From: rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Budi Rahardjo)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD?
Date: 6 Nov 92 19:04:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: ccu.BxB6At.ELy
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

peter@global.hacktic.nl (Peter Busser) writes:
>Suppose I am Mr. Joe User. I want to buy a computer to use at home. And of
>course I hear lots of good news from UNIX, so I decide that I want UNIX. Now,
>how do I get the 'whizzy GUI front end' or a 'menu driven interface'? I can
>install DOS with a few floppies by just inserting the first floppy, turning on
>the machine and answering a few questions. Often, applications are installed
>in a similar way. Tell me, how do I do that with UNIX?

Well just buy a pre-configured Unix machine. 
The analogy to the above story is :
Give Mr Joe User a machine with an unformatted harddrive (even the BIOS is
not set) and a whole bunch of disks. Well, Mr. Joe User has to know how
to set the BIOS and format the harddrive.

Oh, BTW, have you tried installing Linux (unix clone). You can install it
by answering some questions.
>Anything that a user has to learn about his system is considered 'difficult'.
>If a user knows how to use 'dir', then learning how to use 'ls' is difficult.

Well, how did he learn 'dir' then ?
So if I know how to use 'ls', learning how to use 'dir' is difficult :-)
[Actually I use 'ls.exe' on my DOS machine].

...
>Nice, but what does that help Joe and Jane User? A Boeing 747 may have a very
>orthogonal set of push buttons in the cockpit. I couldn't care less since I
>only want to fly from A to B without being bothered about the technicalities
>that are involved with flying. The user doesn't want to know how to get the
>computer to do his work, he wants the machine just to do it.
Tell me, if I want to move a directory (and its sub dirs) into another
directory. How would you do that with DOS (without commercial or other
packages) ?
...
>Most DOS editors know the WordStar commands. Furthermore, there is helptext
>(just hit the F1 if you're lost). And learning another kind of editor
I guess you haven't seen CRISP, eh ? It's a nice text editor.
...
>Ha! What you say is that you have to remember 'F3 for last line' and such, but
>the other way around, the user has to remember ':wq' and all sorts of other
>odd commands. 

What's wrong with :wq  .... It's  Write and Quit, that's what it does.
The problem with F3 approach is that F3 in one package is different with
other package. F1 may be help in one program, but it's Exit in WordPerfect.

...
>Most DOS editors have a help key, they often show which commands are availlable
>on the screen, have mouse support, pull-down menus or WordStar commands.

Try CRISP.

...
>And emacs is easier to learn than vi? <grin> Besides that, the programs you
>mention are editors. A typical programmer's tool. What about a decent word
>processor? (Oh please, inform me about the 'user friendliness' of troff and
>(La)TeX... :)

Ever heard of Interleaf, FrameMaker, Island Write, etc... ?

...
>Now you're talking. Let's face it, most users know DOS and not UNIX. 
I am not so sure about that. I've seen user who has to use WordPerfect
to copy a file. To him, everything could (and must) be done from Word
Perfect.
...
>>You're saying that under DOS, I can send an .EXE to anyone running the
>>same processor family (i86) / operating system (DOS) combination.  The
>>same thing holds true under Unix.

>Yep, but the problem is that even on the same processor it's not always
>possible to exchange executables. Ever tried to run BSD/386 executables under
>System V.4?

Ever run .EXE file compiled for 386 on 8086 ?

...
>>What do you call CONFIG.SYS and TSR order mangling under DOS?  
>>This looks suspiciously like system administration.

>You don't need to have a CONFIG.SYS or TSR's to run DOS applications.

Hehehe... some DOS applications definitely need CONFIG.SYS.
(are you running Windows 3.1 without config.sys ?).
Some even need different environment variables.

-- budi
-- 
Budi Rahardjo <Budi_Rahardjo@UManitoba.Ca>
Unix Support - Computer Services - University of Manitoba
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions