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