cmc3@nvuxr.UUCP (C Chase) (01/27/89)
I know very little about the NeXT machine. In fact what I know can be summed up as follows: 1) fancy hardware: 68030 processor optical disk special purpose chips (e.g. A/D, graphic hardware) 2) great sound 3) nice monitor sounds fine, but what is it really? I seem to have read somewhere that this box runs an OS resembling Unix. Something about handling all the standard OS calls of Unix, but not being derived from the original AT&T code. If this is true, it sounds great, but is it really Unix? Am I going to be able to take any standard unix code and make it go? (yeah, I know "what do you mean by 'standard unix code'"). Which brings me to my real question, what kind of user interface does this box have? I expect there's some fancy window manager. Well, what kind of window manager is it? And what if I wanted to run the X Window System? Well, I think I've properly displayed my ignorance. When this newsgroup became available at my site, I was hoping that I might learn something about the NeXT machine and related software by reading the group. But so far about 90% of the traffic seems to be related to "what is a menu". I guess a lot of people are really concerned about this topic. If they'd really like to know, I can show them one. I use menus all the time. They're really not that complicated. I don't mean to insult other persons who feel they have something to contribute to this newsgroup. They have as much right to post their views as I do to post my own. But I really do think people should try to excercise a little restraint when choosing which newsgroups to post. If the article is unrelated to the NeXT machine should it really be posted to this group? Enough said. I am serious about wanting to know the relationship (or possibility of a relationship) between the NeXT machine and X11. And I really am curious about what this machine is capable of doing. Craig Chase cmc3@nvuxr.bellcore.com
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (01/29/89)
In article <958@nvuxr.UUCP> cmc3@nvuxr.UUCP (C Chase) writes: > >I know very little about the NeXT machine. In fact what I know can be >summed up as follows: > > 1) fancy hardware: > 68030 processor > optical disk > special purpose chips (e.g. A/D, graphic hardware) > > 2) great sound > > 3) nice monitor You're forgetting 4) a user interface that people are RAVING over 5) a fantastic deal on bundled software 6) big archival storage built in >sounds fine, but what is it really? I seem to have read somewhere that >this box runs an OS resembling Unix. Something about handling all the >standard OS calls of Unix, but not being derived from the original AT&T >code. If this is true, it sounds great, but is it really Unix? Am I >going to be able to take any standard unix code and make it go? (yeah, >I know "what do you mean by 'standard unix code'"). It runs a version of Mach. Mach is a research project being run out of Carnegie Mellon aimed towards having a Unix-y OS which can take better advantage of parallel environments. Right now it has a 4.3BSD emulation mode built in that is good enough that the Vax version of Mach can take 4.3BSD binaries directly off a 4.3 machine and run them on the Mach machine. If you want SysV compatibility you'll have to write and/or find a SysV emulator. -- <-- David Herron; an MMDF guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <-- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <-- Now I know how Zonker felt when he graduated ... <-- Stop! Wait! I didn't mean to!