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From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter DaSilva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga: Which replacment OS?/UN*X ??
Message-ID: <214@sugar.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jun-87 08:52:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: sugar.214
Posted: Mon Jun 22 08:52:42 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jun-87 09:15:40 EDT
References: <600@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1705@vdsvax.steinmetz.UUCP> <1576@stb.UUCP> <3979@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 43

Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer writes:

> <I have yet to see a terminal program for UNIX, period. Terminal emulation is
> <a matter for the terminal you're on. There are plenty of *modem* programs for
> <UNIX, however. Some are quite good.
> 
> You haven't been looking hard enough. There's at least one ANSI
> emulator that runs through termcap. X comes with vt00 and TEK
> emulators, and there's a PD vt100 emulator for Suntools. NeWS claims
> to emulate bitgraph, vt100, h19, and tvi925 termminals (at least).

Well, la-de-da. Most UNIX systems don't support bit-mapped displays and
windows at all, and I belong to the unprivileged masses who have never used
such a beast. I wrote an H-19 emulator that ran through termcap once, but
that was just to attach to the standard output of some programs written
without TERMCAP. I wouldn't expect much in the way of speed from such a
beast...

> And the original point still stands. For some reason, Unix modem
> programs don't get very good throughput. Nuts - Unix terminals don't
> get very good throughput. My CP/M-68K system came closer to pushing
> 9600 baud out it's serial port than Unix does.

We get 19200 and even 38400 out of the Unisys 5000 at work... and it's only got
2 68000s to serve typically 15-25 users. It's frowned upon, but it's possible.

> I use single-user Unix systems all the time, with little or nothing in
> crontab. They swap quite a bit, too (something about *large* window
> managers and tools).

Once again, most small UNIX systems don't have gross window managers and
tools.

> The multitasking analogy isn't quite right. Multitasking gives you
> some basic abilities you didn't have before. Swapping just means you
> get to run more and bigger applications before you run out of memory.

That is a new basic ability: the ability to ignore memory limitations
to a great extent. I often want to "swap" deluxe paint to disk while I run
something else. Gobs of memory would do as well, but I don't have it.
Of course swapping on the Amiga is a pretty problematical thing... and, also
of course, nobody says that AmigaUNIX has to support it. Minix doesn't, for
example, and it's a pretty close implementation of V7 UNIX.