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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!feg
From: feg@clyde.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: A different View of the value of OS/2 - it's better than UNIX
Message-ID: <14171@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 09:18:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: clyde.14171
Posted: Mon Sep 21 09:18:33 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Sep-87 04:02:08 EDT
References: <494@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <961@looking.UUCP> <498@parcvax.Xerox.COM> <514@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
Lines: 40
Summary: I should have said "386 running OS-2"

In article <514@parcvax.Xerox.COM>, burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton) writes:
> In article <13909@clyde.ATT.COM> feg@clyde.ATT.COM (Forrest Gehrke) writes:
      [Why would "average Joe" Burton describes want a 386?"

> >In article <498@parcvax.Xerox.COM>, burton@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Philip M. Burton) writes:
> >> 
> >    [deletions]
> 
> Perhaps this average Joe does big, big spreadsheets all day.  Now, on his
> PC, this takes 25 minutes to do a re-calc.  On his AT, maybe 5 minutes.  But,
> on his Compaq 386, less than 2 minutes.  (These are real numbers, drawn
> from the experiences of a major San Francisco bank.)
> 
> 
You are undoubtedly correct.  But your original subject was directed 
at the reasons OS-2 was going to be better than UNIX as seen by your
average Joe user.  When he is using ms-dos on a Compaq 386, he is
not seeing any difference from his experience with the earlier PC's
except speed.

The introduction of multi-tasking and multi-user, (even if multiple
users are not present) capability to an OS, any OS, will make OS-2
look a lot like UNIX.  Even ms-dos after v 2.0 has many obvious
borrowings from UNIX. I predict that OS-2 will look even more like
UNIX, regardless of what it is called and regardless of what the
commands are called (erase/delete instead of rm, and rename instead
of mv, for example).

Unix development began in 1969.  It is still evolving, rel 3 now
beginning to show up for Sys V.  Since ms-dos has taken 5 years
to get to v 3.3 (with most of the bugs out and showing reasonable
features for a single task/single user OS), I don't think 5 years
is going to be an unreasonable wait for a decently appearing
OS-2 (even with UNIX as a template before the developers).  And
it is going to be a great deal more complicated to install and
run than ms-dos. Worse yet, OS-2 on your Compaq 386, is going
to run more slowly than ms-dos does.


Forrest Gehrke