Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 01:14:10 +0200 From: Peter Korsten <peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl> To: "freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Rumors of the death of Unix have been greatly exaggerated... Message-ID: <19970829011410.35329@grendel.IAEhv.nl> In-Reply-To: <34039989.2770@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co>; from Pedro Giffuni S, on Tue, Aug 26, 1997 at 08:05:45PM -0700 References: <199708242230.PAA13822@merchant.tns.net> <34039989.2770@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co>
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Pedro Giffuni S, shared with us: > Here is an alternative view to the M$ problem seen by the former > Autodesk president: Autodesk, are they still in business then? > When I look at Microsoft's current product line (which I avoid doing as > much as possible, I must confess), the problem is not that it lacks > features--God, most of it has way too many features for its own good, > and I suspect 90% of the users never discover nor use a majority of > them--but that it is bug-infested junk. What users need is not > ActiveXYZ, the NanoGenetic TransSpecies API, etc., etc., endless etc. > but software which works properly and does not crash. Jamming 1.5 > megabytes of roach-motel USER and GDI code into the kernel of NT 4.0 to > "improve performance" shows Microsoft lack the basic competence and/or > willingness to provide a reliable > operating system. And that has been a solved problem since the 1960's. > Now they're going to sell us a global distributed component model secure > multi-platform multi-media object oriented operating system. Right. I had NT 4.0 crash on me twice. The first time was when I removed an external SCSI tape drive while the system was on. I got some blue panic screen. The second was when there were 0 (and no more than that) bytes free on the system drive and someone tried to log in for the first time. There was no space to create a new profile and the thing read from address 0x70. That was a segment violation, so the login application was terminated, but that also meant that the system rebooted. This was on various machines, mostly Pentium 133 with 64 Mb memory. NT 4.0 Server, SQL Server 6.5 with a 100Mb database, Internet Infor- mation Server 3.0 and Visual C++ 4.2 running at the same time. I think you can say the system was used moderatly heavily. Performance was still very good at this time. Admitted, the hardware used was high quality: Asus mainboard, Adaptec controller, Quantum Atlas II disk. At one time, I was forced to switch off the system because I accidently opened 1200 Explorers and the damn thing just wouldn't crash. :) So, Pedro, get out of your ivory tower and check your facts before you start making statements from other people's experience. There's a world out there that's using these products. You may not like it, but you can't get around it either. I know I'm sounding like 'Amazing Discoveries' here. I'm not a Microsoft advocate - far from that - but I think there's a lot of either ignorance or blindsightness about this firm and it's products in the Unix world. - Peter
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