*BSD News Article 21343


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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!myall.awadi.com.au!myall!blymn
From: blymn@mallee.awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: NetBSD+FreeBSD merge urged!
Date: 24 Sep 1993 00:21:04 GMT
Organization: AWA Defence Industries
Lines: 68
Message-ID: <BLYMN.93Sep23182109@mallee.awadi.com.au>
References: <1993Sep18.204206.29629@diana.ocunix.on.ca> <CDn8xn.33q@sztaki.hu>
	<1993Sep20.213150.13549@diana.ocunix.on.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mallee.awadi.com.au
In-reply-to: db@diana.ocunix.on.ca's message of Mon, 20 Sep 1993 21:31:50 GMT

>>>>> On Mon, 20 Sep 1993 21:31:50 GMT, db@diana.ocunix.on.ca (Dyane Bruce) said:

Dyane> In article <CDn8xn.33q@sztaki.hu> pink@fsz.bme.hu writes:
>In article 29629@diana.ocunix.on.ca, db@diana.ocunix.on.ca (Dyane Bruce) writes:
>>In article <Ygam_WG00WBME1btYl@andrew.cmu.edu> "Alex R.N. Wetmore" <aw2t+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
[..snip...]

Dyane>   DOS will always be a dog to run under unix...

Not true.  On a commercial unix with a commercial dos-under-unix I
could run four dos tasks at once and still be comparable with a 386/25
running DOS (my machine was a 486/25)

Dyane> DOS has no concept
Dyane> of being to do things in the background. No concept of asynchronous I/O
Dyane> completion i.e. it spin loops waiting for I/O completion,
Dyane> waiting for keyboard ready is brutal.

True but busy waits can be detected and the process priority lowered.

Dyane> Still, it can be very usable
Dyane> for running the "dusty deck" old Miserable DOS program, or
Dyane> the occasional word processing.

Again, on a commercial unix, I *preferred* using Microsoft Word on a
dos-under-unix to using it on a 286 machine because the d-u-u process
was *much* faster.

Dyane> You aren't going to compile
Dyane> anything anyway under DOS... You'd be using the native unix.

Wrong... just think of this: using the unix development environment,
i.e. your favourite editor (vi/emacs/whatever), awk, sed, whatever.
Doing your software build using a unix make file that fires off a dos
process to do the compile and link.  I have done this, basically to
avoid having to deal with some compiler author's idea of an integrated
development environment (Wordstar command keys for doing
cut/paste...gimme a break!) AND their brain-dead/naive idea of what a
make should do (like regenerate dependencies *every* time it makes ...
life is too short).  By running d-u-u and being able to use the unix
tools I am familiar with I won in terms of being able to get on with
the job instead of struggling with a concept on an editor that hails
from the early '80's.

Dyane>   Re-writing the virtual BIOS can help a lot, as anytime a BIOs
Dyane> trap is taken you can suspend the virtual DOS... 

Hmmm I think you would have problems with this concept, some DOS
things still expect timely events...

Dyane>   It is going to take a decent DOS/Windows emulator to wean people
Dyane> away from an program loader system of the 60's to a real
Dyane> operating system, of at least the 70's :-)

Ooops, I sugest a dose one of the folk-lore newsgroups for you... unix
precedes DOS by a good margin, in fact if you reverse your 60 and 70
you would be closer to the mark.

Dyane>   Of course, the dreaded legal challenge is always possible.... There
Dyane> is a legal case on in the states that might enable MS to
Dyane> make WABI illegal.. (As they can argue that the Windows API can't
Dyane> be copied.)

Sun is not small fish so Microsoft may have their hands full trying to
win that case.  It will be interesting to watch.

--
Brett Lymn