Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Operating Systems (Re: archimedes)
Message-ID: <6191@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 22 Nov 88 04:52:58 GMT
References: <12633@steinmetz.ge.com>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 28

in article <12633@steinmetz.ge.com>, davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) says:
>   Everyone has their own "required" set of features to differentiate a
> DOS from a real operating system. Mine certainly includes the concept of
> file ownership and protection. To do that you have to be able to have
> memory and i/o control of some sort, to prevent direct physical i/o.

File ownership and protection are obviously important for multi-user
systems. But I thought we were moving into the era of "one person, one
or more CPUs".... why do I need the overhead of file ownership on my
personal system? 

On the other hand, we're also moving into the era of networking and
ISDN... if we implement a full-fledged network, where any machine is
capable of connecting to any other machine (as vs. limited systems
where the "leafs" can only access a "server"), I see what you mean.

>   Everyone seems to agree the MS-DOS and CP/M are filesystems only, and
> that UNIX and VMS are real o/s', it's the things in between which are
> grey areas.

True. Minix doesn't qualify as a "real OS" by your standard, though...
considering that it implements most of the V7 kernel, that seems a
bit, uhm, over-restrictive (the "toyness" of Minix relates more to the
toy Intel processor it runs on, not the OS itself).

--
Eric Lee Green    ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
          Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509