From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Obituary [Amiga's] in Silicon Valley newspaper
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 22:33:21 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <1992Jul25.215611.24853@ctr.columbia.edu>

In article <1992Jul25.215611.24853@ctr.columbia.edu>
jerry@connection.prospect.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:

| Microsoft has hired Dave Cutler, who worked extensively on VMS.  Dave
| decided that the successor to VMS is:
| 
| 		VMS + 1 = WNT (increment each letter)
| 
| which is, of course, Windows New Technology.  Well, guess what!  The
| successor to WNT already exists:
| 
| 		WNT + 1 = XOU
| 
| which is, of course, X On Unix.  I wonder how long it'll take Microsoft
| to develop that and claim that they invented it.
| 
| :-) :-) :-)

I like it!  But you don't need those smilies, for I think you've stated
a truism that isn't immediately apparent.

Two short stories:

For years I had heard comments about UNIX from people whose opinions I
respected.  No more (do I respect those people).  Back around 1986-1987 the
prices of UNIX boxes became "affordable" and I was able to actually spend
time with one (then several) and see UNIX for what it was.  I now personally
own "a bunch" of UNIX boxes and I've steered my company into that market.

For years I had heard comments about how "dog slow" X was from people whose
opinions I had respected.  In this case, however, "it depends."

For example, with an HP-9000/700 series "Snake", I was simply amazed at how
fast that box is.  I mean F-A-S-T.  Except when one logs onto the console and
fires up HP's version of X, HP-VUE.  Dog slow; so bad that with even four
windows it took nearly 10 minutes to fill an ASCII screen with characters
due to swapping, etc.  So I killed HP-VUE (I mean literally "rm" all the
goddamned HP-VUE files off the disk, then brought up X11R5 from the sources
at MIT (export.lcs.mit.edu) and now the machine is N-I-C-E with NO loss of
functionality and, in fact, some new things, like scrollbars in the windows!
And this is with HP-UX 8.07.

Same thing with a Sun-3/60, which is "sort of like" an Amiga 2500 or 3000 (per
20MHz 68020/68881).  With Sun's OpenWindows, that machine crawled and many
of the window-based apps suffer intense Sun brain-damage in re keyboard char
mapping and use of various shell.  Again: "rm" all the OpenWindows and NeWS
stuff, bring up X11R5, and now the machines are N-I-C-E.  And, fortunately,
some of the "nice" OpenWindows apps (such as calendar manager, calculator, etc.
are upward compatible with X11R5 and continue to function) with SunOS 4.1.1.

Same thing with an SGI IRIS (IRIX 4.0.5, 20MHz MIPS R3000/R3100); dog slow
with SGI's version of Motif (damn: 2 minutes to log on).  "rm" all the crap,
bring up "real" X11R5, and now it's a N-I-C-E machine.

Conclusion: X11R5 is good whereas OpenWindows, HP-VUE, SGI Motif, etc. all suck
dead bunnies through a straw.

In fact, I'm hard-pressed to differentiate between, say, the Sun-3/60 with
X11R5 and the latest Amigas with all the graphics co-processor support; both
are VERY ZIPPY and responsive.  The only real "clue" is the humongous
monitors and greater video resolution on the Suns.

Too bad CBM doesn't tout the capabilities of the Amiga.  Fer crissakes, put
an Ethernet board on an A500 and one could completely take over the X-terminal
marketplace (where X-terminals typically sell for $3,500 as I recently found
out).