Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!stc!idec!alice!fox From: fox@alice.marlow.reuters.co.uk (Paul Fox) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: OS/2 is the result of anticompetitive practices by IBM and Microsoft Message-ID: <346@alice.marlow.reuters.co.uk> Date: 10 May 88 15:44:27 GMT References: <1925@sugar.UUCP> <1612@looking.UUCP> Reply-To: fox@alice.reuters.marlow.co.uk (Paul Fox) Organization: Reuters Ltd PLC, Marlow, Bucks, England Lines: 89 In article <1612@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >Like I said, it's not an easy target that is being aimed at, and OS/2 >misses in many of the following places, but here are areas where Unix >would require a total rewrite to hit dead on: > > a) Administration - this has been discussed a lot, so I won't > go into details here. I agree, but then what does DOS or OS/2 have in the way of sys. admin ? > b) File system integrity: > Unix can't just be turned on and off with a switch like > DOS can, and like users expect. Oh yes it can, ever heard of file system hardening. Granted you shouldn't, but then again, on some PC's you should park the hard disk before removing power. > c) Fragmented file systems: > Unix fragments file systems heavily, and that means you > don't want to run it on anything but a fast disk drive. > Most people have slower (50-60ms) disk drives. Speed of disks is definitely not an issue, although most people think it is. A 2 MB memory cache will solve a lot of problems including slow disks. OS/2 requires in at least 4MB to work properly. Unix needs about .5MB + room for the disk cache. Therefore a 4MB machine will leave users with an ample 1.5MB to play with. How much of this is available under DOS or OS/2 with 4 MB? > d) Running DOS programs > Unix for the 286 might be able to do this the way that > OS/2 does, but nobody has done it. That's partly because > everybody is interested in the 386 way of doing this, since > it isn't a kludge on that chip. Running DOS programs always has been and always will be a kludge. There are very few programs which one will want running in emulation mode, except for say 1-2-3, Windows ? Most of the 'nice' utilities that are used under DOS (eg SideKick, Turbo-*) only exist because of DOS's inability to multi-task. The only thing that Unix lacks is bit-mapped graphics. > e) Real time > DOS programs can do real time applications because they > own the machine. Not so under Unix Absolutely not true. There is a way to do real-time, although it is fiddly but isolating real-time code in device drivers, and performing buffering. This is no more fiddly than using debug under DOS to patch interrupt vectors. Would you patch an interrupt vector whilst the system is running if that system was Unix ? > f) Easy device driver installation. > Typical DOS machines, if they get fancy, have special > peripherals, all with their own drivers. All unusual > disk controllers come with their own drivers in rom. > I agree. Unix really is lacking loadable device drivers. > g) Still run software for the old filesystem, and still use old disks. > This is something people want, although they're wrong > to want it, and OS/2 was wrong to give it to them by > keeping the same file system format. But it is > something people want, they just don't know it's bad > for them. 8-) The thing that kills DOS is the bad disk and file system management. End of story. The only reason that OS/2 kept that old fashioned file system was because of lack of time in there production schedules. It was a bad choice to spend so much of the project worrying about backwards compatability with DOS. > h) Convenient floppy disk use > The whole mount/unmount scheme is too much for a lot of > these users. mount/unmount is a function of the bad user interface of Unix. Remeber that Unix floppy filesystems far outperform DOS floppy disk management. > All flames greatfully accepted. What would you have done if you wanted to take advantage of the 286 architecture whilst maintaining compatability ? By far the most sensible would have been to use something like Unix as a base system and mod it, and include an 8088 emulator. Forget that the h/w can already do this. If it makes the product 4 years late, do it the way the 68* and Acorn ARM people have done it. It must take something like 6 man months to produce an emulator; compare this with the mega man centuries MS have spent on OS2. I really believe that OS/2 is a political and marketing ploy by IBM. (All views expressed are due entirely to my fingers and my behind -- definitely not my brain...) ===================== // o All opinions are my own. (O) ( ) The powers that be ... / \_____( ) o \ | /\____\__/ _/_/ _/_/ UUCP: fox@alice.marlow.reuters.co.uk