Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 18:35:32 -0500 From: Simon Morton <simon.morton@verizon.net> To: Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <3C0574C4.3040001@verizon.net> References: <15365.11290.211107.464324@guru.mired.org> <006101c17854$c6aa2570$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski wrote: > Mike writes: > > >>You've said this before, but haven't done >>anything to demonstrate it. >> > > I'm surprised that you think it requires demonstration. UNIX was designed to > service hundreds of users sitting in front of dumb terminals; it was not > designed to drive a single resource-intensive GUI on dedicated hardware for a > single user. UNIX architecture puts a huge emphasis on multiple, independent > users and processes, and very little emphasis on the kind of close integration > and hardware dependency that a complex GUI requires. These characteristics make > for an excellent timesharing system or server, but they also make for a poor > desktop environment. Sorry but this is plain wrong. 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. 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. 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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