peter@athena.mit.edu (Peter J Desnoyers) (06/15/88)
In article <45900133@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: >> - likewise, we will never see a significant amount of free software for VAXen, >> SUN, Xenix, et. al....... [ :-) added in later posting] >Actually there is another reason you will see less or no free software for >those machine and operating systems : they aren't fun to program! > >All of them are large, clunky, overprotected operating systems. Programming >a PC to its full capability is a lot more fun than doing it on a >protected-mode multitasking system. On the PC the operating system, >what little of it there is, never gets in your way. I have never had much fun programming on a PC (8MHz 8088 klone) because it doesn't really function as a computer - i.e. non-zero computation done in finite time. Turbo C takes forever (over a minute to compile and link a tiny program without a hard disk) and compiled applications are not much better on speed. The operating system is non-existent - all it does is manage the file system (not very well) and load programs. The biggest aggravation is the lack of protection in both memory and i/o devices, because that was either a willful or ignorant oversight. Hackers want to be able to turn off protection, rather than not having it in the first place. Letting buggy programs halt the machine is ridiculous and unnecessary. Letting them cause damage - like frying a monitor or writing over a hard disk - is inexcusable. Peter Desnoyers peter@athena.mit.edu
neff@hpvcla.HP.COM (Dave Neff) (06/17/88)
If you step back and think of the reasons for OS-2 the answer is quite obvious: Greed on the part of Microsoft. Unix already has the multitasking, job control, network support, etc. X windows is a viable windowing system. As has been mentioned in a previous posting various Unix implimentations that run on the Intel 286/386 chips can run old DOS applications better than what OS-2 promises. Since X windows is a set of primitives, a higher level set of libraries and a window manager could even give the same look and feel as MS windows. MS windows, DOS, and ROM BIOS emulation libraries could be provided to aid in porting programs to Unix if they needed the extra memory and features Unix provides. It sounds like it will be just as difficult to port many programs to OS-2 as it would be to port them to Unix, especially if these emulation libraries were available. So why did Microsoft re-invent what was already there? Microsoft does not own and control Unix. Microsoft does own and control the OS that runs on the most popular PC of all time. Microsoft is not willing to give up this kind of power and profit. I can't blame Microsoft for this effort, but I do hope it fails. Dave Neff ihnp4!hpfcla!hpvcla!neff