Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!udel!gatech!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!hplabs!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!jack!sdeggo!dave
From: dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Unix vs. OS/2 (was RE: Pournelle on Unix)
Message-ID: <168@sdeggo.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 88 02:00:47 GMT
References: <11156@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: Lazy Programmer's Society of San Diego
Lines: 40

In article <11156@brl-adm.ARPA>, GUTHERY%ASC%sdr.slb.com@RELAY.CS.NET (guthery%asc@sdr.slb.com) writes:
> 1) Here are some O/S goodies that stock OS/2 (now playing on my desk)
> has that stock Unix (also playing on my desk) doesn't have:
> 	- built-in light weight processes blended compatibly 
> 	  with heavy weight processes 
> 	- runtime dynamic linking and demand loading
> 	- shared global memory segments
> 	- file locking by byte region
> 	- standard system calls from drivers
> 	- periodic signals
> 	- systemwide semaphores
> 	- file write-though
> 	- system trace

Which version of Unix are you running?  Both System V and BSD have file locking
by byte regions through the fcntl() and lockf() calls respectively.  (Ok, ok,
so they're advisory in many implementations.)

Are "shared global memory segments" equivalent to the Sys V shared memory or is
there a nuance I'm missing here?

What's the difference between a "systemwide semaphore" and Sys V semaphores?

Dynamic linking is supported on several machines through shared libraries,
however these may not be as nice as OS/2's Dynalinks.  Demand loading is
done by BSD 4.x systems and Sys V.3, is it not?

OS/2 certainly does things that Unix does not...yet.  However, it is unlikely
to take over the market if it is, as I have heard, a hardware specific OS,
aimed mainly at running on 80286's.  And it's probably not going to run on
my '286, except as a novelty, because I can't take the program I write under
OS/2 which uses all the nifty OS/2 features and run it on the machine at work,
as I can with the programs off my Microport Sys V.


-- 
David L. Smith
{sdcsvax!jack,ihnp4!jack, hp-sdd!crash, pyramid}!sdeggo!dave
sdeggo!dave@amos.ling.edu 
Sinners can repent, but stupid is forever.