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From: dgb@unislc.uucp (Douglas Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: UNIX is yuck (was Re: Next intro...)
Message-ID: <1990Oct17.141632.29144@unislc.uucp>
Date: 17 Oct 90 14:16:32 GMT
References: <1990Oct13.011924.9894@oswego.Oswego.EDU>
Organization: Unisys, SLC Utah
Lines: 34

From article <1990Oct13.011924.9894@oswego.Oswego.EDU>, by ostroff@Oswego.EDU (Boyd Ostroff):
> In article <1990Oct11.220943.9764@unislc.uucp> dgb@unislc.uucp (Douglas Barrett) writes:
> 
>>If we compare os to os.  UNIX is more complicated.  It takes more hardware
>>to run it.  It has to be, it does more.  
> 
> While I think you make some very good points, I'll nitpick here.  Unix itself
> does not require more hardware.  I have an AT&T 3B1 (Unix-PC) which runs
> pretty nicely with a 10 Mhz 68010, 2 MB RAM and a 67 MB disk.  The console
> has a 760 x 512 bitmapped windowing display.  After installing unix 
> (Sys V R2, pretty much) and all the development set plus 5 MB swap partition
> there are still over 40 MB free on the disk.  I can't verify this personally,
> but am told it easily whips an 8MB Mac II with A/UX.  In fact, you can buy
> a used complete system like mine for about the same cost as the A/UX
> software alone!

May I be forgivin for considering A/UX UNIX.  MacOS is (I believe) a
ROM based os.  Thus a 80/8 Mac has 80 MB of disc and 8 MB of memory
left.  It is true ROM is still memory and this address space *could*
be used for something else.  But practically speaking no one loads
their 680x0 up with 4 GB of memory.  And Mac does *not* include os
ROM in their address calculations.

And yes there are many flavors of UNIX floating around out there.  Some
are more space efficient than others.  To guys like me (kernel hacks)
there is a world of difference between them.  To developers all they
care about is SVID, POSIX and ABI.  To the guy who doesn't know how
much memory is in his system its what ever user interface is running
on top of it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Douglas Barrett				these are my own opinions
Unisys Unix Development
Salt Lake City