Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 00:32:50 -0600 (MDT) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: Peter Korsten <peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Conclusion to "NT vs. Unix" debate Message-ID: <199709030632.AAA12695@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <19970831221230.08862@grendel.IAEhv.nl> References: <19970831221230.08862@grendel.IAEhv.nl>
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Conclusions? We don't allow no steenking conclusions here!
Peter Korsten writes:
> I think John Fieber made some comments that I can only agree with.
> Wes Peters did so too. Please read their messages for more details.
>
> (This of course has nothing to do with them at least partially
> agreeing with me. :) )
>
> The point I was trying to make, is not whether NT is better or Unix
> is. I know ftp.com is the busiest server in the world. I know that
> FreeBSD usually performs better on the same platform. The discussion
> has turned into a "why X is better than Y" and you're bound to lose
> that on a FreeBSD mailing list.
Well said.
> Perhaps I should say that I really want an Amiga, but then with a
> 500 Mhz Alpha chip. The Amiga had a pre-emptive multitasking OS
> that ran in 256 Kb. Though some parts were a bit clumsy, the base
> was very good. The basic type was a Node (ordered in a List), from
> which you could derive (yes, object-orientation in C) a Task, a
> Library, a Device or any system structure.
You should take a careful look at BeOS. I think you'll like what you
see. I've said several times that someday somebody was going to come
along and design an OS from the ground up that learned important lessons
from what both the Mac and UNIX workstations had to teach us. Who'dve
thought it would be an ex-Apple CEO?
I was betting on someone from Sun, but they can't seem to get Spring
beyond the "interesting experiment" stage. If they'd just cave, write
Spring for common PC architectures as well as SPARC, they'd probably be
able to move onto a really good GUI. But that's Sun.
> The GUI was good and getting better, so was the shell. ARexx was
> the third interface. This altogether made a system that, as I think
> of it, was better than Unix (despite it's excellent shell) or
> Windows 95/NT 4.0 (despite it's GUI). The fact that not all
> applications supported all functions of the system, doesn't make
> the system less powerfull.
BeOS has a pretty good shell (bash). Scripting languages, also straight
from the UNIX world, include tcl and perl; but are rapidly becoming
ubiquitous due to their association with WWW programming. The GUI is
colorful and interesting without being the overblown mess that many X
systems are, or the underblown mess that "Win" is. The filesystems are
UNIX-like, and could probably use some research. Pluggable filesystems
seem to be supported somewhat, although I'm not sure they've gotten much
attention yet. Now that Be is working on BeOS x86, perhaps pluggable
filesystems will become more important.
> The Amiga has some functions that I really really miss in other
> OS's. Writing your own installer application in some sort of
> Lisp-like language - no need for InstallShield. Assigning logical
> names to devices, directories or drives. Installing new devices or
> filesystems while the system was running.
>
> But the market has been divided. You basically have MS, the Mac,
> some Unixes and dedicated OS's, like real-time OS's (but they are
> a niche market anyway).
A niche market? Tell that to Wind River, who is now probably outselling
Win95. ;^) What operating system is your toaster/microwave/dish washer
running?
> At the moment, a Unix server (probably any Unix server) is more
> suited for something like an Internet-server than an NT server, be
> it for mail, news, ftp or http.
>
> Trouble is, most non-Intel platforms will be having a hard time to
> survive, simply because of the tremendous costs to build a new
> plant. Intel is somewhat the Microsoft of the hardware world: they
> could have released the Pentium II months earlier, but there simply
> was no need. Alpha is your best bet in processor architectures,
> as it comes to who survives Intel the longest. What company can
> put own $1,000,000,000 for a new processor?
Motorola. IBM. Hitachi. NEC. Fujitsu, now the world's second largest
computer company, and very loud about it. etc. Of course, all of them
but Motorola also make WinTel machines. Personally, I think it stupid
that Moto and IBM didn't pick up support for NT on CHRP when MS dumped
it; they're doing themselves a great disservice. AIX, bad as it is, is
better than NT, but "will it run Word?"
> As about GUI's, opinions differ and probably will be differing for
> quite some time. In my view, a GUI is not something that you should
> be able to configure to the max, it's a way of representing data
> in a consistent way to the user. The book I read was the Amiga User
> Interface Style Guide. Yes, there's a lot of psychology behind it
> as well. That's something very difficult for a programmer.
The Amiga Style Guide was quite good. I was an ST-head back in "the
good old days," and the Flying Tramiel Brothers never sprang for an ST
Style Guide. On the other hand, we had the "ST Professional GEM"
articles by the guy who wrote the GEM resource kit, and they were
excellent. The author, whose name I've forgotten, introduced me to
Card, Moran, and Newell, the concept of diadetic memory, and just about
everything else I ever learned about effective communication between a
computer program and a human operator. He also suggested that *all* GUI
programmers read and understand the concepts in the GUI-style volume of
"Inside Macintosh." I wonder if the developers of Office 95/97 read it?
> I also have the opinion that a computer should be easy to use.
> Look, for instance, at an ATM. In the Netherlands, you put in your
> card, type your secret code, select the amount of money, take your
> card, take your money. In Belgium, you choose the amount of money
> _before_ you enter your secret code. In the States, you get your
> money before you get your card back - so Dutch people tend to forget
> their card. Personally, I think the Dutch version is the most
> logical sequence to get money from a machine.
In the US, there are three or four different methods: the little ATMs in
convenience stores and most airports don't take your card, you just
swipe it through a reader and keep possession of it. That way you can't
forget your card -- you never let go of it. Yay! The U.S. stays ahead
on yet another technical forefront! ;^)
> If you link it to personal computers, probably the easiest to use
> is a Windows machine. I have told people how to configure dial-up
> networking over the phone, people who didn't even know how to move
> a window. It just wouldn't have been possible with a Unix machine.
> The Mac is even more easy to use, but it has other problems.
Now see, there you go making another of those sweeping statements that
just aren't true! Take your average 50-year-old who hasn't used GUIs
before, sit him or her before Win95, and they'll choke instantly. I had
the same experience the first time I sat in front of a Mac. I knew
computers; I was fluent with DEC TOPS-10, TOPS-20, RSX-11, RT-11, and
VMS, several flavors of UNIX, and Harris VOS. I couldn't for the life
of me figure out how to even edit a simple document on the Macintosh,
nor did the salesman at that time know how.
> So, if you limit yourself to an environment that basically text-
> oriented, you put yourself in a pretty small market. And you
> can't provide the coupling to those popular applications that come
> from Redmond, WA. And despite Motif and CDE, they aren't standard
> like the prescribed standard of MS is.
That depends -- Motif and CDE *are* standard on just about every
commercial variant of UNIX these days. I mean the big guys, Sun, HP,
etc. Now if CDE just included a real word processor, or at least had
one available. I think most people who install Office(tm) on their Win
machines are really only looking for Word, and even then don't need 75%
of what Word gives them. If someone figured out the important 25%, it
would go a long ways to making UNIX more palatable as an "only system"
for a variety of workers who prefer UNIX in the first place.
> If I look at FreeBSD, even sysinstall has it quirks. I always end
> up pressing the wrong buttons and that's because the buttons (and
> keys) keep changing functions. The "Cancel" button changes into
> an "Install" button all of a sudden.
>
> Basically, that's what I want to say. I also realize that making
> a good GUI is very difficult and takes tremendous resources. It
> should be done with the other free Unixes, it's too big for just
> FreeBSD.
Well, perhaps not. ;^)
> But I think that the hack-heads who do everything from a tty and
> who have a lot of influence on the development of FreeBSD, should
> consider the world outside who's in need of GUI's.
As I've said before, the two areas in which UNIX shows its age the most
is in the lack of overall integration of the networking model and the
windowing model. UNIX was designed before either of these had become
ubiquitous, both were just grafted on long after the fact. Despite
that, it has become the world's reference point for TCP/IP applications,
and for a while at least, the development point for most major
developments in GUIs. I welcome a system that is truly better than UNIX
at this with open arms, but a half-baked 16-bit windowing system grafted
on top of a half-baked 16-bit near operating system, and then compiled
with a 32-bit compiler and called the future by it's creator just isn't
it.
And as for the need of GUIs, FreeBSD has a number of other users to
support as well. What about the people installing serial-console
FreeBSD systems hundreds or even thousands of miles away? If we make a
GUI-only installation, how do we support them? PC Anywhere for FreeBSD?
I think not, thank you very little.
And in the putting your money where your mouth is department: am I
hearing a volunteer here? Ask not what FreeBSD can do for you, but
rather what YOU can do for FreeBSD! (JFK, er, JKH, er...)
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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