To summarize this thread, and I hope end it. The fans of unix correctly point out that unix can, in principle, be configured to be really nice. Well so can a molten lump of pig iron, in principle, be configured to be something really nice. Out in the real world people do not like dealing with a molten lump of pig iron, and so it is usually not configured to be really nice, which is why we see people editing with vi and publishing with latex. Now sometimes MIS creates a tiny little reserve where things really are really nice, and the secretaries are herded into this little reserve, and within this little reserve everything is almost as nice as windows. (Unless of course you want to cut and paste formatted text and graphics between windows, under the sun OS, but hey, that is an arcane operation that the normal user would never want to do. Right? You cannot really expect MIS to help such special power users can you?) And that is what Bill O'Hanlon meant when he said that for ordinary naive users who had not been exposed to either operating system, unix was no worse than dos. Herd them into the reserve and keep them there, and it is indeed no worse than dos. But the reserve is not really the whole operating system, it is just a little area of safety. And as soon as somebody strolls outside the little reserve to do something that MIS has not specifically planned for and arranged, half a ton of molten pig iron pours down on them, and MIS says: "Hey, don't do that." --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. | jamesd@netcom.com