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From: brad@looking.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UNIX
Message-ID: <961@looking.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 13-Sep-87 00:53:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: looking.961
Posted: Sun Sep 13 00:53:09 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Sep-87 10:56:39 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 33

My compliments on an insightful and mostly correct commentary.  But there
is more, and this gives Unix a fighting chance:

   Unix's command structure can be altered to become less frightening.
   Menus etc. are not the answer, as Fortune found out.  The main reason
   Unix hasn't changed to a more consistent command structure is resistance
   from the Unix hacks.

   Oddly, it is the same unix hacks who decry the resistance to change of
   conservative DOS users!

   The biggest problem is the difficulty in administering and maintaining a
   Unix system.  It is still orders of magnitude more difficult than the
   "turn it on and run a program" simplicity of DOS.  Many of these problems
   are not specific to Unix, but are caused by having dynamic, multi-tasking,
   multi-user networked environments.  OS/2 will fall plague to some of these.

   The big advantage Unix has is that Unix for the 80386 is available now.
   OS/2 for the 386 is predicted by Microsoft to be over a year away.  If
   the delivery is anything like that for MS Windows, well....

   In the interim people writing 386 software will have only one OS to
   run it under.  Thus all new 386 applications will be developed for Unix
   (and other, non-OS/2 systems that come on-line)

   Thus Unix will be the system that runs the old software and the new,
   and this will help it overcome the other perceived troubles.

The alternative to this is that the 386 suffers the fate of the 286 -- simply
being used as a fast version of its predecessor.  I hope we don't see this.

-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473