Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!flatline!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The REAL problem is the nature of personal computers.
Message-ID: <1404@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 88 08:15:55 GMT
References: <7967@g.ms.uky.edu> <1363@sugar.UUCP> <8692@ccicpg.UUCP> <8870@ccicpg.UUCP>
Sender: karl@sugar.UUCP
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 57

In article <8870@ccicpg.UUCP>, harald@ccicpg.UUCP ( Harald Milne) writes:
> 	Please everybody, this is not a discussion of OS religion, just
> some random thoughts about the future of the Amiga.

Fine, so keep your eye on Amy and stop taking pot-shots at UNIX.

> 	I was not refering to the size of the kernel, but the amount of disk
> space used. If you are talking about a reasonable implementation of UNIX, I
> would say 50meg barely scratches the surface. Look at the Mac II with AUX,
> 80meg and 5 left for you. 

HP Integral with HPUX: no hard disk, 1 floppy. Had at least all the capability
of AmigaDOS under the same circumstances. Gotta remembet that those megabytes
contain useful programs. If you want no more programs than MS-DOS or AmigaDOS
comes with, you can delete 95% of that.

Xenix for the IBM-PC takes up about 5 Meg for the standard system... with no
online manual, but including the compiler.

> 	There is another problem with implementing UNIX, and that is disk
> performance. UNIX HAS to use a hard disk, and depends greatly on access
> times for performance, something that doesn't come cheap. (Well processor
> performance matters also!)

For a given computer/disk setup, UNIX gives you better disk performance than
any other O/S I know of... at the cost of a little reliability. AmigaDOS
gices you even less reliability AND lower performance.

> 	Add to this, process context. Everytime a process is switched,
> caches are blown away. A problem that does not exist on the Amiga.

I can't see that there would be much retained from the time you do a context
switch to the time you get CPU back again on the Amiga, either.

> 	In 5 years, I still have not seen a cheap and reasonable performance 
> UNIX implemention for less than $5000. Im still waiting, I love UNIX, and
> would love to have it at home.

What do you mean by "cheap and reasonable performance". If you mean "Sun-class
performance"... well AmigaDOS doesn't even get you that. If you mean "at least
as much performance as existing operating systems", then you can get a 3b1 with
a 20 Meg hard disk for less than the cost of the Amiga 500 plus a monitor.
And it does windows, even. 68010, 10 Mhz, ...

> 	And there is yet another problem, you HAVE to have a tape drive.
> How else can one reasonably manage megabytes of storage.

Same way you manage megabytes on the Amiga. What, you don't have them?

Backing up 35 MEG to floppies once a month (with smaller incremental backups
in between) is a LOT less hassle than swapping floppies all the time. I've
done both, and I know which I prefer.

If you have any more questions, I'll do my best to answer them.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva  `-_-'  ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.