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From: gumby@mit-eddie.UUCP (David Vinayak Wallace)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Why do you like your OS?
Message-ID: <668@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Aug-83 17:26:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.668
Posted: Sun Aug 28 17:26:01 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Aug-83 16:36:59 EDT
References: <1910@ihldt.UUCP> <750@hou5e.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 42


    From: mat@hou5e.UUCP
    Subject: Why do you like your OS?
    Date: Fri, 26-Aug-83 14:36:29 EDT

    Why do I like UNIX?  Let me see if I can put it into a few words.

    UNIX seems to be free of these problems.  What is more, things like
    stty/ioctl give you almost as much control over your terminal (the
    device that you care about most) as you would have on a stand-alone
    real-time system.  

Actually, for mmany applications, you care about memory allocation, and
real-time IO.  How does unix fare here?  pretty badly.  And it forces you to
work a lot harder than I would like to access the CRT.  Rather than have a
good virtual, job-wide model of what the TTY looks like you have to be
careful that somebody's brain-damaged program 1> gives you the info, and B>
hasn't completely trashed the tty before returning or passing it on.

    How many systems give easy access to shell variables, exporting, etc.
    And to command line arguments?  Some more modern, enlightened systems
    do.  Finally.

    How many timesharing systems could support vi fully?  While letting
    things run in the background?  And how many systems have a command
    language as rich as even the first Shell?

Both Multics and ITS have had these things since the mid-60's.  You forget
the history that led up to the creation of unix.  Even unix has only become
usable in recent years.  Certainly it offers you a lot, what with
semi-standardised io and a extensible filesystem.  But the price you have
had to pay is a (until very recently) fragile filesystem, slow scheduler,
and mostly klugy software.  It's virtually impossible to debug a running
unix kernal because all of its datastructures are compiled out of existence.

I should explain that I am biased (as if you couldn't tell).  I prefer ITS
on the PDP-10.  Yes, it has almost the worst filesystem in existence, and
yes, it's all written in assembler.  But it has the most integrated
environment I've ever seen, and allows almost unlimited hacking of any
aspect of the system.

Flames, anyone?