From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Nov 28 20:55: 5 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from out004pub.verizon.net (out004pub.verizon.net [206.46.170.104]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 85E7B37B417 for ; Wed, 28 Nov 2001 20:54:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from verizon.net (pool-141-154-54-59.bos.east.verizon.net [141.154.54.59]) by out004pub.verizon.net with ESMTP ; id fAT4tjU09792 Wed, 28 Nov 2001 22:55:45 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <3C05BD9D.4000909@verizon.net> Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 23:46:21 -0500 From: Simon Morton Reply-To: smorton@acm.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120 X-Accept-Language: en,pdf,zh-CN,de-DE,zh-TW,zh, zh-õ` MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Anthony Atkielski Cc: smorton@acm.org, Mike Meyer , questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) References: <15365.11290.211107.464324@guru.mired.org> <006101c17854$c6aa2570$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C0574C4.3040001@verizon.net> <016e01c17889$23dfd990$0a00000a@atkielski.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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