Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!caromero From: caromero@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (C. Antonio Romero) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Why unix doesn't catch on Message-ID: <7632@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Date: 7 Apr 89 20:59:53 GMT References: <1922@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <253@jwt.UUCP> Reply-To: caromero@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (C. Antonio Romero) Organization: Princeton University, NJ Lines: 92 In article <253@jwt.UUCP> john@jwt.UUCP (John Temples) writes: >In article <1922@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes: >> Source code compatibility simply isn't good enough. > >Why not? What's the big deal about compiling the program being a part of the >installation procedure? Well, for one thing, not all Unixes come with C compilers. I suppose one could require that they did, but this would swell the size of Unix. Also, I see problems with people having enough disk space to handle all the object files, libraries, etc. Third, if you're a developer, do you want to be sending the source for that really nifty proprietary whatever you're selling all over creation, so your competitors can open it up and learn all your neat tricks? And of course there's the bozo who makes just a few little changes because he doesn't like this or that feature of the system, and then complains when it breaks something else... Distributing commercial applications as source just doesn't make any sense. But on the main issue of the discussion this came out of-- OS/2 vs. Xenix/Unix/whoeverix: We all hear horror stories about how resource-intensive OS/2 is, and how slow it gets when running several of anything, and how the 'one-at-a-time' compatibility box is a hack and not very useful. But what I wonder (and I _am_ a _very_ strong supporter of running Unix on any possible platform, so this isn't a snipe) is, how much memory/processor speed/etc. is required to run a similarly windowed environment on a 386 Unix box? I haven't heard any information about what it would take to create functionality for a single user comparable to OS/2's with PM. Is anyone out there running, for example, X on a 386 and several applications, with less memory than it takes to run OS/2 EE and a few applications? Some empirical data might help add some meaning to this discussion-- both the inevtiable rigged benchmarks and some subjective perceptions from people doing real work under each environment. Also, consider that the 386 version of OS/2 (due out, if I remember, sometime about a year from now, sure to be late, and probably buggy as hell when it arrives) will probably do a lot to close the gap on the DOS compatibility problem; and that the version of OS/2 out now might be better compared to some of the better 286 Unix solutions, since OS/2 is a 286 operating system. (I'll grant that the state of the art Unix has moved past the 286 by now, but this difference explains a lot of the weakness of OS/2, I think, when compared with the best Unix implementations.) If the competition between OS/2 and Unix were to be handled purely on its merits, I think: o Developers would rather have Unix as the target platform, because it is well understood at this point, and relatively mature on PC's, as well as relatively open-- one would no longer be enslaved to the MS/IBM axis, but could acquire one's 386 operating system from whichever vendor catered best to one's particular needs. o Unix development would also offer the advantage that a vendor could deliver the same software on, for example, 68000-family platforms like Suns with relatively little work for the port, while OS/2 being so tied to the 386, won't (probably) be made available for other processor families. o Users would benefit by using Unix for the same reason-- one is no longer married to MS/IBM for one's operating system, and could even move outside the Intel 80x86-line of processors if that best suited one's needs. o Users who wanted to connect to IBM mainframes might do better early on with the OS/2 offerings, but that gap would close fairly quickly as Unix OS developers quickly moved to cater to their customers' needs. I'm not dismissing OS/2 out of hand, since I think that with its parentage it will inevitably be a major factor in the market-- it won't just go away if we ignore it. As I understand it, it actually handles certain things (like shared libraries) better than most currently available Unixes (though as I understand things, this gap is closing too). I do think, though, that it's an inferior solution to some already-solved problems. I'm still mystified at the 'single-user' decision... while it's certainly more comfortable to have one user per machine, completely ruling out the possibility of running several seems shortsighted. Anyway, I'm babbling. Anyone with real experience with doing real work in either OS/2 or some 386 Unix please chime in now with some war stories... -Antonio Romero romero@confidence.princeton.edu