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From: johnl@hammer.UUCP (John Light)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: UNI* -> PC Anyone ?
Message-ID: <2133@hammer.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jun-86 12:35:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: hammer.2133
Posted: Tue Jun 24 12:35:47 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jun-86 00:48:26 EDT
References: <114@gouldsd.UUCP>
Reply-To: johnl@hammer.UUCP (John Light)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 37
Keywords: Real Operating systems

You've got the right idea, but the wrong implementation.  Except for
the lucky few, running real Un*x on a personal computer is a luxury of
the future.  The only alternative should not be living with just PCDOS.
There is a middle ground.

I don't think that "committeeware" will fill the need.  Feel free
to pursue that course, but don't lose sight of the other alternatives.
Good software systems, even more than individual pieces of software,
come from a unified vision.

One choice for a more powerful environment for a PC is the Percent
package from Thompson Automation.  Instead of throwing out PCDOS, it
makes the best of a weak environment.  Percent provides much of the
best of the Un*x environment without losing anything important in the
DOS world.

Instead of COMMAND.COM, you get a shell that is a superset of the Bourne
Shell, with additions like aliases and history.  The programs you run
are the same PCDOS applications that you run now.  Or you can run any of
the 20 or so Un*x-like utilities that are provided in Percent.  The
designer's vision shows in the clean way all the pieces work together.

I have also heard that Wendin's PC/UNIX does something like this.  And
a product out of Canada, the MKS Toolkit, provides a very complete set
of utilities.  I think all of these products cost about $100.  This is
not exhorbitant when you compare value for dollar paid with the rest of
the software you are running. (You did pay for it didn't you?)

Instead of wasting time chasing "scatterware", let's encourage these
attempts to save us from PCDOS by trying them and talking about them.
Maybe the best hasn't been written yet.

John Light
tektronix!hammer!johnl

P.S., I have no financial interest in any of the above concerns, but I
am a friend of Pat Thompson of Thompson Automation.