Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: R.I.P. Byte Message-ID: <722@proxftl.UUCP> Date: 7 Sep 88 18:28:08 GMT References: <402@mfgfoc.UUCP> <674@proxftl.UUCP> <444@coplex.UUCP> Reply-To: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 88 Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Keywords: In article <444@coplex.UUCP> chuck@coplex.UUCP (Chuck Sites) writes: : In article <674@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes: : >In article <402@mfgfoc.UUCP> exodus@mfgfoc.UUCP (Greg Onufer) writes: : >: Has anybody seen the latest issue of Byte? I was searching long and hard : >: for some redeeming social value in that magazine the other night when I : >: started to glance through Pournelle's column.... and the bastard basically : >: said that Un*x was good for nothing except poorly written multi-user : >: databases. His biggest complaint was that Un*x couldn't run a lot of his : >: MS-DOS applications well enough (two products were mentioned, I think). : : [Greg quotes Jerry Pournelle's article and then summerizes Jerry's : complaints about Unix] Excuse me, but those are *my* words. Please be more careful with your attributions. : > 1) There does not seem to exist a good way to run : > arbitrary DOS programs on a Unix box. Or more than : > one of them at a time, as a good Unix ought to. : : So the analogy is... Hehe.. Lets run that MacPaint on a PC. I know : it should work. :-) It's a bad analogy, because no one was promising him that he could run MacPaint. They *were* promising him that he could run MS-DOS applications. I guess the right way for him to have phrase the complaint is "they LIED to me!" : (seriously though, wait until XDOS hits the : market for 680x0, or VP/ix or Merge on a i386 with an MMU that tame : the little monsters written for those PC's). I hear that these already exist. I may be very disappointed if the machine that I am getting (a 386 from either Wyse or Zenith) can't run certain MS-DOS applications. : > 2) The Unix applications he wants to use are weak : > compared to DOS applications. For that matter, in : > word processing and accounting, they are weak compared : > to CP/M applications. : : Jerry just doesn't know what he's talking about as far as quality of : WP and accounting. He just pick a couple of lousy vendors who couldn't : port thier aps to unix. That might be true, but *I* haven't seen UNIX applications that are comparable to the MS-DOS versions, and I *live* on UNIX. I hear that several of the major vendors are doing ports though. (Brief on a Sun? That would be nice.) If you know of really good applications, with user interfaces comparable with the best PC applications, I'd like to know of them. : > 3) Unix can do some wonderful things, but not the things : > he wants to do. : : And so he doen't use unix, and that's good. God_for_bid if he had : a USENET node. Or even an experienced unix user. :-) I hear that he used to be on ARPA. I have no idea why he isn't any longer. : > 4) Unix applications are overpriced. : > 5) Unix applications are hard to use. : > 6) He implies that Unix system administration is : > unnecessarily complex. : > : >Well, how many of you want to defend Unix against these : >complaints? : : It sure beats a network of PCs! Have you ever seen one of those : boys adminsitered properly and used with any success. Well, the guys over in our medical group have one, and they use that in preference to our Sun! (Don't ask me why, I never *did* get a comprehensible answer.) : >While *I* wouldn't use DOS for anything at all, if I could avoid : >it, ... : : I do avoid it. My PC/286 at home runs UNIX only! Even if I only balance : my checkbook with it. I'm stuck with it. Not only is my terminal an AT (running over the ethernet to our Sun), but I have to port my stuff to PC's. Uck. --- Bill novavax!proxftl!bill