Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 23:46:21 -0500 From: Simon Morton <simon.morton@verizon.net> To: Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: smorton@acm.org, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <3C05BD9D.4000909@verizon.net> References: <15365.11290.211107.464324@guru.mired.org> <006101c17854$c6aa2570$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C0574C4.3040001@verizon.net> <016e01c17889$23dfd990$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski wrote: > Simon writes: > > >>As someone who spent 4+ years developing >>highly graphical, highly interactive, and highly >>hardware-dependent single user applications >>for Unix-based (SGI) workstations, I can >>assure you that the above statements >>have very little basis in reality. >> > > As someone who has worked with mainframes and timesharing systems for years, I > can assure you that it is right. > > Perhaps you can explain the utility of a multiuser environment for a single-user > desktop graphics workstation. More to the point: you have stated yourself that UNIX-like systems are suited for server applications (no interactive users) and time-sharing applications (multiple interactive users). You have failed to provide a single concrete justification for your contention that a system supporting exactly one interactive user requires a radically different architecture from one that supports both 0 (less than one) and n (more than one.) > >>There are many reasons that Windows is the >>dominant force on the desktop today but they >>have everything to do with marketing and >>economics and very little to do with operating >>system design. >> > > That is a common misconception, held dear and defended by those with axes to > grind or religions to defend. Microsoft wanted the desktop GUI market and went > after it. Most UNIX vendors did not. Oh, right, and that had nothing to with marketing or economics. Simon -- http://www.SimonMorton.com smorton at acm dot org \rm -rf /bin/laden To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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