allbery@ncoast.UUCP (08/08/86)
Quoted from <2810@brl-smoke.ARPA> ["Unix dead??? (long message)"], by Crispin@SUMEX-AIM.arpa (Mark Crispin)... +--------------- | The following is from the August '86 issue of the DEC | Professional. It's amusing, if nothing else. I believe Dvorak | is a VMS/IBM PC junkie. | | UNIX IS DEAD! WANNA FIGHT?? | John C. Dvorak | | Summer is over and a plague of UNIX programmers is upon us. +--------------- | First of all, I was shown a slide that clearly showed the | Motorola 68000 as the world's greatest microprocessor. | | The 68000 beat everything. Personally, I can't remember | what it was pitted against -- probably the 8080, the 6502 and a | 4004. Whatever, this was the chip to use. +--------------- | "We were fighting about UNIX," I said. | | "UNIX? I was fighting about UNIX? My God...I was | hypnotized!" | | True story. | | So, try snapping your fingers in the face of one of these | UNIX maniacs next time he flies off the handle. | | See what happens. +--------------- Some of us have committed our lives to turning a certain research-born OS into a viable business operating environment. This, however, reeks of the same kind of idiocy as the churches who consider FRP games to be devil's-games. However, I won't throw in the towel just yet... You may tell Mr. John Dvorak that (1) the 68000 is much better than the alternatives (except for the ``upgraded'' 68000 yclept the 68020) --FACT; and (2) Show me the VM hypervisor running on something other than an IBM 30xx processor. (If it exists, I'd be interested. VM *does* have possibilities; but it's not an OS, it's a hypervisor. CMS is a piece of sh*t. (I have personal experience in this. A bastard hybrid of CP/M and OS/360 we don't need. (CP/M on virtual punched cards? Gaak! It's as disgusting to use as it sounds.) I *do* admit that Unix has problems, however. The major reason is that Unix has been until recently a research OS; AT&T is slowly turning it into a commercially-viable OS, and UCB isn't doing so at all. Nevertheless, it is quite capable of being a commercial OS if the proper work is done for it. (I don't mean UNaXcess. I *do* know the difference between a BBS and a shell.) It is possible to present Unix's filesystem as something familiar to the business user, and also possible to hide the ``strange names'' by means of shell scripts, sh functions, C-shell aliases (most Unix resellers provide the 2.9BSD C-shell), etc. (I have, in fact, *two* ways to present Unix. One has the advantage that it uses Unix's directory structure to emulate for free some rather expensive programs available for MS-DOS; it's the basis for the shell I'm writing.) If Mr. Dvorak isn't reading the net, someone forward this to him. He may get an eye-opener or two; but I doubt it, as he sounds just as religious as the Unix users he describes. (I haven't seen any of that breed yet. I daresay they exist, but I'm not interested in a minority of idiots.) ++Brandon -- ---------------- /--/ Brandon S. Allbery UUCP: decvax!cwruecmp! / / /|\/ Tridelta Industries, Inc. ncoast!tdi2!brandon ---- -------- /-++ 7350 Corporate Blvd. PHONE: +1 216 974 9210 / / /---, ---- Mentor, Ohio 44060 SYSOP: UNaXcess/ncoast / / / / / / -- HOME -- (216) 781-6201 24 hrs. / / / / / / 6615 Center St. Apt. A1-105 ARPA: ncoast!allbery% ---- -----~ ---- Mentor, Ohio 44060-4101 case.CSNET@csnet-relay