joefritz@pawl.rpi.edu (Jochen M. Fritz) (02/25/90)
[The original atricle was praising OS/2. I'll save bandwidth by not
reposting it]
It seems that microsoft and ibm (note the small letters) both have the
corporate philosophy to establish a standard, then stisk with it. DOS was
the firse such standard, and I actually like it. (What I had before was
Apple II ProDOS-- No memory management, no TSR, or any other good stuff)
What I feel should have been done was rather that creating OS/2, why
not push UNIX systems instead. There are already several versions for
PC's. And there is no shortage of software. The problems: Microsoft would
not be able to sell their language compilers seperatelly, because they are
such an integral part of the system. Also, the user interface in UNIX is
less than ideal, but even this could be fixed. You could write a graphical
shell for UNIX, if that was needed. The only reason that UNIX would not be
used on a PC is it's image as a hacker's system, and a PC is am office
machine where, computer illerate's bang out form letters and spreadsheets.
The propogation of OS/2 is just more of a business decision, rather
than what is best for the user.
flame off.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Jochen Fritz | For though we live in the world, we do not |
| joefritz@pawl.rpi.edu | wage war as the world does.-- 2 Cor. 10:3 |
| usergk2s@rpitsmts.bitnet| You have heard it said, Love your neighbor |
| Noah [the peace monger] | and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love |
| | your enemies. Matt. 5:43-44 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (02/26/90)
In article <7~G+@rpi.edu> joefritz@pawl.rpi.edu (Jochen M. Fritz) writes: | The problems: Microsoft would | not be able to sell their language compilers seperatelly, because they are | such an integral part of the system. Virtually all versions of UNIX has unbundled the compiler as a separately priced item. I know of several machines running the SCO development set and ix386, for instance, or gcc. Certainly they *could* compete in this market, and might have if their major customer, IBM, didn't want it's own o/s. | Also, the user interface in UNIX is | less than ideal, but even this could be fixed. You could write a graphical | shell for UNIX, if that was needed. There are a number of GUIs already. Like C vs BASIC, the UNIX shell trades power for complexity, and some common constructs like pipes just haven't been well mapped to GUI. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc "Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon