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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!news.uoregon.edu!tezcat!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!mr.net!news.mr.net!news From: "Sara Rouner" <serouner@mutt.hamline.edu> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy Subject: Re: Betting on Unix Date: 05 Feb 1997 12:57:31 -0600 Organization: none Lines: 70 Sender: serouner@mutt Message-ID: <yvw4tfrqdwk.fsf@mutt.i-have-a-misconfigured-system-so-shoot-me> References: <5d3sr2$44n@nntp1.best.com> <E50rGo.K3n@nonexistent.com> <nLVF2tL@quack.kfu.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mutt.hamline.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:156945 comp.os.linux.networking:67673 comp.os.linux.setup:96086 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:5932 comp.unix.bsd.misc:2382 comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:52201 comp.os.os2.advocacy:266456 nsayer@quack.kfu.com (Nick Sayer) writes: > As for OS, there was an article in one of the magazines that opined that > vis-a-vis NT, "The honeymoon is over." I have heard many a nightmarish > tale about NT4.0 being unable to run on otherwise perfectly good > hardware, and huge mountains of software that runs under win95 but > refuses to under NT4. I may be a unix bigot, but if NT is the answer, > it must be a stupid question. While I don't agree with everything in your post, I have to agree with you here. IMHO, NT4 was a mistake. Probably because they rushed it. IME, NT3.51 was a much better [i.e. stable] product. Articles in trade mags I have read show that an overwhelming majority of IS managers are still running NT3.51, and are wary of NT4 after hearing of others' reports of NT4 instability. MS should have released the shell preview (makes NT3.51 look like Win95) as an add-on to NT3.51, then waited for the feature set in NT5 to become available before making the new release. Water under the bridge now, though. > > What would make Unix' future? Scott MacNeily can whine about Microsoft > desktops wasting monumental amounts of admin time and energy if he > likes, but unix will die without applications. If WABI or Wine can > run Office-95, then that's one way. If not, then Sun or someone else > needs to make an office productivity suite for Unix. It is in the > application arena that an OS lives or dies. If applications are > as plentiful and priced equally ($300 for Word and $1500 for > Framemaker?!), then at long last the OS wars will be fought on > even footing. Companies like Applix are selling comparable products. Sure, all I ever used MS Office for was writing documentation using Word and doing spreadsheet analysis using Excel. Some database work with Access, but I'm much more in favor of Oracle or PG95 for my database needs. ApplixWare from Applix/Redhat suits my needs, and I find it easier to use. It looks and feels a lot like MS OFfice, so it was easy to learn (I never even cracked open the manual.) Screen shots on http://www.redhat.com. Not to mention it's faster on the same hardware than MS Office (P-100, 16MB ram.) After I beat TIE Fighter one more time under Win95, I'll reformat my Win95 partition and mke it a data area. > But Unix' achiles heel is that its compatability is only at source > level. Each CPU requires its own compiler, and each OS requires its > own libraries. This, truly, is POSIX's next task - Application > independence at the shared library level. If I have an x86 ELF > binary, it should not matter what OS it was compiled on, I should > be able to run it without modification or without fetching the > libraries from somewhere. Unix is heading in this direction, > but the quicker it gets there, the quicker it will be seen as an > equal platform. And the quicker the applications will be ported > to it. IMO, the Java virtual machine will go a long way here. It goes beyond UNIX-to-UNIX. As I understand the issues, a Java binary will run on any system that supports the JVM. I think Corel (http://www.corel.com) has a beta out of the Corel office for Java. And Linux (for one) supports running Java binaries as though they were native binaries. Now THAT'S a powerful feature. -- Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too."