Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: OS/2 is the result of anticompetitive practices by IBM and Microsoft
Message-ID: <1623@looking.UUCP>
Date: 9 May 88 02:29:24 GMT
References: <1612@looking.UUCP> <3094@edm.UUCP>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 41

In article <3094@edm.UUCP> rroot@edm.UUCP (uucp) writes:
>> 	a) Administration - this has been discussed a lot, so I won't
>  My friend (edm!neyessa!root) owns an old altos system. Administration
>needs are almost NIL (once a month, he automatically generates usage stats for
>our enjoyment)

You must get a better understanding of the typical DOS user -- the kind who
needs a week long training course to learn how to turn the system on,
insert disks, print and copy files etc.

If you know Unix, you can have an easy enough time running your system if
you don't try to do very much with it, but it's still quite a step over
DOS.  OS/2 probably is, too.

>> 		Unix fragments file systems heavily, and that means you
>Use the BSD file system: It handles (prevents) fragmentation reasonably well.
>(normal MS-DOS/OS-2 has the same problems as the bell FS anyways)

No, there's a big difference.  DOS breaks files into extents, but
the extents are large if they can be.  Regular unix often grabs blocks one at a
time as they come in the free list.  This can be fixed, of course.

>> 	h) Convenient floppy disk use
>See my answer to b): The same answer applies here.
No.  Sync on quiet is not enough, unless it's of the level of sync before
spin-down, and expect the disk to be removed.

The original Mac didn't let you get your floppy out unless you requested
it from the OS.  People *hated* it.


Many of these things, as some people have pointed out, can be done and have
been done in some cases.  But not together, and not as a standard.

If you're going to make such massive changes, why not rewrite the thing,
and fix the things that we know are wrong after 15 years.  That doesn't
mean that OS/2 is the answer, but it does mean that an attempt to write
a new OS is not a conspiracy against the user community.

-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473