xp is a bloody good operating system for home users no matter what anyone says. the only mistake microsoft made was intergrating internet explorer into the os.
if they cut windows down to the core and just have the kernel and the window manager it would be completly useless for what it is designed for and that is for home users. imagine lusers having to figure out where to get a video player from let alone defragger, antivirus and everything else.
a suitable compromise would be having windows media player/internet explorer as an option to install with the os. they would not be forcing it on anyone like now and if they really are as bad as people say they can leave them out.
Opening up a few of the api's for xp and the upcoming longhorn to allow 3rd party applications to really use the inbuilt functions of the operating system would be a massive step forward in making it a more level playing field for everyone.
the nt kernel is pretty bulky since it has to support alot of hardware. a bit like standard linux kernels you get with distributions. they are designed to support everything so they will install on a wide range of machines. but with linux you can compile your own leaving out the modules you dont need. until the nt kernel is open source you will never be able to do this. thats why it has such a large memory footprint.
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