brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (08/31/88)
Jerry Pournelle has long advocated what he conceitedly calls his own law - "one user, one cpu." Some people have misguidedly interpreted this good principle to mean there is something wrong with multi-user operating systems, simply because the original versions of these systems stem from the evil many users, once cpu days. Indeed, the OS/2 team claimed that the distinction behind OS/2 would be that it was the first interactive OS to be designed for a single user. (For example, by choosing the DOS filesystem as the default filesystem, instead of making it a supported mountable filesystem, OS/2 forgets that even though I'm the only one on my computer, I'm far from the only one who wants to use data on it.) In doing so, some people have come to misjudge the value of many of the features of multi-userism, because they overcompensate in their dislike for the bad things. Pournelle is right that tools like VP/ix are still not mature. But they will be, in time, and DOS programs will run as well under Unix as they do under OS/2, or even multi-tasking DOS systems. The problems, all stem, in fact, from where programs had to break the DOS iterface to work, and are problems common to all of these systems trying to be upward compatible. Nonetheless, as I have said before, Unix still has far to go to make it into the single user world. But be sure to criticise the right things. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (09/02/88)
In article <1995@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: > Indeed, the OS/2 team claimed that the distinction behind OS/2 would be > that it was the first interactive OS to be designed for a single user. What about AmigaOS? For that matter, what about RT-11? I'm sure you can come up with more examples. What I don't understand is... why is this a virtue? For example... > (For example, by choosing the DOS filesystem as the default filesystem, > instead of making it a supported mountable filesystem, OS/2 forgets that > even though I'm the only one on my computer, I'm far from the only one > who wants to use data on it.) AmigaOS gets this part right. It's not totally dain bramaged, just a little weak in places. Oh well, it's young. It'll learn... The rest of your article is totally right-on. -- Peter da Silva `-_-' Ferranti International Controls Corporation. "Have you hugged U your wolf today?" peter@ficc.uu.net