Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!well!yoo
From: yoo@well.sf.ca.us (Young-Kyu Yoo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A3000UX competition
Message-ID: <22014@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 7 Dec 90 06:59:10 GMT
References: <14659@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <4136.275af61c@cc.helsinki.fi> <14712@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 24

Thom Cleland writes:
>If you're going to buy a Unix box, you should learn a bit of Unix information.
>AT&T, BSD, SunOS, and Xenix are uniting into one Unix, the new *INDUSTRY
>STANDARD*, called System V Release 4.

Very misleading.  System V Release 4 is an attempt to make SysV the Unix 
standard by giving it the power and completeness of BSD Unix.  Meanwhile,
the people behind BSD are working on 4.4BSD, which may very well leave
System V Release 4 in the dust.  

There have been two Unix standards in the past:  BSD and SysV.  BSD is
generally considered the more complete and powerful implementation.  SysV
is popular because it has AT&T's backing and is standard on many business
machines.  However, it has lacked BSD's completeness, and Release 4 is an
attempt to address this.  It remains to be seen how successful this
attempt will be.  Meanwhile, BSD marches forward toward 4.4BSD.   

At any rate, the NeXT is not a great machine because it is a Unix machine.
It is a great machine because it gives you the power of Unix without making
you deal with Unix directly.  A typical NeXT user should never have to 
learn vi, grep, ls, or any other Unix command.  A typical NeXT user should
have to know nothing about what BSD stands for (Berkeley Standard
Distribution).  The equivalent can't be said about the users of X Windows
OpenLook (the GUI for Amiga's Unix).