flusekw@ucs.indiana.edu (WILLIAM FRANKLIN FLUSEK) (05/23/91)
I thought that many of you might enjoy this posting. Especially the comparisons with other operatiting systems. There may not be anything in OS/2 that you can not find in any of a dozen other operating systems, but I think that it does what it does (on its platform) better than most (if not all) of them. Enjoy Bill ============================= From comp.os.misc ======================== From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: OS/2 versus UNIX Message-ID: <0WGBJ55@xds13.ferranti.com> Date: 21 May 91 19:12:47 GMT References: <1075@stewart.UUCP> <3330.tnews@templar.actrix.gen.nz> <1089@stewart.UUCP> <1991May15.110459.21996@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1101@stewart.UUCP> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 56 In article <1101@stewart.UUCP> jerry@stewart.UUCP (Jerry Shekhel) writes: > "Portable threads routines?" This is interesting. How can you graft thread > on top of a UNIX kernel that doesn't support them? You do it in user mode, and use select() or poll() to look for I/O unless all of the threads are blocked. Lester Buck was the last person to touch this code that I know of. > Yes, this is probably true, but you must admit that UNIX is a horrible mess, > with all the different versions floating around, each with its own set of > deficiencies. Not at all. If you limit yourself to the 35 (give or take a couple) system calls in standard UNIX you still have a richer environment than any of IBM's proprietary PC operating systems. > Sorry, you're wrong. The reason they went for a new OS has to do with the > hardware for which it was initially written -- the Intel 286. UNIX does not > run well on that processor. You'll have to excuse me, then. I'm running under Xenix on a 286 right now, and it's supporting 20 users (up to 10 concurrently). Runs as well as any other O/S. Oh, the segments are a pain, but they're no less a pain under DOS. For that matter, UNIX runs fine on the 8088, which OS/2 will never support. IBM Xenix 1.0 and Venix both provided better performance on a vanilla XT than MS-DOS. > >I don't like DOS. I despise the very idea of OS/2. > Well, you may dream of a world standardized on UNIX, but I prefer having > several choices. Me too, that's why I like UNIX. It gives me choices. I can choose any hardware from an 8088 based PC up to an Amdahl monster with 2000 users. Standards don't restrict, they empower. > >More IPC mechanisms? That's supposed to be good? How about AmigaOS, which has > >one very good IPC mechanism? > Wait a minute! I thought you despised the very idea of proprietary operating > systems! Read your own comments above. No, I despise the idea of OS/2. There is no feature of OS/2 that isn't bettered by something else. It provides no new capabilities over any of a dozen operating systems that already exist... including concurrent CP/M, OS-9000, as well as UNIX. And it's bigger than the lot of them... including UNIX. More to the point, just about every proprietary general purpose operating system that has come out recently for the PC (Coherent, OS/9000, etc) has a superset of the base UNIX API. OS/2 doesn't. Why? -- Peter da Silva; Ferranti International Controls Corporation; +1 713 274 5180; Sugar Land, TX 77487-5012; `-_-' "Have you hugged your wolf, today?"