From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Aug 20 12:51:15 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id MAA14599 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Aug 1995 12:51:15 -0700 Received: from UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU (UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU [129.7.1.11]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with SMTP id MAA14588 for ; Sun, 20 Aug 1995 12:51:10 -0700 Received: from Taronga.COM by UUCP-GW.CC.UH.EDU with UUCP id AA03530 (5.67a/IDA-1.5); Sun, 20 Aug 1995 14:33:06 -0500 Received: by bonkers.taronga.com (smail2.5p) id AA19987; 20 Aug 95 14:08:08 CDT (Sun) Received: (from peter@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id OAA19984; Sun, 20 Aug 1995 14:08:07 -0500 Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 14:08:07 -0500 From: Peter da Silva Message-Id: <199508201908.OAA19984@bonkers.taronga.com> To: dennis@et.htp.com Subject: Re: FreeBSD in a Windows World In-Reply-To: <199508201613.MAA01700@mail.htp.com> Organization: Taronga Park BBS Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk In article <199508201613.MAA01700@mail.htp.com>, dennis wrote: >A real operating system is one that provides a computer with usable >services, which both DOS and WINDOS (as it should be called) do. An operating system is that component of the software in a computer that manages system resources. In the case of DOS the operating system is embedded in every application: just about every resource allocation issue is fobbed off on the application writer. All DOS manages is storage and a modicum of device interfaces... and most programs ignore the DOS-provided drivers. Windows is better, though it does leave applications responsible for most scheduling. >Academically, it may be the truth, but the point is that its irrelevant. The >market is driven by functinality, The market is not driven by functionality. It's driven by applications. the market doesn't care what an operating system is so long as it runs their applications. It doesn't even care much how good those applications are so long as they can do what they bought them for. >The market today is convertees (from other Un*x type OSs) and simple >canned functionality (like routers). In other words: applications. The other thing you have to watch out for is, the market has no memory and no foresight. You and I can see that buying a scheduling package that ONLY runs on top of a mail package is short-sighted, and if you buy that scheduling package you're going to be locked into that mail package, but it doesn't care if that package will solve today's problem. Open system solutions don't do that, which means they're worth putting up with a bit of inconvenience. How do you convince the market to do that, though?