sukthnkr@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Rahul Sukthankar) (12/28/89)
One DOS lover wrote: >For example, to display a file under DOS, I use >'type' or the near-universal bit of freeware 'd'. That's lots >easier to remember than 'cat.' A UNIX supporter replied: >That's your opinion. I am always typing "cat" on DOS machines but I >never use "type" on my UNIX box. An "intuitive commands" promoter commented: >I have a PD program called "look" on my 286 and am constantly annoyed >that I don't have the same ability on Ultrix or Sys V3. If you are on UNIX, and you long for that DOS friendliness, all you need, at worst, is a shell which duplicates DOS. Not that difficult a task. Until someone supplies you with one, you can: - change your prompt to a 'C:\>' - alias "dir" to "ls"; "type" to "cat"; "rename" to "mv" etc - and so on. If you are on DOS, and you yearn for the feel of a "real" OS, you should download a program like 4DOS or pc-shell which will give your nasty PC, AT, or 386 a warm csh-like feel. Until then, you can: - set prompt to 'favorite-unix-machine%' - patch COMMAND.COM (very easy with DEBUG) to rename "dir" to "ls" etc - rename all the external DOS commands to UNIX ones All of the changes made above, are changes to the command interpreter, or user-interface. These changes do not have much to do with the underlying operating system. Real operating system questions are questions like: - Can it multi-task? DOS:no UNIX:yes - Is it multi-user? DOS:no UNIX:yes - Does it eat up huge chunks of memory? DOS:no UNIX:yes Almost any operating system can be made user-friendly or user-hostile. It's a feature of the user-interface, and that's upto the user. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- just another pearl of wisdom from the Teknowraith, alias: __ _ |_) _ |_ | (_ |, |_ |_ _ _ |, _ __ _| \_(_|_| )_(_)_| __)_(_)_|\_|_,| )_(_|_| )_|\_(_|_| ---------------------------------------------------------------------------