Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!pan!jw
From: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: X11 on RT with AIX?
Message-ID: <481@pan.UUCP>
Date: 20 Sep 88 21:44:54 GMT
References: <148@sunquest.UUCP> <5756@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <7109@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson)
Organization: Adasoft AG, Solothurn, Switzerland
Lines: 43


Listen, I think people are really being unfair to the RT/PC in this
discussion.  I do not disagree with what has been said; in fact, I
have seen virtually all of the problems that Dan Heller described in
his posting, and I know that Dan is a careful and honest person, so
I have no doubt that everything he said was correct.  Likewise, the
posting from Alexander Denner about xterm; I have never seen an xterm
hang the system, but I can crash xterm on my RT anytime I want, with
any of several different commands.

The problem is that we are all commenting on a *BETA* release of V11
from IBM, and I for one expect to find problems like this in beta
software.  The important fact, for me, is that IBM is willing to send
this beta software out, apparently to quite a few people, and that it
appears that they will meet their announced delivery of a real release
of V11 this month.  The beta version is already very fast, as everyone
has commented on, and I think it is pretty good all things considered;
if they have worked out these problems over the past 6 weeks or so since
the last beta release, then the full release should be a very solid
piece of software.  In fact, the most significant problems with the
beta release are in the area of color support.  Dan didn't explicity
say so, but I'm sure that the problems he described were on a color
display; I use a monochrome display every day, and I don't have any
of the problems he described.  I taught an X class last week using
some systems with color displays, and I would agree that the state
of things on those machines was pretty dismal.

Our company started looking to buy some new workstations at the first
of this year.  We talked extensively to DEC, HP, Sun and IBM.  One of
the things we were careful to ask each one was when they would be
delivering X.V11.  DEC, Sun and HP all three said either May or June,
and IBM said September.  Well, it's now September; the last I heard,
you could get a beta V11 release from HP, DEC had finally announced
their V11 release but no one had seen the tapes yet, and Sun was still
trying to figure out how to finish the NeWS/X server.  I would think
that it would be fair to wait and compare the official releases from
all four before engaging in a lot of IBM-bashing.

By the way, you can be sure that if the final release from IBM has
many (any) of the same bugs as these beta releases, I will be heard
screaming as loud as anyone about it.

jw