Date: 20 Apr 1997 10:06:21 +0100 From: Paul Richards <paul@originat.demon.co.uk> To: mike allison <mallison@konnections.com> Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>, jack <jack@diamond.xtalwind.net>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) Message-ID: <87lo6enjw2.fsf@originat.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: mike allison's message of Sun, 20 Apr 1997 19:54:36 -0700 References: <5354.861482487@time.cdrom.com> <335AD6EC.7306BE6D@konnections.com>
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mike allison <mallison@konnections.com> writes: > They aren't mutually exclusive, rather complementary. The point was > sacrificing one for the other at Microsoft. They took away our low > level access and tried to replace it with GUI programs which are still > too abstract to allow what you need. If the GUI is in the way, having a > program under the GUI isn't going to let you fix it.....Unless it's > built more like X or even Win3.x which is merely an app on the OS not > the whole OS... > > NT needs an NTterm where you can attack the machine.... Well, not to appear to come out in Microsoft's defence but actually they haven't. The shipped usr interface may be a GUI but that doesn't mean you can't write a more unix like interface, in much the same way that you add a GUI on top of the unix CLI. Anyone looked at OpenNT? I took a look at a web page of theirs someone showed me and it looks very interesting. They've built a parallel Unix clone alongside the Windows GUI and they've done it from a low level of the NT structure, from the diagram they've built on top of the kernel rather than hooking above or into the Win32 system. I'm actually *COMPLETELY* in favour of a Unix GUI that is as tightly coupled to the OS as Windows is but as Jordan keeps pointing out, this won't prevent you popping up an xterm to a shell prompt or for that matter bringing up a "standard" vt220 terminal on another vty. When I'm not doing development I much prefer to be on a Windows box to a Unix box and having both environments on the same box with Unix underneath would be the best of both worlds to me. I was very impressed with StarOffice, it perhaps signifies a changing trend, a very very small step againts the Micorsoft juggernaut but nevertheless it's the first truly functional Windows like application that I've seen on Unix and while developers may not get all excited by it, as a developer who'd rather do "office" tasks on a windows box I was very encouraged by it. (Office tasks being writing letters, spreadsheet work, accounts etc which even thoug I'm a developer I have to do to keep my company ticking over). Maybe we could approach the Linux camp about a common ELF API for free unix systems and then there won't be this confusion about Linux binaries running on FreeBSD, there'll just be i386 FreeElf format. With some careful marketing we can stop claiming Linux emulation and just treat it as an alternative native format. This has kind of worked for BSDI emulation since many vendors now offer BSD binaries rather than BSDI binaries. -- Dr Paul Richards, Originative Solutions Ltd. Internet: paul@originat.demon.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (UK Mobile)
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