Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ic.Berkeley.EDU!faustus
From: faustus@ic.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: OS/2 is the result of anticompetitive practices by IBM and Microsoft
Message-ID: <3230@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 10 May 88 02:38:20 GMT
References: <1623@looking.UUCP> <1612@looking.UUCP> <3094@edm.UUCP>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Lines: 16

When people say that PC's should run Unix, they don't care about the
filesystem code or the details of administration (as long as it's not
too bad).  They want it to look like Unix, to have ^Z and vi, and for
their Unix application programs to run on it with no modifications,
which means system call compatibility.  What they DON'T want is to
have to use \ instead of / for paths, to have to type "copy" instead
of "cp", and to have to learn some marketing person's idea of what an
editor should be like instead of what they're used to.  I've seen
usable Unix systems on PC's (HP systems, mainly) and I'd much rather
use them than anything coming out of Microsoft or IBM.

As for the disk problems when turning off the machine -- how hard can
it be to make the off switch a "soft" power switch, that does a sync
before shutting off the power?  The problem isn't the technology here,
it's the mindset.

	Wayne