Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nuchat!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: OS/2 vs. Pournelle Message-ID: <2742@sugar.uu.net> Date: 3 Oct 88 11:33:02 GMT References: <5384@fluke.COM> <9362@swan.ulowell.edu> <800@super.ORG> Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX Lines: 39 In article , limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) writes: > In article <2731@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > > (for OS/2) > > Start with UNIX. > No, if I wanted Unix, I'd get Unix. Remember, this is a fresh-start > OS. I really love Unix but I dread seeing it in homes. Then again, > I'm sure someone has come up with a version of Unix that doesn't > require hiring a $18,500 sysadmin to keep it running. (Is anyone > still selling "I [heart] my sysadmin" bumper stickers?) HP sold a machine called the Integral (oh no, here he goes again) that came with UNIX in ROM. You turned it on and there you were in a friendly windowing shell. No system administrator. When you stuck a disk in its name showed up in a menu. You *couldn't* pull a disk out until it was unmounted. Everything OS/2 is promising, in 1 meg and NO HARD DISK! > Have you read the book yet? OS/2 has a real nice name space and the > interface to the OS is nice too. It really doesn't matter what the innards of the system look like (like I said, the kernel needs replacing anyway), or what the user sees. The really nice thing about UNIX is that there are all these truly clever ideas (setuid bits, fork, /dev/tty, ...) that make it possible to run it effectively on systems that won't even *fit* OS/2. The UNIX paradigm can be cleanly expanded to allow for windowing and real-time (look at Mach). Yes, both AT&T and Berkeley fubbed this one up, but there are clean IPC and realtime systems out there. If they started there they would have a system out, today, that would let people with stock ATs actually start using it. They might even be able to license HPUX/ROM. The reason for OS/2 has nothing to do with technical superiority, a fresh start, or anything like that. It's a blatant attempt to sell IBM hardware, and to lock out the competition. Just business as usual for IBM. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' peter@sugar.uu.net Have you hugged U your wolf today?