Re: alt.religion.your.operating.system.sucks
Spif wrote:
so your point, basically, is that the public will settle for whatever it can get, and get easiest and cheapest, when it comes to software and operating systems in particular.
It always puzzles me that people on the net spend so much time griping about Microsoft when the net tends towards libertarianism. I would think libertarians would welcome Microsoft's dominance, as a validation of the free market in action. I'm not saying you are libertarian, of course. "Dos/Windows + applications available for Dos/Windows" are obviously blowing out "unix + applications available for unix". Normal people don't give a damn if source code is available for "power tools" like PERL, sed, grep, wc, bc, strip, yacc, lex, puke, barf, etc. They want to cut and paste their spreadsheet charts into the word processor they use, and email it to coworkers.
certainly a growing market for internet-capable systems
OS/2 is internet friendly, Windows 95 will be friendly, etc. Certainly unix will let you do more, but most people won't care about the value of the extras, as long as a web browser, news reader, and mail reader is available. Some people on this list swear they never have to drop to a command line with the cool tools they use with their SLIP accounts (except to change their password). If that's true, then any "advantage" unix has is washed away. How will the unix market grow (relative to other more popular OS's) if internet access tools run the same on Windows and OS/2 and Mac's as they do on unix?
On Sun, 29 Jan 1995 anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com wrote:
Spif wrote:
so your point, basically, is that the public will settle for whatever it can get, and get easiest and cheapest, when it comes to software and operating systems in particular.
It always puzzles me that people on the net spend so much time griping about Microsoft when the net tends towards libertarianism. I would think libertarians would welcome Microsoft's dominance, as a validation of the free market in action.
I don't think supporting the free market has anything to do with supporting bad products. I separate my ideological views from my technical opinions, quite frankly. In addition, when did I single out Microsoft? IBM and Apple make plenty of crappy products, which is ironic since they also make UNIX products that are technically superior and should probably be the de facto operating systems for their high-end machines (in fact, in IBM's case, they are - AIX is the default OS on rs6000 machines).
"Dos/Windows + applications available for Dos/Windows" are obviously blowing out "unix + applications available for unix".
that depends on what applications you're talking about... if you mean Word Processors, Spreadsheets, and (perhaps) games, then I'd have to agree. If you're talking about programming environments/tools, graphical interfaces, networking software, graphic design software, or file server applications, not to mention at least a few other categories, I'd have to disagree strongly.
Normal people don't give a damn if source code is available for "power tools" like PERL, sed, grep, wc, bc, strip, yacc, lex, puke, barf, etc.
so UNIX users aren't "normal" now, eh? by what standard do you define normal?
certainly a growing market for internet-capable systems
OS/2 is internet friendly, Windows 95 will be friendly, etc. Certainly unix will let you do more, but most people won't care about the value of the extras, as long as a web browser, news reader, and mail reader is available.
we're talking about both client AND server applications here, as well as the robustness of the multitasking/threading capabilities of the OS they run on. when surfing the net, it's best not to have your news reader choke because your web browser needs more resources.
Some people on this list swear they never have to drop to a command line with the cool tools they use with their SLIP accounts (except to change their password). If that's true, then any "advantage" unix has is washed away. How will the unix market grow (relative to other more popular OS's) if internet access tools run the same on Windows and OS/2 and Mac's as they do on unix?
simple - they never will run the same, and they definitely won't run better, unless of course they are morphed into UNIX... and I wouldn't be surprised if they do. I see a day sometime not too far into the future when Windows, OS/2, and their kin either vanish completely or at least as non-UNIX operating systems, and are replaced with look-alike UNIX flavours with commercial app support. if Microsoft, IBM, and/or Apple have the guts, that is. Bryan Venable | c642011@cclabs.missouri.edu Student & MOO Administrator | wlspif@showme.missouri.edu U of Missouri - Columbia | spif@pobox.com SGI/Netscape/MOO addict | spif@m-net.arbornet.org Spif or Turmandir @ MOOs | http://www.phlab.missouri.edu/~c642011 <insert standard university disclaimer here>
anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com says:
Normal people don't give a damn if source code is available for "power tools" like PERL, sed, grep, wc, bc, strip, yacc, lex, puke, barf, etc.
They want to cut and paste their spreadsheet charts into the word processor they use, and email it to coworkers.
You can do that just fine under Unix. What decade are you living in? .pm
participants (3)
-
anonymous-remailerï¼ shell.portal.com -
Perry E. Metzger -
Spif