Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 21:08:33 -0400 (EDT) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: paul@geeky1.ebtech.net (Paul Anderson) Cc: ulairi@jps.net, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: NT vs Linux vs FreeBSD Message-ID: <199907030108.VAA24907@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.990701024207.9223l-100000@geeky1.ebtech.net> from Paul Anderson at "Jul 1, 99 02:47:58 am"
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[This has completely diverged to -chat. Redirected there.]
Paul Anderson wrote,
> On Wed, 30 Jun 1999, Ulairi wrote:
>
> > NT is about 7 years old. Give it time,
> > perhaps it'll grow up a tad.
> >
> And it's already a huge kludge.
NT suffers from two _major[0]_ faults:
1) It is meant to be the end-all, be-all for every customer.
i.e. a single distribution of the OS is meant to serve every
possible contigency for the user. This is the conceptual
design which leads to rampant featurism[1].
2) Marriage to a GUI. Once anyone has used a CLI for a while
realizes how frightfully inefficient the GUI is for the
experienced user. By the time any administrator has learned the
ins-and-outs of NT, they have had more than enough time to
graduate from the awkwardness of GUI to the CLI.
That said, I still have trouble with this remark,
> The problem is that Microsoft won't admit to itself that UNIX is, in
> fact, the pinnacle of operating system interface design.
[snip some mostly valid statements about UNIX vs. NT.]
To me, saying UNIX is "The Operating System" is almost
hypocritical. As my reason (1) claims, the primary flaw of NT is that
it wants to be the OS for everyone all of the time[2]. The power of UNIX
is flexibility, but surely, it is not the OS for every
situation. Also, saying UNIX is the 'pinnacle' seems to say there is
nothing better in the future. This I find hard to believe. Whether the
next step(s) are evolutionary or revolutionary diversions from UNIX, I
think there _is_ a next step (who knows, maybe a Microsoft broken up
by the Feds finds the Next Best Thing). I feel about UNIX how I feel
about democratic government,
"UNIX is the absolute worst operating system there is. Except
for all of the others."
There must be something better down the road. Even if there is no
factual basis for that belief, I must believe it to keep going in the
computing field.
[0] NT suffers from a broad range of problems, but most can be tracked
down to these two major ideological flaws.
[1] Which in turn is what leads to the contradiction that the
supposedly easy to admin system becomes impossibly complex. A
personal example is doing something simple like getting a "shared"
directory's permissions right. There are at _least_ 3 overlapping
permission systems that all must agree for things to work. The GUI
does _not_ make it easier.
[2] If anything in here is going to catch flames... Well, I'll just
say it: The current primary UNIX offerings, FreeBSD, the other
*BSDs, and the Linuxes are still not the best option for the luser
who just wants to use Outlook, M$ Word, PowerPoint, etc. The Win9x
OS's, or say an iMac, are still a good choice (today) for someone
who wants to use a computer without really caring to understand
how it works. The ol' analogy being someone who wants a nice cute
car that will get them around town without having to build it
or maintain it themselves.
--
Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com
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