Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 02:55:50 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <15365.63510.713899.607362@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <021f01c178a9$43b2c500$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <004801c17872$98e47b40$6600000a@ach.domain> <017f01c1788c$8cb71d90$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15365.52562.394957.602907@guru.mired.org> <01fe01c178a1$001d1be0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15365.58639.39658.89837@guru.mired.org> <022901c178ab$8b12cb50$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <001401c1789c$f4ea1f60$6600000a@ach.domain> <021f01c178a9$43b2c500$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> types: > Andrew writes: > > So, using Unix on your entire product line as > > the primary OS is a poor technical decision? > It depends on what the product line is supposed to be doing. UNIX is a poor > choice for a desktop, single-user environment. For some people it is. For others it isn't. > > The market that they were aiming for was graphical > > workstations. > Workstations that cost 20 times more than a PC? Yes. > > Solaris (SunOS) and IRIX were free? > I don't know about those, but much of the success of UNIX has been due to its > low cost and availability. Unix kept getting more and more expensive. Last time I checked, a source license ran to $70K, and you had to cough up dollars to AT&T - yes, I checked that long ago - for each copy sold depending on how many users were going to run on it. > If you can send this from Windows, why do you need to configure anything else to > do the same thing? Because the data I want to use in them is on a Unix system? > > ... and merely chalked them up to software problems, > > since there's nothing in the world that could be wrong > > with your hardware. > That is the logical assumption. Vacuum tubes are no longer used in computers. True. The parts no longer conk out. Instead, cosmic rays cause them to change state at random if they aren't sufficiently shielded. > > For some of us, playing games results in dropping > > money on a gaming console, hooking it up to the > > TV and going. > I'm sure many people prefer that. It's certainly simple. Most such games are > too inane for my tastes, though. They are pretty much the same set as are available for the PC, sans network games. Personally, I'm a Go player. > Keep in mind that an operating system is a generalization of functions needed to > some extent by most application programs. The most efficient application > program is one that runs by itself, without an operating system, doing > everything on its own; however, that is hugely impractical in the real world. > An operating system is a compromise that sacrifices the specificity and > performance of a standalone application in exchange for convenience and > practicality. Note that this carries down to the next level. IBM figured they could get an order of magnitude better performance out of the 370 (and most following) lines if they wrote compilers to the micromachine instead of putting the 370 instruction set on all of them. > I can't understand what isn't true. I'm familiar with the many fallacies of > debate, and I do not fall prey to them. Yes you do. You were guilty of the "straw man" fallacy earlier. Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> types: > Mike writes: > > Which is why WNT has the same relation to > > VMS that HAL has to IBM. > None at all, you mean? I agree. Fred already answered that one. 2001 chose HAL because the letters are one further down the alphabet from IBM. Cutter chose WNT for the same reason, except he started with VMS. As I heard it, his reply when someone finally asked him about it was "What took you so long today." > > Be - including BeOS - was bought by Palm > > for US $11 million ... > And where is this OS today? Last I looked, you could download evaluation copies for PC hardware, and buy copies from Be. I'm not sure what Palm is going to do with it. They may be planning on using it on a next generation machine. Which wouldn't be the first time that an operating platform has moved from the desktop to the Palmtop. HP put DOS on their handhelds, and GeoWorks put their lightweight multitasker in the Nokia 9000 series phones, though Nokia eventually dropped that for Epoch. > > Well, for Sun and Apple because they decided > > that their wasn't a viable market for the product. > If they can develop an OS for thousands of dollars, why not follow it through to > completion, anyway? Because the cost of all the trimmings around an OS that make it marketable - and the marketing itself - are much larger than the cost of writing the OS. > > Yup, but it's still data analysis. > It's easy to do stuff sequentially. If you can do the job the easy way, why do it the hard way? > > If there's a local Linux users group, you might point > > them at that ... > Why? Why recommend Linux over Windows? I didn't say recommend it, I said point them at the group. If someone asks me for knowledge about something, I try and help them find it, I don't prejudge what they want it for. I may try and warn them about problems, and about the fact that if they install Linux, I might not be the best person to ask for help, but there's no reason to hide the alternatives from them. > > That's *especially* true if they are complaining about > > problems in the Windows GUI. > I don't understand. Why would they complain about Windows problems to a Linux > users' group? You need to put these together. If someone has complaints about the Windows GUI, it only makes sense to point them at a group that can provide them with a desktop that lets them use alternatives to that GUI. > > That means Unix is an inferior processor for > > those applications, not that it's an inferior > > desktop. > Either way, it pretty much excludes UNIX. Yup. Once you're caught in the trap of proprietary standards, getting out is a PITA. I've been there once, and have no plans on going back. Which means that if I ever switch a Windows desktop, I'm not going to run MS Office on it - I'll buy FrameMaker :-). > > Which ones can you not find an acceptable alternative > > for on Unix? > I provided a list once before. Yes, and we went through it and didn't find anything that didn't exist for FreeBSD. > > With the command "gimp". They changed the commands > > and UI, though. > Illustrator is a vector-based drawing application. Sorry, I saw "Adobe" and assumed "Photoshop". For Illustrator, it's "applix -gr", or if you've got the applix iconbar open, click on the icon with the ruler, triangle and pen. But they've still changed the commands and UI. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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