Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hplsla!hpvcla!neff
From: neff@hpvcla.HP.COM (Dave Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: OS/2 Anyone? or why the PC and MSDOS are wonderful
Message-ID: <4740016@hpvcla.HP.COM>
Date: 16 Jun 88 21:17:37 GMT
References: <1866@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Vancouver, WA
Lines: 24

If you step back and think of the reasons for OS-2 the answer is quite
obvious: Greed on the part of Microsoft.

Unix already has the multitasking, job control, network support, etc.
X windows is a viable windowing system.  As has been mentioned in a
previous posting various Unix implimentations that run on the Intel
286/386 chips can run old DOS applications better than what OS-2
promises.  Since X windows is a set of primitives, a higher level
set of libraries and a window manager could even give the same look and
feel as MS windows.  MS windows, DOS, and ROM BIOS emulation libraries could
be provided to aid in porting programs to Unix if they needed the
extra memory and features Unix provides.  It sounds like it will
be just as difficult to port many programs to OS-2 as it would be
to port them to Unix, especially if these emulation libraries were
available.

So why did Microsoft re-invent what was already there?  Microsoft does
not own and control Unix.  Microsoft does own and control the OS
that runs on the most popular PC of all time.  Microsoft is not willing
to give up this kind of power and profit.  I can't blame Microsoft for this
effort, but I do hope it fails.

Dave Neff
ihnp4!hpfcla!hpvcla!neff