Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!ut-sally!rice!titan!phil From: phil@titan.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: The Next Generation Message-ID: <468@ra.rice.edu> Date: Wed, 18-Nov-87 01:39:58 EST Article-I.D.: ra.468 Posted: Wed Nov 18 01:39:58 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 20-Nov-87 23:36:25 EST References: <2785@megaron.arizona.edu> <5294@ccicpg.UUCP> Sender: usenet@rice.edu Reply-To: phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Organization: Rice University, Houston Lines: 50 In article <5294@ccicpg.UUCP> harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes: > I am glad somebody finally said this. The Amiga does not have the >massive context switch overhead involved with user space and virtual memory >maps. Context switching virtual memory need not be expensive. It's just that the way Berkeley implemented it, it is. >Virtual UNIX on the Amiga or the Sun or the Mac II will suck, and cost ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ >a lot. Assuming that you mean Unix with virtual memory (and not virtual-machine Unix :-), that has existed on the Suns for as long as Sun 2's have existed. And it doesn't "suck" unless your workstation has less than 4 meg of real memory (Suns that support more than one or two users need more like 8 or 16 meg). > Although the Amiga is multitasking, and not multiuser, this is >an advantage. There is no reason to support the multiuser feature of UNIX >on the Amiga, simply since it isn't. (After all, it is MY machine) Once you have multitasking, multiuser is trivial. Provided you are willing to take the ITS route and dispense with useless formalities like userids and file ownership. All you need is an intelligent SER: driver (note that the standard one is NOT very intelligent) and some serial lines. >> As an extreme example, look at Sun workstations... > That is a very good example. No, it is a bad example. See my previous posting on this subject. >To bad this is the street Apple >is walking down on for the Mac II. Boy do they have a few suprises! I >won't even mention the astronomical costs to accomplish this! You mean, like an 80 meg hard disk, an MMU, an extra 4 meg of memory, and the actual OS itself? >UNIX on micros is silly Correct! But remember: Unix is a poor example of a virtual memory operating system, and SunView is a poor example of a Unix-based windowed environment workstation. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University