Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Pournelle doesn't like Unix Re: R.I.P. Byte
Message-ID: <1995@looking.UUCP>
Date: 31 Aug 88 06:34:46 GMT
References: <402@mfgfoc.UUCP> <674@proxftl.UUCP>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 29

Jerry Pournelle has long advocated what he conceitedly calls his own
law - "one user, one cpu."

Some people have misguidedly interpreted this good principle to mean
there is something wrong with multi-user operating systems, simply
because the original versions of these systems stem from the evil
many users, once cpu days.

Indeed, the OS/2 team claimed that the distinction behind OS/2 would be
that it was the first interactive OS to be designed for a single user.
(For example, by choosing the DOS filesystem as the default filesystem,
instead of making it a supported mountable filesystem, OS/2 forgets that
even though I'm the only one on my computer, I'm far from the only one
who wants to use data on it.)

In doing so, some people have come to misjudge the value of many of
the features of multi-userism, because they overcompensate in their dislike
for the bad things.

Pournelle is right that tools like VP/ix are still not mature.  But they
will be, in time, and DOS programs will run as well under Unix as they
do under OS/2, or even multi-tasking DOS systems.  The problems, all stem,
in fact, from where programs had to break the DOS iterface to work, and
are problems common to all of these systems trying to be upward compatible.

Nonetheless, as I have said before, Unix still has far to go to make it
into the single user world.  But be sure to criticise the right things.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473