Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!mcsun!tuvie!mike From: mike@tuvie (Inst.f.Techn.Informatik) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: How to modify the "kernel'? Summary: ver osf/1 ? Message-ID: <1802@tuvie> Date: 10 Sep 90 11:41:23 GMT References: <6881.26e59640@jetson.uh.edu> <25786@boulder.Colorado.EDU> Organization: Technical University of Vienna, AUSTRIA Lines: 84 In article , asherman@dino.ulowell.edu (Aaron Sherman) writes: > * If you need to raise the number of process slots, you're out of luck! > 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. Wait! Just a moment! DomainOS to you seems to be Aegis! This is (fortunately) not the case! DomainOS is to be "an enhanced UNIX"! I quite like _that_ idea. But if you have to write software which is portable, you want reasonable UNIX compatibility. Without forfeiting execution speed. I cheer any attempt to make DomainOS more UNIX compatible as long as the good features of DomainOS are retained which are basically networking and CASE support. I can live without DM, but demise of the DM (which is soon to come, from what I hear) is a warning what will soon happen to DomainOS at large. And I can and will not welcome this. If DomainOS is killed, I guess we'd rather go Sun. The implementation of DomainOS is lousy, but the ideas behind it are _great_. So I guess Hpollo should not kill DomainOS, but rather fix the broken parts. The number of process slots has nothing to do with DomainOS being like UNIX or not! Sure, UNIX is more daemon hungry, but daemons are a clean solution and I'd rather have 5 programs doing one thing properly each, rather than one program doing five things in a totally _awkward_ fashion to save daemons. Our gateway for example has 35 processes running _if_nobody_is_logged_on! > [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:)] What does this help most users? You just dont get PC NFS with NCS. And if you've a heterogenous environment you might just as well commit suicide. > These are the problems that should be worked on instead of tyring to make > Domain/OS into Unix. Just my point. But this is exactly what annoys most users. User do not say "I want this workstaion with real UNIX", because they hate the DomainOS ideas, they say it because Sun workstations are perceived to work properly and without bugs (I know this is far from true, but this is the perception :) whereas in DomainOS all kinds of things do not work. > [...] 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). Sure! E.g., things like the syscall() system call or related stuff. I know these things ain't clean and nice, but some times (e.g. if you want to compile SB prolog) they are necessary. > I think that what they should do is just add one more supported environment: > OSF/1! Would be nice, but eill not happen. I think there is a simple reason for this: HP currently has to support MS-DOS, DomainOS 68k, DomainOS Prism, HP PA, HP 68k machines. Also, I think, they have some proprietary OS as well. Now, I guess, HP would rather have two lines, MSDOS and _one_ UNIX line. They have already killed (or are doing it right now) DomainOS Prism and the next to fall will be DomainOS. It simply doesn't make economic sense to have 5 different kinds of OS. > This would keep the standards-hounds happy, while letting people still get > real work done. Standards are necessary if you want to live in a heterogenous environment. I guess you won't buy a VCR if it isn't able to play some other manufacturer's cassettes. Same thing for computers! I guess HPollo should think _twice_ about killing DomainOS. I know a lot of people who would rather have SunOS as their OS and not HP-UX. So if this is the future, I guess HP will lose _lots_ of customers. Worrisome is for exmple the demise of the DM, which makes many people unhappy. I guess we should try to find out what HP wants to do to DomainOS next. I guess that DomainOS will not survive the DM's death very long. For many users, DomainOS _is_ the DM, and if they can't have the DM, they will go somewhere else. I HP should pay attention to its customers feelings. Otherwise, the only return from the acquisition of Apollo will be disgruntled customers who will never ever buy HP again. (50% of all people I know say that without the DM they will go Sun, because if they have to learn a new editor, it will be emacs, so that they are insulated from all further changes. And up-to-date GNU software is not easy to get for DomainOS.) bye, mike ____ ____ / / / / / Michael K. Gschwind mike@vlsivie.at / / / / / Technical University, Vienna mike@vlsivie.uucp ---/ Voice: (++43).1.58801 8144 e182202@awituw01.bitnet / Fax: (++43).1.569697 ___/