Nuke Richmond

From: ajp166 <ajp166_at_bellatlantic.net>
Date: Sat Jan 13 11:33:08 2001

From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_socal.rr.com>


>When you have a LOT of unix experience they do seem about as easy to
>install, but I am a fairly normal, knowledgable person and it took me


That is the culture and documentation thing. Plus, unix {and clones} is
an
OS not an application unto itself. So that means you can use it for
anything
BUT, anything you may want to do is not always documented in a direct
stepwise fashon.

>had to do, but the mechanics of doing it are much more familiar. Exiting
vi
>the first time I edited /etc/resolv.rc only took about an hour.


Well, having had to live with TECO, Vteco, ED {cpm version} and command
line editing inside VAX EDT {teco macros} a command line oriented visual
editor like VI is far less foreign. Be glad you didn't have to use unix
ED!

>at what price? (both in $ and failing to learn how to exit vi). When I
>recommend NetBSD, part of the recommendation is before you get started,
>join a support list (and I give a URL).


Do the words HELP! mean anything? It's a good idea.

>With windows the problem is the opposite, the damn thing wants to run
>EXACTLY the way it wants to with few if any user options and very much
at
>your own risk.


Well yes and no. To make a point yes it's more limiting, it was designed
for a different use (more like specific use). However if you learn how
to
manipulate the Registry, some of the .INI files and other burried bits
it's
possible to tune or even eliminate a lot. The first step is learning how
to install it with the opions you want and not the MS or CPU vendor
selected set. For example getting the W95 OSR2/USB OEM version
to NOT install AOL, ATT and Compuserve or the correct set of tools.
It does make a difference. If your using W98 (or 98second or ME)
using 98lite to eliminate some of the junk in the install process can
considerably lighten and speed the end result. But this is going far
beyond the usual level that even most W9x power users go.

In comparison, Unix users have gone to the level beyond the Windows
power user. Most are doing system integration (making a NAT box
lets say) and are even doing significant applications development.
You can do that with W9x but you need the SDKs and corrosponding
knowledge. In the end it's not an OS thing beyond having the fundemental
hooks in it.

There is nothing to say you couldn't have used:

    WinNT
    OS/2
    BeOS
    Minix
    OpenDOS

or whatever to do the same project. Each would impose different
knowledge requirements and development loads. By the same token
each one would have differing paybacks in cpu, memory and storage
needed to accomplish the task to some given level of performance.

Anywho, where W95 is actually weak in my mind is isolation between
applications and the OS. The result is a misbehaving app or driver
can kill the system. Security is poor as well. The serious offense
and W98 (ME edition is best here) is TASK management and
scheduling. In all it's a low security and weak multitasking OS.
So if it doesn't perform with 10 tasks open then one should not
be surprized.

Based on the above comment I find this to be my opinion of multitasking
perfomance of OSs I've used or seriously looked at for PC hardware.

   Poor Win3.11 little to no protection for the OS or tasks
                W9x Limited OS and task protection and some
security.
                OS/2 V3 Close to NT maybe better on multitasking,
security is ???
               WinNT4 I use it, best of the MS lot I've worked with.
               Linux It's getting too loaded with MSisms
               Unix clones {FreeBSD, OpenBSD} good multitasking,
excellent security
   BEST ..............unknown

I'm Biased as I don't think any of them are at the OpenVMS level of
reliability, performance or documentation. The latter, documentation
both in it's completeness and conciseness alone seperates it from
the PC OS listed though linux likely has by shear bulk come close.

Allison
Received on Sat Jan 13 2001 - 11:33:08 GMT