Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!im4u!ut-sally!husc6!think!ames!aurora!labrea!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!nuchat!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The GNU Manifesto
Message-ID: <1393@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jan 88 13:33:12 GMT
References: <153@mozart.UUCP> <1351@sugar.UUCP> <9591@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 40

In article <9591@tekecs.TEK.COM>, snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com (Snoopy) writes:
> Incorrect.  My home machine will run GNUmacs, and I know plenty of other
> people who own machines that will run it.

I guess my home computer could run GNUmacs, but I'd need two diskettes to
fit everything I need to bring it up.

What's your machine, that you run GNUmacs on? A 3b2 or equivalent?

A home computer should cost no more than a small fraction of the price of
a small car. I'll amend my statement to read that GNU can not run on any
machine that any significant numbers of individuals can hope to own.

> The expensive part of a home Unix machine is the disk, not the CPU/MMU/RAM.
> Disk space is still expensive, and the MTBF is, er, depressing.

A 20 megabyte drive and controller for the IBM-PC costs on the order of a
couple of hundred dollars. A megabyte of DRAMS costs a substantial fraction
of that.

And the HP Integral should pretty much discount any claim that you need a
hard disk to run UNIX. Too bad HP was still in their Hypercharge (we're
real proud of our machines, and we think you should pay lots and lots for
them) mode.

> Minix is a very good thing.  The IBM-PC however, is worthless for anything
> except running "Flight-simulator".

The IBM-PC is the cheapest machine you can run UNIX on... and even then the
UNIX is way too bloated. Let me tell you a story... once upon a time there was
a good little operating system named Version 7...
> 
> Snoopy
> tektronix!doghouse.gwd!snoopy
> snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com


-- 
-- Peter da Silva  `-_-'  ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.