tholen@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (David Tholen) (11/09/90)
In article <4624@gara.une.oz.au>, rjacobs@gara.une.oz.au ( ABRI) writes: > virtually ignored. As a multi-tasking operating system Unix on the PC is > a better program and at a more evolved stage than OS/2. There are > even GUI's for Unix now, to make it more user-friendly. There was a time some years ago when FORTRAN was "at a more evolved stage" than C, so I wouldn't use the current stage of a product's evolution as an argument. Also, whether UNIX on a PC is a "better program" than OS/2 is an entirely subjective matter, one that's been debated here to a great extent (and it's not my intent to restart the debate) with no clear-cut conclusion. Both operating systems have certain points in their favor. Only time will tell if the OS/2 versus UNIX comparison goes the same way as the C versus FORTRAN comparison.
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (11/10/90)
In article <4624@gara.une.oz.au> rjacobs@gara.une.oz.au ( ABRI) writes: |IMHO the most blatant case of this is the |promotion of OS/2. This is a product that has been promised for a longtime, |but fails to deliver the goods. The market share of OS/2 is very small. Yet, |journals like PC Magazine continue to devote regular columns and special |feature articles to OS/2. Why does this occur when programs like Unix are |virtually ignored. As a multi-tasking operating system Unix on the PC is |a better program and at a more evolved stage than OS/2. There are Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. But more important, compare the applications available for OS/2 (especially when it has Windows compability but even without it, you have Excel and Word for OS/2) and the applications for Unix. |Am I being picky or does Microsoft and Bill Gates have lots of friends |who are in the sales, marketing, journalism and communication side of |the computer business and more than willing to help Bill tell us how |great Microsoft products are? I think you don't understand what real users want. Namely: applications! -- The Sierra Club got their butts kicked in California on election day.
RFM@psuvm.psu.edu (11/10/90)
I've wondered about Microsoft sometimes myself, but let's face it: if Intel keeps driving the Mainstream PC market, Microsoft is in the catbird's seat. Would I drop DOS? No way, not for UNIX, at least. Prejudiced, Maybe. Butt more, DOS is where all my software apps are. Hence I'm vitally interested in what Microsoft is doing. As for OS/2, it's time is coming (albeit slowly) It's the 32-bit operating system (if the future is 32 bits). DOS Extenders are patches, more in the genre of temporary fixes than permanent solutions. As far as I'm concerned, Windows was a dog, is a dog, adn will continue to woof. The next REAL step forward is to 32-bit systems, and Windows can't touch that. OS/2 is in our futures. Bob M., PSU-Harrisburg.
horne-scott@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne) (11/10/90)
In article <4624@gara.une.oz.au> rjacobs@gara.une.oz.au ( ABRI) writes: <Is it my imagination or not, but every magazine I read has more than <one article or regular column on a Microsoft product. Several magazines <have put aside parts of their magazine to be devoted every month to <Microsoft Word, Windows, OS/2, MSDOS etc (I've even seen one magazine with <a regular Excel column). Microsoft does have some very good products, but <the prevalence of specialized articles and columns on these products <when the excellent products of Microsoft's competitors are either ignored <or given small recognition concerns me. Well, come on. Almost every PC user uses DOS (or OS/2, but who cares about *those* people :-) ). And Windows is very common, too. So is Word. (You see its competing product, WordPerfect, mentioned at least as frequently in magazines, perhaps more frequently.) <IMHO the most blatant case of this is the <promotion of OS/2. This is a product that has been promised for a longtime, <but fails to deliver the goods. The market share of OS/2 is very small. Yet, <journals like PC Magazine continue to devote regular columns and special <feature articles to OS/2. Why does this occur when programs like Unix are <virtually ignored. Because people who use OS/2 *need* the help. :-) Seriously, now, it's because UNIX on PCs is not yet common. In fact, most PC owners (including me) can't run UNIX because it's so big. I don't know why _PC Magazine_ continues to run so many articles on OS/2, though. Why not write them a letter? And I'd hardly say that UNIX on PCs is being "virtually ignored". >As a multi-tasking operating system Unix on the PC is <a better program and at a more evolved stage than OS/2. I agree. But UNIX is also a lot more expensive, in terms of hardware as well as software, than OS/2. <Am I being picky or does Microsoft and Bill Gates have lots of friends <who are in the sales, marketing, journalism and communication side of <the computer business and more than willing to help Bill tell us how <great Microsoft products are? I think you're failing to realise the importance of Microsoft's products in the PC world. No matter what you think about them, they're ubiquitous. You see other companies' products mentioned when they come out, but things like MS-DOS are so important that magazines have to keep discussing them. I seriously doubt that Microsoft is involved in unscrupulous marketing practices with those magazines. --Scott -- Scott Horne ...!{harvard,cmcl2,decvax}!yale!horne horne@cs.Yale.edu SnailMail: Box 7196 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520 203 436-1817 Residence: Rm 1817 Silliman College, Yale Univ Uneasy lies the head that wears the _gao1 mao4zi_.
vojta@powdermilk.berkeley.edu (Paul Vojta) (11/10/90)
In article <10232@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> tholen@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (David Tholen) writes: >In article <4624@gara.une.oz.au>, rjacobs@gara.une.oz.au ( ABRI) writes: > >> virtually ignored. As a multi-tasking operating system Unix on the PC is >> a better program and at a more evolved stage than OS/2. There are >> even GUI's for Unix now, to make it more user-friendly. > >There was a time some years ago when FORTRAN was "at a more evolved stage" >than C ... Ditto for FORTRAN vs. PL/1. >Also, whether UNIX on a PC is a "better program" than OS/2 is an >entirely subjective matter, one that's been debated here to a great extent >(and it's not my intent to restart the debate) with no clear-cut conclusion. >Both operating systems have certain points in their favor. Then why do they IGNORE Unix, instead of giving OS/2 and Unix even-handed treatment? They have had a multipart series on OS/2, but has PC Magazine had even _one_ article solely devoted to Unix? Guess they're afraid of losing subscribers to UnixWorld... --Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu
ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) (11/11/90)
In article <90313.225702RFM@psuvm.psu.edu> RFM@psuvm.psu.edu writes: >I've wondered about Microsoft sometimes myself, but let's face it: if Intel >keeps driving the Mainstream PC market, Microsoft is in the catbird's seat. >Would I drop DOS? No way, not for UNIX, at least. Prejudiced, Maybe. Butt >more, DOS is where all my software apps are. I could play along with this viewpoint... yes, that to a lot of users, the machine is largely a set of applications. (You have to remember that the same set of apps running on a real multi-tasking windowing big-screen system is a real screamer against something like Windows which makes my 386 feel like a PC-XT. The applications, yes, but on what platform? NeXT is a wonderful platform for running 123 and WordPerfect (say). Similarly, WingZ on the Sun really kicks in as compared with anything you can do with Windows or the Mac). >Hence I'm vitally interested in >what Microsoft is doing. How does that follow? Microsoft is just one player in a big game. NeXT, Sun, Amiga etc. all have powerful acts in place. Microsoft is neither very innovative nor very fast; I don't see how it is axiomatic that they figure as central players. > As for OS/2, it's time is coming (albeit slowly) It's the 32-bit >operating system (if the future is 32 bits). DOS Extenders are patches, >more in the genre of temporary fixes than permanent solutions. As far as I'm >concerned, Windows was a dog, is a dog, adn will continue to woof. The next >REAL step forward is to 32-bit systems, and Windows can't touch that. >OS/2 is in our futures. How does that follow? You start off by agreeing that OS/2 today is a dead duck. What is to prevent it from staying a dead duck? Since you think applications are so important, isn't it striking that there are more 100% GUI applications for the NeXT and for the Sun than for OS/2 (this is from the Applications Watch column of _Personal_Workstation_). Think about this: $3k buys you a NeXT with 8M of memory, big screen, megapixel display, a real multitasking OS, cshell windows if your IQ is better than a basketball player, a spectacular frontend, a consistent imaging model, a 400 dpi postscript laser printer addon for $1500, etc. No amount of money can buy a Intel box of the same performance, and the closest that you can come with a 486 will cost something like $10k. SPARC/Mips boxes running Unix are far better candidates for our future (in the sense that I would bet on them) than Intel and Microsoft. A few weeks ago, Sun announced the Sparcstation 2, which delivers 28.5 mips and 4.5 MFlops, all this with less investment in VLSI technology than the 486. You can buy SPARC chipsets for $30, when Intel (monopolist) hawks anemic 20 MHz 386 chips for $300. You have to have your head in the ground to ignore the impending death of Intel-Microsoft... sure sound like PC Magazine in emitting the official line on OS/2! Nothing personal of course.. -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Ajay Shah, (213)734-3930, ajayshah@usc.edu The more things change, the more they stay insane. _______________________________________________________________________________
few@gupta.portal.com (Frank Whaley) (11/12/90)
In article <1990Nov9.193424.1196@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: >Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. I tried long and hard to stay out of this, but I've heard this argument too many times without a single line of proof. Can anyone name even one example of 'more sophisticated technology' available in OS/2 that is not available in at least one flavor of Unix? >But more important, compare the applications available for >OS/2 (especially when it has Windows compability but even >without it, you have Excel and Word for OS/2) and the >applications for Unix. I'll admit Unix applications lack some of the sophistication of their Microsoft counterparts. This has nothing to do with the differences between systems, but rather the differences in markets. Should the market change, Unix applications will rapidly gain sophistication. >I think you don't understand what real users want. Namely: applications! No one wants an application. People only want solutions to their problems. People buy the technology that provides a cost-effective solution (if they're smart :-) A final question: Is anyone posting to this thread via an OS/2 machine on the Net? -- Frank Whaley Software Engineer Gupta Technologies few@gupta.portal.com
stevew@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Steven L Wootton) (11/13/90)
Did anyone else read this, or am I the only UnixWorld reader here? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- OS/2 MEETS ITS MAKER -- UnixWorld, November 1990 page 16 IBM has taken OS/2 back. In September, Big Blue announced it has taken over virtually all OS/2 development from Microsoft, including control of all versions of OS/2 for Intel 286 and 386 CPUs. Microsoft will continue to work on Portable OS/2, its version for non-Intel processors, which Microsoft has said will not be ready for at least several years. From IBM's point of view, OS/2 has always been the low end of its Systems Application Architecture line of interoperable, proprietary operating systems spanning PCs, minis, and mainframes. When IBM and Microsoft originally went to work on OS/2 in 1985, the arrangement mirrored their working relationship for MS-DOS. The DOS operating system has sold tens of millions of copies for IBM and non-IBM desktop computers. IBM hoped that OS/2 would prove to be another PC-DOS, and as recently as two years ago market researcher Future Computing Inc. was predicting that OS/2 would represent more than 50% of the operating systems sold with business PCs in 1991. That hope hasn't materialized, however, as unit sales of OS/2 have been a small fraction of those for DOS. The new all-IBM OS/2 is expected to be targeted at current IBM mainframe and minicomputer installations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- If this story is true, it seems to me that IBM's taking OS/2 back for use as part of SAA is the kiss of death, and Microsoft's "several year" timeframe for Portable OS/2 is the bullet in OS/2's head. Is Microsoft betting that UNIX will not get any better over the course of the next several years, thereby making OS/2 obviously superior whenever it gets done? When I look back on unix, several years ago we had Version 7. Now there's 4.3 Reno, SysVr4, mach with a unix frontend, and several other more-customized variants. Where will unix be several years from now? Will a portable OS/2 be able to compete with a 20-year-old product which has been constantly evolving to meet its customers' needs? Did I just dream all of this? Who killed Laura Palmer? Steve Wootton stevew@ecn.purdue.edu stevew@pur-ee.uucp stevew%ecn.purdue.edu@purccvm.bitnet
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (11/13/90)
In article <1990Nov11.174012.9566@gupta.portal.com> few@gupta.portal.com (Frank Whaley) writes: |In article <1990Nov9.193424.1196@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |>Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. | |I tried long and hard to stay out of this, but I've heard this argument |too many times without a single line of proof. Can anyone name even |one example of 'more sophisticated technology' available in OS/2 that |is not available in at least one flavor of Unix? OS/2 has support for "threads". An application can have multiple threads of execution so that one document could be printing while you're editing another. OS/2 also has a high performance filesystem. In addition, file names can be 256 characters (or so) long. How many characters can SCO Unix filenames have? How many Unixs have high performance filesystems? How many Unixes come with Windows built in.? |I'll admit Unix applications lack some of the sophistication of their |Microsoft counterparts. This has nothing to do with the differences |between systems, but rather the differences in markets. Should the The original article complained about all the attention given to Microsoft. |market change, Unix applications will rapidly gain sophistication. Personally, I think Unix is too far behind OS/2 to ever catch up. The further behind you are, the harder it is to catch up. |>I think you don't understand what real users want. Namely: applications! | |No one wants an application. People only want solutions to their |problems. People buy the technology that provides a cost-effective |solution (if they're smart :-) Yup, and Unix is not that technology for many users. |A final question: Is anyone posting to this thread via an OS/2 |machine on the Net? Not yet, maybe next year. -- KrystalNacht: why every Jew should own an assault rifle.
lsh@polari.UUCP (Lee Hauser) (11/15/90)
Yes, I think OS/2 is dead except in specialized situations like LAN Manager
(which AT&T ported to Unix years ago). Unix will improve and we may find
any serious work on "portable OS/2" gradually dying out. Up here in the SiliconForest, where Bill Gates shadows the land like Mt. Rainier itself, we are far
too caught up in the success of Windows 3.0 to give much further thought to
OS/2. Not that we all use it, but we like everyone to think we do ;)
--
------- ======= ------- ======= ------- ======= ------- ======= ------- =======
lsh@polari
Lee Hauser
If I pay for access, I don't have to disclaim ANYTHING!richi@hpopd.HP.COM (Richard Jennings) (11/15/90)
/ hpopd:comp.sys.ibm.pc / lsh@polari.UUCP (Lee Hauser) / 10:42 pm Nov 14, 1990 / Yes, I think OS/2 is dead except in specialized situations like LAN Manager (which AT&T ported to Unix years ago). ---------- #awfully_polite_mode ON Ahem, I though we (i.e. Hewlett-Packard) did that (you did mean LM/X, didn't you?) richi.
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (11/16/90)
In article <1990Nov11.174012.9566@gupta.portal.com> few@gupta.portal.com (Frank Whaley) writes: |In article <1990Nov9.193424.1196@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |>Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. | |I tried long and hard to stay out of this, but I've heard this argument |too many times without a single line of proof. Can anyone name even |one example of 'more sophisticated technology' available in OS/2 that |is not available in at least one flavor of Unix? Here's another aspect: price. How much would you have to pay to get Unix with a GUI? I see Interactive advertising X Windows for $695, if I understand their ad correctly. Is this in addition to Unix? Ouch. And what kind of applications can you get for it? At what price? -- KristallNacht: why every Jew should own an assault rifle.
steve@Advansoft.COM (Steve Savitzky) (11/16/90)
In article <1990Nov15.191312.13301@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: In article <1990Nov11.174012.9566@gupta.portal.com> few@gupta.portal.com (Frank Whaley) writes: |In article <1990Nov9.193424.1196@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |>Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. | |I tried long and hard to stay out of this, but I've heard this argument |too many times without a single line of proof. Can anyone name even |one example of 'more sophisticated technology' available in OS/2 that |is not available in at least one flavor of Unix? Here's another aspect: price. How much would you have to pay to get Unix with a GUI? I see Interactive advertising X Windows for $695, if I understand their ad correctly. Is this in addition to Unix? Ouch. And what kind of applications can you get for it? At what price? Well, we paid exactly nothing for the MIT X distribution plus the stuff that's been posted to comp.sources.x. That's 280MB of SOURCE CODE for 221 applications (plus many we haven't built), the server, the libraries, several different toolkits, at least two application builders, and so on. And that's not even counting emacs and TeX, which work just fine with X. Of course, if you're willing to *pay* for applications, there's almost no limit to what you can get. Most major PC applications are available on Unix, plus some others. Of course, they generally cost more because the vendors assume that if you have Unix you probably have multiple users on a network. -- \ --Steve Savitzky-- \ ADVANsoft Research Corp \ REAL hackers use an AXE! \ \ steve@advansoft.COM \ 4301 Great America Pkwy \ #include<disclaimer.h> \ \ arc!steve@apple.COM \ Santa Clara, CA 95954 \ 408-727-3357 \ \__ steve@arc.UUCP _________________________________________________________
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (11/16/90)
In article <STEVE.90Nov15143558@pluto.Advansoft.COM> steve@Advansoft.COM (Steve Savitzky) writes: |Well, we paid exactly nothing for the MIT X distribution plus the |stuff that's been posted to comp.sources.x. That's 280MB of SOURCE Hm, do they have drivers for my Orchid Prodesigner II Super VGA card? What about a Sigma Two Page Display? An NEC Graphics accelerator? IBM XGA? |Of course, if you're willing to *pay* for applications, there's almost |no limit to what you can get. Most major PC applications are |available on Unix, plus some others. Of course, they generally cost Not only do they cost more, they are usually not very interesting applications. They run in ASCII terminal mode. Pretty primitive after you've used Microsoft Windows. -- KristallNacht: why every Jew should own an assault rifle.
m1phm02@fed.frb.gov (Patrick H. McAllister) (11/17/90)
In article <1990Nov15.191312.13301@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: In article <1990Nov11.174012.9566@gupta.portal.com> few@gupta.portal.com (Frank Whaley) writes: |In article <1990Nov9.193424.1196@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |>Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. | |I tried long and hard to stay out of this, but I've heard this argument |too many times without a single line of proof. Can anyone name even |one example of 'more sophisticated technology' available in OS/2 that |is not available in at least one flavor of Unix? Here's another aspect: price. How much would you have to pay to get Unix with a GUI? I see Interactive advertising X Windows for $695, if I understand their ad correctly. Is this in addition to Unix? Ouch. And what kind of applications can you get for it? At what price? The lowest price that I have seen for a complete package is SCO, offering UNIX, X, plus X.desktop (so that the package is actually useful straight out of the box), at a price of about a grand. (Unless my memory is confused and it was someone else making that offer at that price . . .). Someone posted a followup about how much they got "free" off the MIT distribution -- having played with some of that stuff, it seems to me that it is only free if you are not the person paying for the hours of time required to port it (unless you happen to be running the same type of machine as the author -- in spite of the "portability" of UNIX software, somehow I find myself having to do some porting on about half of the stuff I get). Back to the original question, about advanced technology; my candidate, assuming it actually works, is the way in which the scheduler gives priority to the task with which the user is currently interacting. (I say "assuming . . ." because I haven't used OS/2 myself, but only read about it). On my Sun, I find it extremely frustrating to start typing away into EMACS and not even have my keystrokes echoed for several seconds, I assume because EMACS has been paged out since I have't typed anything for a little while. Has anyone ever put a scheduler into UNIX that is designed to maximize interactive responsiveness for a single user, rather than to maximize total system throughput? Pat
rwl@amber.cs.Virginia.EDU (Ray Lubinsky) (11/17/90)
In article <27202@cs.yale.edu>, horne-scott@cs.yale.edu (Scott Horne) writes: |> In article <4624@gara.une.oz.au> rjacobs@gara.une.oz.au ( ABRI) writes: ... |> And I'd hardly say that UNIX on PCs is being "virtually ignored". |> |> >As a multi-tasking operating system Unix on the PC is |> <a better program and at a more evolved stage than OS/2. |> |> I agree. But UNIX is also a lot more expensive, in terms of hardware as well |> as software, than OS/2. Is that really the case? I thought that the main stumbling block to OS/2 (as a DOS successor) is its huge memory and disk requirements. Does anyone out there in Netland know of a good comparison between OS/2 Extended Edition and, say, SCO UNIX? I bet that there are similar resource requirements. The problem with PC Magazine is that it seems to think that OS/2 EE with Presentation Manager is somehow a vastly superior solution to UNIX with X windows. Their bias is persistent and seems to be based only on the idea that UNIX is some alien life form while OS/2 is the friendly DOS-successor annointed by IBM and Microsoft. Their bias is actually amusing because they sometimes seem to go out of their way to bash UNIX as if their silence with let the cancer grow...
dfc@macs.UUCP (David Caldwell) (11/19/90)
In article <STEVE.90Nov15143558@pluto.Advansoft.COM>, steve@Advansoft.COM (Steve Savitzky) writes: |> In article <1990Nov15.191312.13301@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |> In article <1990Nov11.174012.9566@gupta.portal.com> few@gupta.portal.com (Frank Whaley) writes: |> |In article <1990Nov9.193424.1196@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: |> |>Actually, OS/2 has more sophisticated technology than Unix. |> |> Here's another aspect: price. How much would you have to pay to |> get Unix with a GUI? I see Interactive advertising X Windows for |> $695, if I understand their ad correctly. Is this in addition |> to Unix? Ouch. And what kind of applications can you get for it? |> At what price? |> |> Well, we paid exactly nothing for the MIT X distribution plus the |> stuff that's been posted to comp.sources.x. That's 280MB of SOURCE |> CODE for 221 applications (plus many we haven't built), the server, |> the libraries, several different toolkits, at least two application |> builders, and so on. And that's not even counting emacs and TeX, |> which work just fine with X. What about COHERENT? It lists for $99.95, claims UNIX kernel compatibility and maintains that you can still run your MS-DOS software. It also allows multiple users (try that with OS/2) and multitasking. Along with the MIT X distribution, you can have the power of UNIX with a graphical operating environment. No flames please, this is just a suggestion and I have no experience with COHERENT so this may not be a feasible suggestion. David Calddwell Stetson University
phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) (11/21/90)
In article <21188022@macs.UUCP> dfc@macs.UUCP (David Caldwell) writes: |What about COHERENT? It lists for $99.95, claims UNIX kernel |compatibility and maintains that you can still run your MS-DOS software. |It also allows multiple users (try that with OS/2) and multitasking. |Along with the MIT X distribution, you can have the power of UNIX with a |graphical operating environment. X on Coherent, that's a really funny idea. That's like using a poodle to pull a dog sled. It's a dog, isn't it? -- KristallNacht: why every Jew should own an assault rifle.
2113av@gmuvax2.gmu.edu (John Porter) (11/21/90)
In article <21188022@macs.UUCP> dfc@macs.UUCP (David Caldwell) writes: >What about COHERENT? It lists for $99.95, claims UNIX kernel >compatibility and maintains that you can still run your MS-DOS software. >with COHERENT so this may not be a feasible suggestion. Not intended as a flame, but I believe the ads claim no such thing about runnig MS-DOS software. Yes, technically you can still run your MS-DOS software, but only by booting your DOS partition. NOT under Coherent. If you boot from the Coherent partition, the only link you get with the DOS world is a special utility which will read/write files in a DOS file- system from Coherent. No execution. As has been mentioned too (painfully) frequently, X and other large programs are a long ways off for Coherent, since the compiler currently only compiles small model. They managed emacs and kermit in 64k... --jp
2113av@gmuvax2.gmu.edu (John Porter) (11/21/90)
In article <1990Nov21.004640.1465@amd.com> phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes: >X on Coherent, that's a really funny idea. That's like using >a poodle to pull a dog sled. It's a dog, isn't it? Who's pulling whom? I'd say it's more like a Lincoln towing a VW... >KristallNacht: why every Jew should own an assault rifle. I for one am pretty darned sick of this "sig". Is your purpose actually to offend, to see who'll take the bait for a religious/racial argument? (fearing I might just have...) --jp
mig@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu (Meir) (11/22/90)
What is the exact machine and path where I can obtain stargoose? * * * * * * * ======================= Meir Green * * * * * * * * ======================= mig@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu * * * * * * * ======================= N2JPG
silver@xrtll.uucp (Hi Ho Silver) (11/25/90)
In article <2938@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> 2113av@gmuvax2.UUCP (John Porter) writes:
$As has been mentioned too (painfully) frequently, X and other large
$programs are a long ways off for Coherent, since the compiler currently
$only compiles small model. They managed emacs and kermit in 64k...
The reason why Coherent is restricted to 64k segments is that it's a
286 operating system, not a 386 one, and the 286 doesn't allow segments
to be larger than 64k. A future version for the 386 is promised ...
BTW, for those interested in some critical reviews of Coherent, BYTE
and PC Magazine have both discussed it recently; in each case, the
conclusion was (to put it politely) that it's not for everyone.
--
__ __ _ | ...!nexus.yorku.edu!xrtll!silver | always
(__ | | | | |_ |_) |----------------------------------| searching
__) | |_ \/ |__ | \ | if you don't like my posts, type | for
______________________| find / -print|xargs cat|compress | SNTFkc@rna.UUCP (Kaare Christian) (12/06/90)
In article <1990Nov25.003037.5814@xrtll.uucp>, silver@xrtll.uucp (Hi Ho Silver) writes: > In article <2938@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> 2113av@gmuvax2.UUCP (John Porter) writes: > $As has been mentioned too (painfully) frequently, X and other large > $programs are a long ways off for Coherent, since the compiler currently > $only compiles small model. They managed emacs and kermit in 64k... > > The reason why Coherent is restricted to 64k segments is that it's a > 286 operating system, not a 386 one, and the 286 doesn't allow segments > to be larger than 64k. A future version for the 386 is promised ... The original poster is more on target -- coherent only suports small model. Other compilers support multiple (small, medium, compact, large) models, and thus support much larger programs. What I wanted to know, and what the marketing types I talked to couldn't tell me, is how they did a full 16 bit compress with a small model compiler. (It might be asm hacking.) > > BTW, for those interested in some critical reviews of Coherent, BYTE > and PC Magazine have both discussed it recently; in each case, the > conclusion was (to put it politely) that it's not for everyone. > -- I'm glad *someone* read my PC mag first look on coherent. It hasn't generated much comment from readers. Your summary is just right -- it's not for everyone. Kaare Christian