Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 09:20:11 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Dale Chulhan - Home <dchulhan@uwi.tt> Cc: "chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Follow up: More Win vs NIX Message-ID: <15056.29595.184747.316107@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <3AD053AF.4743DEC4@uwi.tt> References: <3AD053AF.4743DEC4@uwi.tt>
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Dale Chulhan - Home <dchulhan@uwi.tt> types: > This guy seems to be really persistant and dug me into a hole here ... > help I don't think you're in a hole. I think he's about given up on technical arguments, and is resorting to name-calling. > ============ > > Dale, please check your sources before you post third party information, > or > at least try and do some of your own research before you cross post. > > 1. The following OSes are examples of Monolithic UNIX Kernels:Linux, > FreeBSD > and Solaris to name the most popular. > Can you name any commercial/mainstream UNIX OS that comes > microkernel out > of the box, apart from GNU Hurd? Note that he's given up arguing that Unix is bad because you have to reboot it to load a new driver - which is clearly a misfeature - and is now assuming that a micro-kernel is "a good thing". That's an opinion, and one that is largely irrelevant to users. I'd also like to know why the user benefits of the microkernel don't extend to the GUI - or if they do, where I can find documentation to take advantage of that. On most Unix variants, I can change the window manager, the desktop manager, or the entire GUI subsystem without having to reboot the system. On some of them, I can even run completely different GUI environments on different monitors, or possibly even on virtual monitors. Can I change any of those components on MS-Windows, and can I do it without rebooting? > 3. True, Mac OS-X uses a mach kernel, not a monolithic one. But if you > want > to call Max OS-X UNIX.. be my guest. It has a command line. It the has utilities one expects to find on Unix. It has enough of a development environment that I can compile and run lots of Unix software. From what I can tell, it's closer to Unix than AIX. It certainly qualifies as a mainstream system. > 2. SunView was available in 1985 not 1984, after Ms released Windows > 1.0. > Please see the comp.unix newsgroup for the latest version of the UNIX > FAQ. > You can use the following for references. > Archive-name: unix-faq/faq/part6 > Version: $Id: part6,v 2.9 1996/06/11 13:07:56 tmatimar Exp $ > X was first commercially released in 1986. see the front page of > the > www.x.org website. That merely means the first Sun windowing system wasn't SunView, but something else (SunTools?). The FAQ is just notable achievements, not firsts. For instance, Sun had a network disk protocol before NFS - but as the faq indicates by not mentioning it, ND is best forgotten. > 4. Yes, many RFCs were developed on the UNIX system. However Kerberos > was > not ported as the author says, it was written according to RFC. In fact > most > UNIX guys complain about Microsoft's non-standard implementation of > Kerberos > because they used 5 reserved bytes in the protocol.... > Lest we stray from the original point, that Microsoft has been allegedly > stealing from UNIX from day one. There is a reason why people write > RFCs... I'm pretty sure kerberos source was used under the BSD license, but can't find the reference. On the other hand, I didn't claim that MS was stealing from Unix. I think the opposite is generally true - I think MS pretty much ignores everything outside of their own source tree, so they can claim their reinvented wheels are innovative, even if they aren't quite circular. Since he brought it up - there is a reason that people write RFCs: so that people who've never talked to each other can write software that works together. MicroSoft seems to have missed the point, and treats RFCs as legal documents to search for "loopholes" that let them write incompatible extensions. That's in contrast to the recommended practice of accepting for the loosest interpretation of the standard and and generating for tightest. > 5. The fact that the author thinks that the Windows interface is the > least user friendly just shows that he may need to find a > proctologist to locate his head. Really solid, technical argument here. In my experience, the same could be said for anyone who claims that X + Unix is a slower windowing system than MS-Windows suffers from the same problem; X + Unix is quite usable on hardware that MS-Windows can barely boot on, much less do anything useful. However, I'm not going to argue with other people's perceptions, just report my own. Returning to which: MS-Windows is user-friendly like Ford model T came in any color you wanted. It does everything the user wants, so long as they want what it gives them. I want a system that doesn't insist that the active window be on top, and activates a window without having the extra work of clicking on it. Even Jeff Raskin now admits that the latter was a mistake, and putting the active window on top under those conditions is really, really ugly. If you think I shouldn't want those things, you're taking the MS attitude, and I think it's pretty blasted unfriendly. I've only run into three Windowing systems where those two behaviors weren't user-configurable. I don't think anyone would argue that Windows is less user-friendly than the Mac. BeOS is considered to be friendly than the Mac, but I abandoned the idea of using it as soon as I found out how unfriendly it really was. > 6. I stand corrected on the IP Address change. I always rebooted after I > run > ifconfig. I was not aware that reloading the interface after running > ifconfig on Linux would avoid having to reboot. > > However, according to Sun Documentation: http://docs.sun.com, the > reccomended procedure involves running sys-unconfig and rebooting. I can almost believe that. Changing things like the IP address and host name on Solaries is incredibly convoluted. It's not really documented anywhere, as exactly what you have to change depends on what subsystems you are using. Then again - Solaris is another Unix variant that was different enough from what people thought of as Unix that it was greeted with shock and amazement when it was introduced. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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