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From: sl@van-bc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UNIX
Message-ID: <1344@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Sep-87 15:27:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: van-bc.1344
Posted: Thu Sep 17 15:27:20 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 16:57:12 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <961@looking.UUCP> <498@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Reply-To: sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne)
Organization: Public Access Network, Vancouver, BC.
Lines: 100

In article <498@parcvax.Xerox.COM> burton@parcvax.xerox.com.UUCP (Philip M. Burton) writes:
>In article <961@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:

>However, menus are part of the answer.  For many people, any kind of command
>line is NOT the answer.  That's a good part of the success of the Mac.

Menus may not be the answer, but the current System V Sysadm package is at
least adequate for reducing the amount of knowledge you need about all of
the nitty gritty details to a low level. It basically steps you through all
of the steps necessary to add users, System file entries (aka uucp L.sys
file), etc. I know how to do all this, but still use Sysadm, because it
keeps me from forgetting things. 

>>   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.

Exactly. Anytime you add a hard disk and five or ten MB of software together
you start having problems. I for one don't have *any* problems bringing up a
Unix system. However I cringe anytime I have to go near an MS-DOS system.
It's really not very easy to setup. I mean really, auto-exec what?? For me
to bring 3.2 MS-DOS on our recently installed 386 would take me longer than
it did to put unix on it (about 1hr from a standing start). 

The reason that everyone thinks that MS-DOS is easier is that they have had
a relatively slow and long training period, with lots of peer support. Everyone
had MS-DOS so it was easy to find other people who could help you. And the
real experts started with 1.0 (ah, a great little version, the last one *I
used*), and progressed upwards through levels two, and on to 3.[012]. 

For people like me who havn't kept up it's really quite annoying to try and
do anything with it. I know all of the basic ideas but don't know any of the
specific little details. And when I compare the basic capabilities of MS-DOS
to Unix, I usually just give up. 

And if you've ever brought up an IBM pc network, you can't really claim that
MS-DOS is a simple system to configure! Makes *anything* else look simple.

Basically the only MS-DOS that is easy to configure is two floppy system
with 256k RAM :-)

>At the same time, until you make fundamental, and I do mean that, changes
>to UNIX, for example the filesystem fragility, lack of true random access,

I've beening running on an older Uniplus Unix box for over a year now, with
over 150MB of files on second hand, slightly flakey hard disks. The system
crashes occasionally (flakey hardware). I've *never* lost a file. 

With the current release of System V, release 3, AT&T has "hardened" the file 
system. Reports of the "fragility" of the Unix file system are grossly
mis-informed.

>you don't have a PERSONAL operating system.

Funny, I'm the only PERSON on this system. Of course I've got two terminals
and two phone lines plugged into it, but I'm the only one who uses it as
their main system. I do allow about twenty other computers to route mail and
news through it, otherwise it would just sit there and get dusty. It might
as well be doing *something*. 

>>   The big advantage Unix has is that Unix for the 80386 is available now.

And cheap too! I heartily recommend it.

>>   OS/2 for the 386 is predicted by Microsoft to be over a year away.  If

And probably not so cheap too!

>>   the delivery is anything like that for MS Windows, well....

And probably it will be about as successfull as MS Windows too!

>No, that conclusion about UNIX doesn't follow.  UNIX will not run software
>written for OS/2. And even if it were true, my "marketing gut" tells me that

Say's who. If you think that the people who brought you DOS/Merge / Locus
etc, are not carefully studing the OS/2 manuals right now you are just naive. 
I would venture to say that you may be able to run 386 OS/2 programs under
Unix before you can under OS/2!

>What got me started on all this was the prospect that MicroPort has a UNIX

>Then I started thinking of the incredible hassles that I would have to put
>up with to get uucp news up, or whatever.  Just not worth it.

Unix is available for very low prices on the 386. The 386 is the first
machine that will allow large scale distribution of binary compatible Unix
programs over a wide range of different manufacturers machines.

I for one am currently porting news and a large number of PD tools over to
my machine at work. Once I've done this I'll be able to hand out copies of
the binaries to anyone interested. You want news "cpio < /dev/rdsk/f0q15dt".

I think that Unix will replace MS-DOS wherever users want multi-user or
multi-tasking. It's not all that hard to use/install/configure. You just
have to learn how to do it, just like you did with MS-DOS. 

-- 
{ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!Stuart.Lynne Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532