Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 09:51:32 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Peter Korsten <peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl> Cc: "freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Rumors of the death of Unix have been greatly exaggerated... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970829092557.341G-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <19970829011410.35329@grendel.IAEhv.nl>
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On Fri, 29 Aug 1997, Peter Korsten wrote:
> 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.
Devil's advocate here, how about when other people's experience
matches your own? The part of the article that struck home with
me was about (mis)management of system files:
In the most recent case, an update to the bank order-entry software I
use, which does nothing other than display forms and write files,
modified thirty-seven files in my C:\WINNT directory tree (without
asking for confirmation first), then crashed when attempting to
import the database from the previous version with a numeric error
code from ODBC. Customer support for problems like this in these
enlightened times seems to have converged onto the All Purpose
Answer: "Reformat your hard drive, then re-install Windows and all
your applications".
It isn't necessairly Microsoft's fault that this is the norm rather
than the exception, but they do set a precedent for it with how their
own applications install. In the windows world there has
historically been no separation of application and system filespaces
and it doesn't seem to be changing for the better very fast. Without
that separation the instability describe in the article is
inevitable. The reason is exactly the why user processes are not
allowed to muck around with the kernel's memory.
The other thing that irks me--and it seems to be a more general PCism
than a Microsoft-ism--is that installation instructions of even the
most trivial software so often include the last step "Reboot your
computer". I'm sorry, but for a workstation that is also a server,
that is just isn't acceptable. (Granted, there are some justified
cases, such as installing new hardware....)
-john
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