Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Microsoft, OS/2, and UNIX
Message-ID: <29182@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 1 Apr 89 21:34:38 GMT
References: <267.2434BA33@medsoft.uucp>
Reply-To: madd@buit4.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Associative Design Technology
Lines: 83

In article <267.2434BA33@medsoft.uucp> Ed.Maurer@p4.f10.n135.z1.fidonet.org (Ed Maurer) writes:
|Every year the same argument, and every year it gets shot down for a few 
|damn good reasons: First and foremost, the user base simply will not accept 
|UNIX in any of its current releases (numerous, and therein lies reason 2: 
|No standardization - compared to most UNIX's, MS/OS2 and IBM/OS2 are saimese 
|twins).

Users will accept whatever is necessary to run their applications.  If
this were not the case, IBM would never have made money on the
System/3x line.  I suspect the winner will be the OS which supports
the most applications the fastest.  This is the first time you really
had a choice in the PC world; it could go either way.

|OS/2 was never designed to be a multi-user OS, and hence any 
|comparison to UNIX is absurd to start with. Without a shell, UNIX is far 
|too much for the average end user - and whose shell is going to be
|the ONE?

I think you mean something like a friendly interface.  There are
several standard shells under UNIX which are pretty close the the same
environment for the uneducated user, and which behave remarkably like
the MS-DOS command interpreter until you get to functions which MS-DOS
cannot perform, such as multitasking.  Most users can handle logging
in and typing an application's name, much as they can handle turning
the machine on and typing an application's name.  What's the problem?

|Most UNIX based application sites (not university or development sites; 
|application sites, where the bulk of computer use is done) still require a 
|highly paid and trained administrator.

You will find that this is changing very fast.  How many application
sites must now have a PC expert?  Whenever you go to networked PC's
you *need* such a person.  Few standalone UNIX boxes require much more
than the initial setup and some simple instructions to run
applications; it's when you have a lot of them interconnected that
things become hairy, or when your disk gets fried.  Same problem under
OS/2.

|And OS/2 is no more buggy than the 
|first release of most OS's and it certainly is not slow.

You sure must not be trying to run 10Mb in 8Mb of memory.  Under UNIX
it's painless.  Try it under OS/2 and watch what happens.

|(Yes, I know all about UNIX or is it 
|XENIX or AIX or...).

Some people would say that an operating system supported by multiple
vendors is one which is likely to be around for awhile.
Incompatibilities between UNIX's almost always result from supersets
of UNIX, provided by specific vendors, except in the case of System V
versus BSD or research UNIX's.  You'll see most of those differences
going away soon.  From a user's point of view there's no real
difference (except job control and general utility availability, not
topics for the beginner anyway).

|your point about windows is not quite 
|correct, as is your statement re IBM's support for AIX - only on the RT. 

IBM has announced that AIX for the high-end PS/2 lines is right on
schedule, although it's slipped for some of the higher-end machines,
and that they intend to support it on a very wide range of machines.
Perhaps we don't read the same rags.

|there is NO official UNIX support in the PC arena.

You have me there.  IBM is supporting it.  AT&T has been supporting it
for years.  Microsoft is supporting it.  Sun Microsystems is
supporting it (providing you call the 386i a PC, which is arguable).
Dell is supporting it.  Pheonix Technologies is hiring UNIX people
like they're going out of style.  Toshiba is shipping a laptop 80386
UNIX machine aimed specifically at executives.  Bell Technologies is
supporting it.  And we won't even get into all the smaller companies
that are producing versions.  What do you consider official?

|to read into this that OS/2 is dead is ridiculous.

OS/2 isn't dead, but neither is COBOL.  Take 'em if you want 'em and
let the rest of us get some work done.

jim frost
Associative Design Technology
madd@bu-it.bu.edu


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