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From: shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Minix, Unix on the Amiga, and flames - Extingushed - fizzle
Message-ID: 
Date: 13 Aug 89 09:59:24 GMT
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Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
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In-reply-to: gmd@pulsar.UUCP's message of 11 Aug 89 05:57:09 GMT


On 11 Aug 89 05:57:09 GMT, gmd@pulsar.UUCP (George MacDonald) said:

Deven> *sigh*  Here I go again.

George> Geesh what a lot to respond too, I'll cut it down to just a
George> couple of points

You're a bit late responding. I thought this thread was dead.

Kevin> I'll agree with you that AmigaDOS is half way decent for the
Kevin> user interface, although from a programmer's standpoint, the
Kevin> operating system itself is about the buggiest thing I have ever
Kevin> seen.  When my Amiga crashes CLI's for no apparent reason, I
Kevin> would tend to think there must be something better out there,
Kevin> especially since Minix comes with SOURCE CODE!!!!

George> Get Real!! My amiga runs for days/weeks on end without
George> crashing. In some ways it's been more reliable than my sun's
George> at work with their new major OS release 4.0/4.0.1/4.0.2/4.0.3
George> ...... It's not the OS that's causing your problems.


George> I run all sorts of stuff i.e.  DCRON/AmigaUUCP/pyro/backdrop/
George> wicon/mclk/virusx all the time!!


George> Then I run a lot of the following doing all sorts of business
George> things - Word processing, Accounting, mail, logging into
George> various sites ....

George> Directory of Work:c

[who cares?]

George> Most of these are very reliable public domain programs that
George> make life on the Amiga a joy!!!

Not always so reliable.  Maybe you've been lucky.

Deven> First, I think AmigaDOS's UI sucks.  But that depends to a
Deven> degree on what you're used to.  I'm used to Unix, and I find
Deven> AmigaDOS annoying and clumsy, and often frustratingly limiting.

George> What a load of absolute drivel!! AmigaDOS is not that much
George> different than unix sh, CLI is even better in some way's.

Get a clue.  The AmigaDOS CLI is worthless.  It does virtually
nothing.  The Bourne shell is a language in its own right.  The CLI
isn't even a scripting language, much as you may think it is.  ALL
commands are external to the CLI, including script commands like if,
else, endif, _endcli_ and even simple commands like echo.  The stock
Amiga CLI simply doesn't compare to Unix sh, csh, ksh, tcsh, or just
about any other Unix shell you might run across.

George> More natural history than csh/ksh and more consistent
George> arguments than the multitude of unix programs.

Csh has history substitution, ksh has history editing.  The Amiga CLI
has neither.  AmigaShell does add reasonable (if slightly buggy)
history editing and aliases, which makes it almost reasonable.  But
that's not the CLI.

George> If you miss *.?[0-9]funky.stuff then get the csh for the
George> amiga.

That's not the point.  The point was that the AmigaDOS _CLI_ was poor,
along with the command names and syntax.  The fact that there's csh
clones (somewhat limited when compared to the real C-Shell, but far
far superior to the AmigaDOS CLI) doesn't change my opinion that the
AmigaDOS UI sucks.

George> I use it all the time now, it's reliable and I don't have to
George> think about which machine I'm on.

If you don't notice a difference between Dillon's (et al) csh and the
real csh, then you're using a small subset of its features.

Deven> What IS poor is the BCPL shit showing up in the programming
Deven> interface.

George> Your point is well taken, your language is not!! Read
George> NETTIQUETE AGAIN!!

It's known as *emphasis*...  or can't you understand that?

Deven> I don't see that Minix/Unix on an Amiga need be any more of a
Deven> headache for system maintenance and administration than
Deven> AmigaDOS itself is.  Yes, Unix is multiuser, but that doesn't
Deven> need to complicate things much.  Managing an AmigaDOS system
Deven> well can be a lot of work as well.  [unless you LIKE using only
Deven> the stock configuration...]

George> Having just repaired my hard drive on the amiga and debugging
George> a new disk installation on some sun systems I would say the
George> amiga is A LOT easier to deal with!! It is much better at
George> fixing the file system, diskdoctor is easier to use than
George> fsck/fsdb.

Try paying attention to what I say once in a while.  I wasn't saying
most Unix systems aren't more complicated than AmigaDOS.  I was saying
that a Unix implementation for the Amiga doesn't _need_ to be so
complicated.  I have proposed writing something similar to Unix V7,
which is MUCH simpler than SysV or BSD systems nowadays.  A Unix-like
system on the Amiga could well be written to fix the filesystem far
better than AmigaDOS does, as well.

Bernie> There are also other disadvantages to Unix-like systems.  I've
Bernie> not seen one yet that had decent real-time response.

Deven> And how often do you run across Unix systems without MMUs?
Deven> Virtual memory can slow a system way down.  (So much easier on
Deven> the Amiga, it just crashes.)  Real-time Unix systems DO exist.
Deven> Most are not.  The Amiga Exec OS achieves excellent response by
Deven> not supporting VM, message-passing by reference, strict task
Deven> prioritizing and other such little tricks.  They can work
Deven> nicely and attain impressive speed and response time, but there
Deven> ARE clear drawbacks.

[specifically, demand-paged VM]

George> You really mean good design decisions and clear tradeoffs.

I stated that there are advantages and drawbacks.  Whether they are
good design decisions or not is context-dependent.

George> No system can give you everything, the amiga operating system
George> gives perhaps the best single user co-operative multitasking
George> system available today.  Virtual Memory and protected systems
George> are only really required in multi-user systems when one needs
George> protection from other users.

No, when you need protection from YOURSELF.  If a process crashes, on
the Amiga, it can trash all sorts of stuff before the system catches
it and brings down the machine along with everything else running.  A
memory-protected system will continue running happily.  Memory
protection is not an outgrowth of paranoia.

George> I am willing to trade the advantage of VM on MY machine to
George> achieve maximum response.

Memory protection and vitrual memory are separate issues.  Memory
protection involves little performance overhead.

George> The Amiga has done a very good job at this, my 2500 FEELS very
George> fast and very smooth.  I never run out of memory an IF the
George> machine crashes I know instantly who caused it, ME not some
George> one else hacking on a device driver.

Yeah, well try asking someone on a one FLOPPY drive system with 512K
or even 1Meg of ram who wants to run a dozen things at once.  And you
often don't know what task caused a crash.  Who cares who ran it?
It's a single user system; of course you ran it.

Deven> The responsiveness of Exec is excellent.  AmigaDOS isn't always
Deven> so hot.  Consider directory scans, a VERY common operation,
Deven> which is slow as all hell.  [and don't bother to mention FFS --
Deven> it's backpatching to make the file system what it should've
Deven> been to begin with.]

George> There is still room to improve FFS, perhaps caching the file
George> names in a fname block list. This would provide a quick dir at
George> the exspense of more work when adding/deleting files/dirs.
George> Also the disk can be packed more efficently, without messing
George> with the basic model of file system structure.  And FFS is not
George> THAT different than the original file system.

Yes, FFS *is* THAT different from the old file system.  And the old
file system is what I was referring to.  It is an abomination.

Bernie> There is also a more elegance of design to the AmigaDos
Bernie> system.

Deven>  AmigaDOS?  More elegant than Unix?  Don't make me laugh.

George> The model of devices being dynamically loaded entities is just
George> NOW being added to unix as is shared libaries and er um
George> windows. Each OS has some winning "features" and each has some
George> things not to be proud of.

The shared libraries are solely a feature of Exec, for which AmigaDOS
can not take credit.  (It doesn't even *cooperate* with the shared
library design.  Ever try to SetFunction dos.library??)

Dynamically loaded devices is of the few things AmigaDOS does well.
(volume handling and assigned devices being others.)  But Unix
provided an excellent model for a number of things (such as pipes)
which AmigaDOS ignores.

Bernie> but it's the utilities!

George> Finally a meaningful comment!! But then spoiled by foul
George> language again!!

You seem be really hung up on language.  Don't take it out on the net.

[and try to keep it straight who says what.]

Bernie> Life is not worth living if I can't come in early in the
Bernie> morning and grep a few files to start my day.  With make,
Bernie> diff, awk, etc. etc. etc. life is so much easier.

George> Oh you mean like the make, diff, egrep, sed, tee, ... on MY
George> amiga Of course I just need to click on that cute little box
George> in the upper right and pop up my vt100 window which
George> automatically logged into the Sun just as I got up. Geesh and
George> I haven't even finished eating breakfast yet!!!

Great, that proves nothing.  So you can use your Amiga as a terminal
to a Unix machine and get all those wonderful utilities.  That doesn't
give you that functionality ON THE AMIGA.

Deven> Yes.

George> See you knew I was right 8-).

Wow, clever.

George> Go ahead, make myday

Go ahead...  make my sandwich.

Deven
--
Deven T. Corzine        Internet:  deven@rpi.edu, shadow@pawl.rpi.edu
Snail:  2214 12th Street, Troy, NY 12180       Phone:  (518) 271-0750
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Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.