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From: davewt@NCoast.ORG (David Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga OS *IS* state of the art
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.030653.10978@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 2 Apr 91 03:06:53 GMT
References: <7827@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <1991Mar27.062345.6622@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au> <7840@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 29

In article <7840@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) writes:
>	That's a different issue:  SIMULTANEOUS multiple users.  I would
>still argue that, for an OS to be "state of the art" (as was claimed by the
>original poster), it has to have some concept of file ownership; a multiple
>user model in which a user "owns" a file.
>......
>	I claim that an OS without this feature is not "state of the art".
>That's all I'm claiming -- no more, no less.
	Name one single-user-at-a-time OS that does this (not some kind of LAN
OS like Novell, but a real, optimized for one user at a time but still
multitaksing OS that runs on PC class machines.
	Until there is one that does these things, *AND* does everything else
the Amiga OS does just as well as the Amiga (shared libraries, unlimited
RAM, dynamic device drivers, etc.), you can't compare it. That's like me saying
that "if a car doesn't hover 500 feet off the ground, cruise at mach 2
at 4 kilometers, and come with sidewinder missiles it isn't state of the
art". For something to be better than something it has to EXIST, not just be
what someone comprehends COULD exist.
	In fact, OS/9 had almost as much as the Amiga did, for it's day,
and it DID have real multi-user abilities. As did MP/M. Does that make it
state of the art? Is Unix state of the art? Hardly. I have yet to see ANY
Unix system that makes as much use of dynamic shared libraries as the Amiga,
or provides dynamic shared libraries as SOP for things such as shells,
so that even common things like regular expression matching could be done in
one place instead of in each program that wan't to do it.
	Don't mistake something that is more "powerfull" with something that is
"state of the art". The two aren't the same.

				Dave