Xref: utzoo comp.misc:6310 comp.sys.ibm.pc:30054
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!udel!burdvax!dvnspc1!gary
From: gary@dvnspc1.Dev.Unisys.COM (Gary Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: PC-WEEK Article / OS-2 Obituary?
Summary: UNIX OS/2
Message-ID: <624@dvnspc1.Dev.Unisys.COM>
Date: 12 Jun 89 11:56:06 GMT
References: <237@imspw6.UUCP>
Followup-To: comp.misc
Organization: Unisys Corporation, Devon, PA
Lines: 31

In article <237@imspw6.UUCP>, bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) writes:
> 
> 
> From Ted Holden, HTE:
> 
> Unless I'm reading it wrong somehow or other, it's
> saying that by 1993, Unix will be doing more than double the business
> of OS-2 like, basically, hey the game's over; Unix is going to win and
> OS-2 is going to lose, simple as that.  

 I work for a major computer manufacturer who markets UNIX boxes and
 PCs.  From my own experience, it would appear that OS/2 is far from
 a dead issue.  The belief seems to be here that OS/2 has a better
 than fighting chance to win the desktop market, but UNIX WILL take
 its share of the micro business.   Application software is being
 designed such that it will be portable to either UNIX or OS/2.  

 My own feeling is that OS/2 will hit a quick deadend if it does not
 address the following:  1) POSIX, and  2) RISC.  

 Gates claims to have a POSIX-conformant OS/2 coming down the pike, I
 believe.  But as POSIX becomes ever more comprehensive, I just wonder if 
 we won't see a convergence of OS/2 and UNIX.  The argument over which is a
 better operating system will become a moot point - except that OS/2
 may remain a single-user OS.  

 As for RISC, I cannot see how Gates can continue to pinpoint OS/2 to Intel 
 80x86 chips when even Intel has announced a RISC chip family.  Gates must
 make OS/2 portable to RISC (and various upcoming CISC chips) or have
 it become a niche OS in short order.   That means an OS/2 kernel
 written in C.