From: "Tobias DiPasquale" <anany / ece.vill.edu>

> Copy-on-write allows the fork call to copy only the VM pages that are
> different from parent to child into the child process being forked (thus
> NOT copying the pages that are shared by both; these are only copied in
> the event of a write by either process). This drastically reduces the
> time it takes to execute the execve() system call (this is the typical
> call made to overlay a forked process with a new binary image and start
> a "new" process). All modern *n*x OSs implement this (Solaris, *BSD,
> Linux, I think HP-UX and AIX as well, but don't quote me). Windows
> process creation functions do not do this, and thus have to create an
> entire process context and assign virtual memory "from scratch" every
> time a new process is created. Windows gives the developers more options
> in process creation, true, but at the cost of speed and memory.
>
Not sure where you got your information from. This is EXACTLY what the
windows MM does (I speak for NT only, I don't know or care about the other
versions), not only when creating process but also when sharing libraries
etc.

So much misinformation.

Ralph