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From: rb@ccivax
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga OS
Message-ID: <357@ccivax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Jan-86 22:29:20 EST
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Posted: Fri Jan 24 22:29:20 1986
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> Matt  Dillion  thinks  AmigaDos   is ``total shit'' and believes that Unix
> is  the god which all o.s.  must  emulate.
> 
> Well, Matt, I don't know if you are a Unix expert  and, in fact, your exp-
> ertise in operating system X doesn't really bear upon the argument at hand.
> are too restrictive  (read that  narrow minded).  The  answer to statements
> like ``Unix is  great   because...and  AmigaDos  is  shit  because...'' are
> senseless and without worth. The two  operating  systems  address different
> needs.
> 
> Maybe you are a UNIX  expert,  Matt, but you definately are not an AmigaDos
> expert.
> 
> Perry S. Kivolowitz

Matt's article was actually quite useful and valuable.  I believe his primary
point was that AmigaDos is not what he considers a "Programmer Friendly"
operating system.  This is a very legitimate concern, because it is very
hard to get a lot of applications software written for a system which requires
"wizard level knowledge" of the interface.  Even more important is the
cost of maintaining applications for such a system.  A simple unix application
may require say, 8 lines of code to say "hello world".  An operating system that
requires 10 includes, 200 lines, and 60 parameters, reguardless of how they are
structured, to open a file, and print a string to it, will cost more to
maintain than in an operating system that requires six lines like:

main()
{
	char *message="hello world";
	fd=open("window1",1);
	write(fd,message,sizeof(message));
}

Of course, this is old Version 7, and even 4.2 has gotten more complicated,
but still, this is a lot simpler than the "Hello world" program I saw
when this board first started.

Just so you don't put me in the "UNIX cheerleaders camp", there are features
that MS-Dos, GEM and OS-9 have, that Unix doesn't.  And since I don't
know any more about Intuition than from the sources posted on this net
I would like to know how it stacks up. Like:

  The ability to add new DEVICE DRIVERS to a running system.  With Unix,
you have to re-link the entire operating system kernal to add a new type
of device.  You can mount any number of iterations of that device type
via the mount command but you can't mount a new device. Intuition?

The ability to share code between applications via 'trap vectors'. Unix
lets you share executables but if two routines call printf you get two
copies of the full floating point library tromping around both disk and
ram.  OS-9 lets you share "modules" like the floating point library,
graphics libraries, and the like (they are mounted like drivers).
What about Intuition?

Only what you need is in core.  Unix has drivers for things that haven't
even been invented yet just to take up kernal space.  Outside of the
file manager, you only mount what you really need. What about intuition?

Of course, if Intuition is too complicated, Commodore may go the same
way North Star went with the Horizon.  North Star's dos was so complicated,
you had to directly manipulate the directory to add a new file, allocate
enough space when you created it, and then you could think about opening it.
Eventually, they wrote a bios for CP/M and let nature take it's course.

Of course they may try to go the way of Ohio Scientific, who clung to their
OS to the very end, right down to their async disk format.  I guess they
still exist on paper somewhere.