Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: Is SUN a "PURE PLAYER" in window systems - SunView or OpenWindows??? Message-ID: Date: 31 Dec 89 14:44:23 GMT References: <8912302010.AA11723@super.super.org> Reply-To: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 47 In article <8912302010.AA11723@super.super.org> lerici@SUPER.ORG (Peter W. Brewer) writes (and also sends in mail. I wish people would stop doing this... or at least *note* that they're mailing as well as posting a response!): > Almost all of the things you say about X could also be said about UNIX Not at all. The things that I particularly dislike about X are: It requires a huge runtime overhead linked in with each program. Complex policy is forced on the application programmer. A certain programming model is forced on the application programmer. It's very very large. None of these things are true of UNIX. The runtime for a small programming language (say, FORTH) under UNIX is under 1K. Most programs have no user interface policy at all. Almost none even have to parse filenames or scan directories. In fact, UNIX forces less policy on the program than anything I know: most systems at least expect a program to scan wildcards! UNIX has (and does) run languages and systems in every programming model you can think of... including communicating concurrent processes. And UNIX is small. It's run 8 users in 128 K words of RAM. The Cory 11/70 at Berkeley, running V7 and 2BSD, was usable with 35 users in 2 Meg of RAM. With 60 users it was unbearable but it kept going. These numbers are in line with the best proprietary systems of the time. Now it may be that Sun, AT&T, and Berkeley have forgotten their roots. But there's nothing inherent in UNIX that makes it a hog. And it scales very well. X scales not at all... it starts big. > If NeWS is to find some niche it would > be better off not knocking X but joining with it and enhancing it. I'm sorry, I really don't know how you can combine X and NeWS. They have completely different ideas of how the system works. X puts all this overhead in the client, where it gets duplicated zillions of times and gets copied over the network redundently again and again and again... NeWS puts the window system where it's needed... in the display system. > Xnews is a poor attempt at this.. How could it help but be? > I do not think all of that stuff belongs in the server. It's gotta be one plece or the other. At least in the server you only need one copy of it. And RAM's generally cheaper for the server. -- `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. . 'U` Also or . "It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance." -- gavin@krypton.sgi.com