From: gram@aim1.aztec.co.za (Graham Wheeler)
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD?
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 12:42:16 GMT
Organization: Aztec Information Management

papresco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Paul Prescod) writes:

>Unix MUST evolve.  Perhaps X is the way to go, perhaps not, I don't know
>it's technical merits.  I do know the version I have been exposed to
>is absolute crap.  If you want to keep unix alive, unix users do not 
>resist the move towards the GUI.  Defend your command line, because
>it is useful (I am a commandline lover, too), but respect the users 
>rights to decent, easy to use icons, wordprocessors, spreadsheets etc.

I haven't been following this debate, but feel like adding my $0.02 as well.
Paul is quite right about a lot of things, as the computer market has grown
to the point where not everyone who works on a computer is a programmer. And
Unix is a programmer's operating system.

One of the original (silly) posts on this topic was from someone who thought
Unix was unfriendly *compared to DOS*. As a long time DOS and Unix programmer,
I can say that DOS has only one thing going for it (ignoring software bases,
which have little to do with DOS per se), and that is that an application
can take over the whole machine, talk directly to the hardware, etc. In many
ways this is bad, and it is absolutely no good for multi-user machines. But
it does mean that if you have a CPU-intensive application, you can get it
to cook quite nicely under DOS as the operating system doesn't interfere.
Unless of course your app needs lots of memory... Anyway, DOS is in the
past, in many ways; the next generation is a (so called) war between Unix,
Windows, OS/2 and whatever Apple/IBM dream up (a blue apple pie?)

But, in reality, there is no war. Joe Bloggs, whose job title is `Not-a-
computer-programmer', is never going to be sold on Unix. Wendy Bluggs, whose
title is `the only thing I take more seriously than pizza is C', is not
going to give up Unix easily. The point is, it's horses for courses. Unix is
going to remain the OS of choice for serious computing; Windows, etc will be
the OS for desktop applications, home users, etc. As for the corporate market,
you certainly don't want Windows to be running your fat distributed database
server; firstly you have this huge user-interface overhead that isn't being
used, and secondly it isn't mature enough, powerful enough or standard enough.
No, your server is going to run Unix. Your client programs, on the other hand,
are likely to run on Windows or Macs on the desktop, as that is where you 
want the human/computer interface.

That about sums it up, IMHO. Unix is years ahead of Windows in terms of
real (not apparent) power, and maturity. But its failure is the computer-
human interface. Windows and other GUI-based OS's have the opposite problem;
they look good, they are easier to use (easy doesn't come in to it, if you're
talking about computer illiterates), but under the flash they aren't in the
same league. Together, they make a *real* winning team.

As a result, I don't go around denigrating Windows or arguing about the
pros and cons (this posting being an exception ;-) ). I like Windows, I
still use DOS more than anything, and I use Unix whenever there is real
work to be done. I think the whole Unix vs Windows `war' debate is a load
of CP/M. No-one is going to lose; everyone can win. Hardly your typical
war.











>Accept their right to demand compatibility, even if it means you have to 
>alias ls to dir sometimes.  Accept their right to demand case insensitive
>command lines.

>In short, stop thinking like a bunch of techies and think like Unix 
>salesmen, and think what well SELL unix and add it, without taking
>away that which you love (even VI, for the particularly perverse).

-- 
Graham Wheeler                     | "That which is weak conquers the strong,
Network Systems Programmer         | that which is soft conquers the hard."
Aztec Information Management       | 		Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching Ch. 78
gram@aim1.aztec.co.za              | There's no justice, there's just us