From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 23 4:32:48 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4FAD037B400 for ; Tue, 23 Jan 2001 04:32:30 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 32562 invoked by uid 100); 23 Jan 2001 12:32:29 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14957.31196.939559.889627@guru.mired.org> Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 06:32:28 -0600 (CST) To: "Albert D. Cahalan" Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: OT: non-Unix history (Was: FreeBSD vs linux) In-Reply-To: <100370249@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Albert D. Cahalan types: > David Kelly writes: > > [--snip--] > >> On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 08:54:58PM -0600, David Kelly wrote: > > >>> The majority of Linux users are also Windows users and wear > >>> Microsoft-colored glasses no matter how much they badmouth > >>> Microsoft. They continue to build their new land with a > >>> Microsoft tint. This may not be a bad thing, only time will tell. > > What I mean by "Microsoft tint" is prefaced by "Microsoft-colored > > glasses". Users who know only of Windows bitch when an OS doesn't do > > everything the way they are used to. When configuring a foreign system, > > or writing code for it, they design the user interface after the > > Microsoft model. And use Microsoft terminology to document. And then > > complain about how much they hate Microsoft. > The GNOME+Gtk desktop looks like OS/2 and Motif. NeXT-like themes > are very common. The usual title bar buttons are actually useful, > and hey, Motif was quite a Windows 3.1 rip-off anyway. I think you've got that backwards - or maybe sideways. Remember, MS & IBM produced OS/2 in a partnership; it was supposed to be the next OS after DOS. MS screwed IBM by not actually supporting OS/2 the way they had agreed upon, and doing Windows internally. Motif, on the other hand, was produced by a consortium that included IBM, and was specifically designed to look like OS/2 - which IBM owned, so it wasn't a ripoff. I don't remember if the GUI design went from OS/2 -> Windows or the other way, but it's sort of moot; MS had rights to both in either case. Of course, MS stole the Windows UI from Apple (only they did a miserable job of implementing it), who stole it (if you ask Xerox) or licensed it (if you ask Apple) from Xerox. > It is stupid to invent a gratuitously incompatible user interface. Which was why Motif looked like OS/2. That your users could move between PC's running OS/2 and Unix boxes running Motif with no training. On the other hand, there's no such thing as "gratuitously incompatible user interfaces". All those changes are *improvements* - just ask the authors! If you want to argue that one of the reasons that Unix failed on the desktop was that X allowed the users to run arbitrarily strange window managers, and most of those window managers allowed configuration to an extent that would require major rewrites of MacOS or Windows, I won't argue. I would claim that the kernel APIs being different were more of a reason, but that's just me. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message