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From: vax@sylvester.cc.utexas.edu (Vax)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Choosing a Unix like OS for a pc
Date: 1 Jul 1993 06:44:25 -0500
Organization: The University of Texas - Austin
Lines: 64
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <20uimp$ffp@sylvester.cc.utexas.edu>
References: <203s5k$j9u@urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> <C9E4J4.Fsw.1@cs.cmu.edu> <20thkf$9ab@urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>
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In article <20thkf$9ab@urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> dak@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de (David Kastrup) writes:
>Give it a break. The system makes high language development possible,
>has multi-tasking, and an object-oriented compiler. It is fast, and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Some might argue that preemptive multitasking is the only Real way to multitask,
especially on a multi-user platform.
>useable lean system and should at least serve as sort of reminder
>that software development should not stop at the point where you say
>"With hyperfast processors and lots of memory, this program will
>work not as painfully slow as it does now."
Say, I seem to remember a little operating system with a GUI and
Text Formatting utilities and printing utilities, and the so-called
"multitasking" (cooperative, blech). And it's OS was so small it could
fit in a ROM chip... hmm... could it be... a MACINTOSH?
One should remember that processor power continues to decrease in price;
most people are not impressed by anything that can run on an 8088
or under a MB of disk space, aside from that fact alone.
Coherent has a good, small Unix system (Sys 7 derivative) that runs in
a minimal environment; and it retains compatibility with alot the "real world".
Personally, I'd rather have a system with the "plug-n-play" aspect of BSD;
I can pick 90% of the programs off the net and compile them with usually no
more than a "make bsd". And, I have all the power of a Real box, with lotsa
neat networking toys and other stuff to learn over the next century or so :)
The thing that fascinated me most is that I get more done with all this
nasty overhead than I ever did under DOS; I still load up DOS once in a while
and I'm perpetually amazed at how much time I spend waiting for a task to
finish.
The days of nit-picking over a byte or two are gone. If you just want to
work on one thing, sure, pick a minimal OS to run it on. But if you want to
do everything, you're gonna need a big OS.
I'm playing with a language/OO-OS I'm writing that runs on top of the
MOP under CLOS, do you think you could run it on that OS?
I'm not railing "small is beautiful", it's just that I happen to USE
the functionality my OS gives me. So, minimalistic OS's aren't a great
boon to users like me. But, I'll tell you what. Keep your OS small,
and when processor-power-per-dollar increases fourfold (shouldn't be
too far off by anyone's estimate), I'll probably
be able to emulate yours underneath whatever I'm running at the time. :)
And besides, by your own reasoning, isn't almost all of that OS
basically worthless to someone who just wants to number crunch, one
process? It's almost all overhead. Just as networking code is overhead
to someone who wants to animate under X, or multi-user code is overhead
to a single-user OS.
I guess the summary of my rantings is "to each his own", but more than
likely once you see someone else's, you'll want theirs, too. Unix is a good
all-round winner. Granted, if all you do is number-crunch from the command
line on a CRT, almost all of your OS seems wasteful, but the general trend
is for OS's to bloat. Unix has managed to be useful for two decades, and
incorporate more features than I've seen anywhere else. Even so, it
has a smaller "bloat-rate" than any modern OS I know of, especially the
microsoft line of OS's. I have a few nit-picks, I think the file system and
device drivers are a bit archaic, (I'm a smalltalk fiend
myself), but then again alot of things continue to impress me about it;
the no-holds-barred approach to sheer power involved; one only has to read
through the man page to "find" to know that most programs pack more whallop
than most of non-unix PC OS's put together.
Sorry, I've been through 5 OS's on my PC in the last four years,
not counting new versions, and I hope someone finds this educational.
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