greg@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Greg Noel) (01/11/88)
I'm surprised at the response to this idea; I hadn't expected it to cause any comment at all (the concept seems entirely obvious to me!). I'm taking the liberty of changing the subject line so that it can be distinguished from the original thread about Jerry Pournelle in BYTE. Kurt Zeilenga and Dave Curry propose the use of symlinks to solve the problem of writable files on a read-only file system. Andy Glew and Barry Schein moot whether the symlinks should go from the read-only device to a read-write device or vice-versa. I don't think the exact mechanism is the issue (if I had to design it on the fly, I'd use quite a different mechanism entirely); the issue is whether it is a viable idea to include a half-gigabyte of standard software with a PC-class machine, and if so, what would be useful. My belief is that it would be, and that the most cost-effective way to do it would be with something like a CD-ROM. To answer Barry's question about why to do it this way is cost. A CD-ROM with over 500 megabytes of storage is just a few hundred dollars and liable to get cheaper. (I just saw an add for a Walkman-class CD for listening while running for only $69.89. It doesn't hurt that the same technology is used for a mass-audience product.) An equivalent amount of disk read-write storage is thousands of dollars and liable to stay relatively expensive. Remember that the context of this discussion was \small/ computers; either home computers or single-user desktop machines. (I'm prepared to believe that the economics for a larger installation would be different.) A great deal of the popularity of networking among current PC users is that they provide access to disk servers with lots of software. What if all this software came standard, practically an integral part of the processor? Most IBM PCs (and clones) now come with a hard disk as standard equipment; it is now technically feasible to have a machine of this class include a CD-ROM mass storage device as well without driving the price out of the range of the home hobbyist. If this home machine runs Unix, how would you propose to provide all of the standard programs in a reasonably bullet- proof way and at a competitive price? A CD-ROM with practically all the files read-only sounds a good way to me. Maybe the Amiga 3000 will have a 68030 at 28.5 Mhz, a 32-bit bus, Workbench 2.99 booted directly from a CD-ROM, all of the Fish disk software standard, and the ability to run a shell in a POSIX environment in an arbitrary window. Well, I can dream, can't I? -- -- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo Greg.Noel@SanDiego.NCR.COM or greg@ncr-sd