Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Why unix doesn't catch on
Message-ID: <1922@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 3 Apr 89 20:17:35 GMT
References: <3177@imagen.UUCP> <1309@bucket.UUCP> <7956@chinet.chi.il.us> <13420@steinmetz.ge.com> <8029@chinet.chi.il.us> <13449@steinmetz.ge.com> <29177@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 30

In article <29177@bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd@buit4.bu.edu (Jim Frost) writes:
<The biggest problem with UNIX on the PC is there is no single version.
<Different versions came from different sources and perform (pardon my
<repetitiveness) differently.  I've used XENIX, plain System V, System
<V with Berkeley enhancements, and SunOS (Berkeley with enhancements,
<basically).  The latter performs the best of all of them (easily
<outperforming OS/2), but most of them outperformed OS/2 once any real
<load developed.

Unix suffers from two killer problems:
1. Lack of media compatibility.
	Silly unix vendors invariably invent a new file format. I haven't
	seen one yet where you could write a 5.25" disk under one
	vendor's unix and read it on another's.
2. Lack of binary compatibility.
	Can't compile on one unix and run on another, even if the
	hardware is the same. Source code compatibility simply isn't
	good enough.
The irritating thing is that these problems are easilly solvable, but
unix vendors suffer badly from nih.

At least the Mac can now read MSDOS disks, and funny thing, it's selling
much better! Maybe someday the unix people will wake up and discover
that compatiblity sells more than capability does.

An MS-DOS application developer can write and test a piece of code, and
can run it on 25 million DOS machines. Unix application developers have
to buy a dozen different machines, recompile and test on each, and stock
inventory on a dozen different permutations. This isn't practical for the
small developer, which is where most applications come from.