Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ulowell!swan!asherman From: asherman@dino.ulowell.edu (Aaron Sherman) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: How to modify the "kernel'? Message-ID: Date: 9 Sep 90 21:06:11 GMT References: <6881.26e59640@jetson.uh.edu> <25786@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <1801@tuvie> Sender: news@ul-cs.ulowell.edu Organization: CPE: University of Lowell -- Lowell, MA Lines: 69 In-reply-to: mike@tuvie's message of 9 Sep 90 11:44:55 GMT mike@tuvie (Inst.f.Techn.Informatik) writes: asherman@dino.ulowell.edu (Aaron Sherman ) writes: me> The problem here is that Domain/OS is NOT Unix, and the more HP/Apollo me> tries to make it Unix the more people will get frustrated. Remember that me> for YEARS Unix was not "standard". me> me> Standards. Bah! Standards brought us MSDOS. Standards brought us MOTIF. me> I much prefer the old Apollo attitude. You want BSD, have it. You want me> SystemV, have it. Heck, you can make Apollos act like a PC. You can have me> DDS, TCP/IP or DECNet. You can use X, the DM, even MS-Windows if you're sick. me> Since the HP-takeover though, people like this poster have been having me> more of a voice in the direction Apollo's taking, and I fear the day me> an Apollo is just as much a toy as the next machine. There are great things in DomainOS (you forgot to mention my favorite, the //netdirectory :-), BUT there are annoying things in DomainOS as well, like: * If you need to raise the number of process slots, you're out of luck! * If you complain about a bug in DM, you're told it's not worth fixing as the DM is going to die soon, anyway. * If you have problems with buggy include files, you are told "Wait for OSF/1" All of these problems are directly related to the fact that HP/Apollo is trying to turn Domain/OS into Unix. This is their greatest mistake, as Domain/OS is 1000 times better than Unix. * The file-locking semantics of open can drive you mad. * Programs which work on any other computer break on Apollos. * HPollo makes your life miserable, if you need rpc. Ok, NCS is better, but I never managed to get the pcnfsd to compile with NCS :-) [BTW: I've been thinking of writing an interface that would allow Sun/RPC to use NCS internally, that would piss off Sun! Of course you could only talk to other NCS-based SunRPC's, but this would just mean re- compiling on both ends (not easy if you don't have source:)] These are the problems that should be worked on instead of tyring to make Domain/OS into Unix. Where I work we have ~20 Apollos, including a DN10000, and I find that most of the users' complaints center around Domain/OS not being like Unix, but so are ALL of the praise! If HP/Apollo takes away Domain/OS, they take away ALL of our reasons for liking the Apollo. Instead they could try to make the mock-BSD and mock-SYSV environments a bit more tollerant (even give out supported docs on the get-info-that-would-be-in-kmem-if-there-was-one calls). I think that what they should do is just add one more supported environment: OSF/1! This would keep the standards-hounds happy, while letting people still get real work done. Anyone from HP/Apollo out there want to comment on this??? -AJS -- asherman@dino.ulowell.edu or asherman%cpe@swan.ulowell.edu Note that as of 7/18/90 that's asherman@dino.cpe.ulowell.edu "That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is."