From: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.01 Beta
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 92 03:15:26 GMT

In article <gepsv0q00WB3EubFgJ@andrew.cmu.edu> Jyri Virkki <jyri+@CMU.EDU> writes:
>
>brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
>>
>> NT's DOS support will be better than 1.X's -- IBM's OS/2 2.0 support, while
>> good for some, is more of an overreaction by a frighten bureacracy, than
>> a well thought out feature.  Consider also the testing/maintenace
>
>In other words, including excellent msdos support in OS/2 is an act
>of a frightened bureaucracy, but including the same support in NT is
>a wise design feature? Interesting.

Are you just being an asshole, or did you misread my statement above?
NT's support is better than that in 1.X.  OS/2 2.0 goes way overboard
with 40 or so options. It's hard to configure, and it raises users level
of expectation that all their DOS apps should work.
Microsoft "learned their lesson", but they did not overreact like IBM did.

>
>> bits level, Windows 2.X, 3.X, Win32s, Win32.  It's possible in the
>> near future that OS/2 may run well everyone else's apps, but it mainly
>> means there is less incentive for people to make apps for the small 2.0
>> native market.
>
>Well there are x people out there running OS/2, and not a single
>person running NT because it's still vaporware. Regardless of the
>value of x, x>>0, thus the market for native OS/2 apps is tremendously
>bigger than NT's.

Odd... I'm running NT.  The beta starts in a few days. This is vaporware?

>> Further the large number of subsystems + IBM's need to maintain its
>> reputation for supporting old features for a long period of time,
>>[...]
>> Any major new feature in OS/2 will have to be geared to be compatible with
>> the other platforms.  Imagine they have to support two of many
>> things already!
>
>It's funny how people rationalize the most imaginative arguments
>against reality when they want to be blind! OS/2 and NT are both doing

Oh, so you are trying to be an asshole.

>the same thing, coming out with new, 32bit os's, and including support
>for older apps so people can make a smooth transition. (Of course,
>the support is real with OS/2, yet-to-be-seen with NT). Pray tell us
>why is it that OS/2 will collapse under the burden of compatinility,
>while NT won't, if it's doing the same thing?? You are making a basic

No OS/2 and NT are not doing the same things in terms of compatibility.
NT's has simpler DOS compatibility and it also supports 1.X character
mode apps.  The 1.X character mode apps are simple to support as their
console subsystem is essentially a cleaned-up superset of 1.X character
mode.  The 16-bit Windows apps are much easier to do for them
as NT's graphics mode is basically a clean-ed up superset of the old API.

NT doesn't have someone else's multimedia, OLE, graphics API, font system,
printer drivers, etc to support; OS/2 does.  Worse OS/2 plans to add the
considerably harder to do Win32s and Win32 API's.

>assumption here, that OS/2 will forever try to be compatible with
>everything, while NT will soar ahead. The error here is that

IBM has already said publically that they will add support for
future versions of Windows... are you saying they'll go back on their word?

>compatibility issues are only relevant during the transition period,
>OS/2 will not have the need to try to support anything new, just the

They are already saying they will add Win32s and Win32 support... this
is not new?

>apps that already exist in users' hands. As more and more native OS/2
>apps appear, compatibility will be less and less of an issue.
>
>Saying NT is better just because it's better is a clearly redundant

I never said NT is better (though it is). I said that OS/2, because
it has such a heavy compatibility burden, will have a hard time
keeping up with its competitors -- too many resources will have to
be dedicated to maintaining the compatibility and too many compromises
will have to be made in future enhancements in order to allow
that compatibility.

>argument. Someday NT will be out and we'll be able to compare it with
>OS/2 which is excellent and has been out for quite a while now. Maybe
>it will be better, who knows, if so, I'll buy it. But I have to be
>mighty sceptic given that microsoft has not been able to produce an
>usable operating system in over ten years. Maybe this time they'll get
>it right, but I have to wonder why would they suddenly be so good
>at os's, if they have never been able to get it right?

Window 3.X and DOS 5.0 are not usable?
Given the underlying design decisions, I think they are excellent products.
Really, the only time I've seen Microsoft make an "unusable" product was when
they worked with IBM on OS/2.

>Jyri J. Virkki | DoD#561 | jyri+@cmu.edu | Carnegie Mellon University | MSINI

Brian
-- 
C. Brian Sturgill                I strongly encourage you to read Ross Perot's
University of Utah                             United We Stand
Center for Software Science             How we can take back our country.
brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373  (It's more important than OS/2 vs NT! :-))