Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!caen!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!ogicse!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!pphillip From: pphillip@cs.ubc.ca (Peter Phillips) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: The Hardy Few Message-ID: <1991Apr6.072832.4012@cs.ubc.ca> Date: 6 Apr 91 07:28:32 GMT References: <1991Apr5.023527.16647@alphalpha.com> Sender: usenet@cs.ubc.ca (Usenet News) Distribution: comp,world Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada Lines: 71 In article <1991Apr5.023527.16647@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes: >In article mishkin@jrst.apollo.hp.com (Nathaniel Mishkin) writes: >>the incredibly clunky), I can only hope that after a while, given the >>fact that X is so widespread and that the usability of what's out >>there on top of it is so bad, someone will build something that has >>the "incredibly useful" parts of the DM. >The only "someone" that is qualified (discounting Alfalfa, and we >don't have the money to finance the time it would take) is Apollo. >I should note that Apollo also has the greatest incentive. You've >got an awful lot of people in R&D who are refusing to switch to X >right now - and that means you're creating yet another situation (Unix >being the first) where Apollo isn't using the stuff it ships. Well, I understand that a lot of old time Apollo users would like to see DM stuff ported. As a new Apollo user interested in UNIX compatiblity, I'd rather see Apollo devote some of their diminishing resources to getting the bugs out of the current UNIX emulation under Domain/OS before they go and re-write the "Display Manager" for X. I'd rather have some psuedo-ttys that work properly than a window manager for X which likes to put a window on top of the current window and then beeps at you because a there is output in a window it just obscured :-). > > -kee > >Yes I'm ashamed to admit it but it's true - I'm typing this on a >Sun. NFS is a crock and slower than mollasses, all the terminal >emulators are flakey, the machine hangs about once every two days. >The debugger was written in the stone-age, the X server is almost >as buggy as Apollo's share-mode X (more so actually, but smaller >bugs). The SystemV merge is so screwed up that it's almost impossible >to port software to it; but it's fast, it's cheap, and it's JLRU. >You too can increase your productivity by setting the clock back >10 years. It's a sad world. Are Suns really that bad? Try getting "gdb" and the X11R4 release from MIT. If you find bugs, report them. As for NFS, it has at least two advantages over the Apollo file system: a) It is stateless. A curse and a blessing, I must admit, but at least diskless machines don't crash if the server does. On the other hand, you do have to live with "NFS server not responding..." occasionally. b) It seems to be portable. A lot of systems have some NFS compatibility, probably because of the public specification of the protocol and its relative independence on a particular underlying file system. Mere details. The *real* reason anyone wants to use UNIX or its many variations is because a lot of vendors try to support it. If you stick to one operating system supported by one vendor, whether it be MVS, VMS, Domain/OS, MS-DOS, TOPS-20, Macintosh, MTS, etc. then you (as an individual, a small business or a large corporation) are completely subject to the whims of that vendor. One day, Domain/OS is well and fine, the next day, its future is uncertain. With UNIX one does have the option of going to another vendor. You don't like Suns? Go and buy some DECstations, or MIPS machines, or IBM R/6000s, HP-UX, NeXT, PCs running SCO, etc. UNIX has many faults but in one way it is 10 years ahead of other operating systems: it isn't quite as proprietary. It is possible for any vendor to offer a version of UNIX because AT&T will provide the source code (for a substantial fee) and because the marketplace accepts the possibility of different implementations of the (sort of) same operating system. Come to think of it, the same reasons apply to X. For completeness, I should probably make some sort of motor vehicle analogy but I can't think of an apt one at the moment. -- Peter Phillips, pphillip@cs.ubc.ca | If an airplane crashes on the US/Canada {alberta,uunet}!ubc-cs!pphillip | border, where are the survivors buried?