HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jwh@citi.umich.edu (Jim Howe)
Subject: Re: Who actually NEEDS NT?  Speak Up!
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 14:28:46 EDT
Organization: IFS Project, University of Michigan
Reply-To: jwh@citi.umich.edu
Keywords: NT OS/2 Windows OS

In article <1992Jul28.155907.2510@njitgw.njit.edu>, dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:
|> In article <1992Jul27.191356.25328@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> laird@stable.ecn.purdue.edu (Kyler Laird) writes:
|> >In article <1992Jul27.163902.10195@njitgw.njit.edu> dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:
|> >>[...] I forgot that not everyone knows
|> >>that a LAN Manager server does not protect files from access at the
|> >>console.
|> >
|> >Hmmm...has something changed on me here?  or did you mean that someone
|> >can always rip the hard drive out of the console (server) for hacking
|> >at home?
|> 
|> Perhaps my experience isn't complete enough.  Last year, I worked at a
|> company with a LAN Manager network.  Maybe they hadn't set it up
|> properly, but the servers were quite vulnerable from the console.  How
|> so?  All network resources were directories on the servers' hard
|> drives (four drives total).  The resources were protected, but at the
|> console, you could just access drive C: or drive D: - bypassing the
|> network resources.
|> 
|> Again, the system there might not have been set up properly.  It
|> wasn't a problem for them, because the file servers were kept behind
|> locked doors.  (In the machine room with two IBM 9370 mainframes for
|> company)
|> 

LAN Manager comes with a version of HPFS called HPFS386.  If you install
LAN Manager with local security, you can protect files on server disks
at the user level.  In order to access files from the server, you need
to logon as a particular user.  When you logon, you only get to see
the files that the user id is allowed to see, exactly as if you were
trying to access files from a remote system.  Earlier versions of
LAN Manager did not have this capability.

I would like to restate something that I have said multiple times,
I would really like IBM to make HPFS386 (and associated admin tools)
available to OS/2 users without requiring LAN Manager.  This would
give me the security that I want on my machine without the overhead
of running a LAN operating system.  IBM doesn't have to write any
code to provide the type of security many OS/2 users want, it only
has to package what is has in a different manner.


James W. Howe                  internet: jwh@citi.umich.edu
University of Michigan             uucp: uunet!mailrus!citi.umich.edu!jwh
Ann Arbor, MI   48103-4943         
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
From: bcmatusz@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Brian Matusz)
Subject: Re: Some more misconceptions regarding OS/2 and NT
Organization: Oakland University, Rochester MI.
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 15:08:33 GMT

In article <62592@cup.portal.com> ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes:
>Is NT fully 32-bit?  When programming under NT (no matter what I'm
>writing: application, device driver, whatever the equivalent of a
>Windows VxD is, etc.), will I never have my day darkened by having
>to deal with a segment register?
>
>What release of OS/2 will be fully 32-bit?
>
>(I don't count a system as non-32 bit if it *allows* 16-bit stuff to
>run, as long as there is nothing that requires anything *new* to be
>16-bit.)

I jsut couldn't let this go ... from someone who has done some extensive
386 programming in protected mode (assembly), let me tell you that segments
are not dead ... it's just that you can access 32-bit amounts of memory
with each segment.  2^32 being of course slightly larger than 2^16 ...
the segments are marking the boundaries between allocated sections of
memory.  If you want 1k, you get a segment of 1k ... if you need 3 megs,
you get a segment of 3 megs ...

Brad Wilson
(via a friend's account)



Xref: sparky comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:1501 comp.os.os2.advocacy:3124
From: orac@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Giovacchini)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows 3.1 hardware requirements.
Date: 22 Jul 92 16:39:25 GMT
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX

In article bbrown@infonode.ingr.com (Bailey Brown) writes:

>Well, if you want to run OS/2 2.0 with "seamless windows", you're
>SOL with anything other than plain VGA.  Yep, that's right, no
>8514/A or XGA drivers.

	Oh, then I am not running 800x600 seemless???  Then how come
 when I open a Windoze app, it still has the OS/2 desktop and when I
 move my mouse over that app, my mouse pointer changes to that white
 windoze pointer, and has all those windoze scroll bars and buttons,
 etc.  Sir, please find out what you are talking about before you post...

>With 8 megs, 2 of which are being used by smartdrive, windows, almost
>never swaps while handling my usual workload.  OS/2 2.0 swaps all
>the time with the default disk cache size (256k?).

	Your usual workload or more than your usual workload?  And
 a 256k cache is fine.  Cache is not ment to be the main swap area, it
 is a cache.  And how did you run those Windoze apps?  If you ran them
 seemlessly and opened up several seperate sessions this might explain
 the swapping.  I also have 8 megs and rarely swap. 

>As far as I can tell OS/2 and Win 3.1 are about equivalent in speed,
>except when OS/2 is swapping.

	Silly, they both swap.  I like that you said they were the
 same.  OS/2 is running OS/2, DOS and Windoze and is still as fast
 as DOS and Windoze......

>Windows takes up about half the space that OS/2 does (did, on my system).

	OS/2 takes up 32 megs on my machine.   Windoze takes up 12
 Megs, Dos 2 megs.  So 14 Megs is DOS windoze and 18 is OS/2.  And
 OS/2 is faster and better. 

>Yes, great suggestions, now if they'd have just gotten OS/2 to work
>properly and had video drivers for it.

	OS/2 is fantastic.  Never had a problem with it.  And I can run
 760x1024 [sic].  Can you???  I can also run 1024x760, 800x600 and also
 have a virtual desktop.  Can you???

 ================================== 
         Paul J. Giovacchini        | Experience is that marvelous thing that 
      ( orac@chinet.chi.il.us )     | enables you to recognize a mistake when
       In the year XXVII A.S.       | you make it again.  -F. P. Jones
 ===================================
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: scdorcy@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (JAMES DORCEY)
Subject: Re: Windows 3.1 hardware requirements.
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Date: 22 Jul 1992 17:58 EST  

In article <1992Jul22.184841.19225@polaris.async.vt.edu>, 
fred@polaris.async.vt.edu (Fred Homan) writes...
>In article <1992Jul21.195852.21303@infonode.ingr.com> 
bbrown@infonode.ingr.com (Bailey Brown) writes:
>>>Hard disk                    Get a minimum of 80 MB; 100 MB or more 
>>>                             is better.
>>
>>Windows takes up about half the space that OS/2 does (did, on my system).
> 
>	Just a small reminder that people seem to forget a lot.  Windows is
>an operating *environment*.  OS/2 is an operating *system*.  You're comparing
>apples and oranges.  To rightfully compare them you need to add in the
>operating system that Windows is running over (under?).  A fair comparison
>between Windows size and OS/2 size would be comparing NT to OS/2, which can not
>be done at this time.

When I went from DOS/Windows 3.1 to OS/2 2.0, it was almost a wash as far 
as hard disk use, since I deleted the following items:

	Windows 3.1
	DR-DOS 6.0
	QEMM 386
	Desqview 386 (& applets)
	Most of PCTOOLS 7.1

Whatever...

JD
From: calloway@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Frank Calloway)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows works just fine, thank you!
Date: 20 Jul 92 13:26:02 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO

One thing I've noticed in the (IMHO) childish "flame wars" over
operating systems is that OS/2 folks typically emphasize how
well it runs DOS applications.  I primarily (90%+) run Windows
applications, and for me Windows 3.1 does a better job of that
than OS/2 does.  If DOS applications were most important to me, 
I'd probably prefer OS/2.  (Yes, I've used both.  I bought OS/2,
used it for a week or so, sold it, and went back to Windows.)

It's simply a matter of matching the correct tool to the task.
Use whatever it takes to get *your* job done.

Frank Calloway
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
From: tamu@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Todd Henderson)
Subject: Re: Windows 3.1 hardware requirements.
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 14:53:38 GMT

<F0O@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:

>In article <1992Jul23.202605.21163@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>,
>smsmith@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M Smith) says:

>>Tim--F0O@psuvm.psu.edu writes:


>   15-20 Meg isn't peanuts if you have to go out and spend several hundred
>bucks to buy a new hard disk.  My machine came with a 40 Meg hard disk.
>There is about 4 meg left.  In order to get the 15-20 meg, I'd have to
>buy a new hard disk.  True, I could buy one of those programs which gives
>more space on your disk, but I dislike them for some reason.  So for me,
>6 meg is alot since I don't have it.

It seems that you only edited the post the way you wanted to.(I could be 
mistaken as to which post you edited, but I don't think so.)

The previous poster pointed out that when you subtract the DOS+Windows
junk, that was put in to give OS/2 a foothold on the market, OS/2 is no
larger than DOS+Windows.  It is equivalent to having TWO operating enviornments
plus OS's on one machine.

When OS/2 becomes more dominant on it's own without the Windows stuff(if it
ever does), the size should shrink.  Except for the fact that it will of 
grown more by natural additions probably, but then so will have DOS+windows.

I didn't notice when I did the install, but is there a switch to leave out
all of the DOS+Windows stuff.  If so, it would be interesting how much it
would save.

Todd

>                                                              [Tim]
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 09:24:36 EDT
From: <F0O@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: 1 Thing Windows can do but OS/2 can't.

In article <92206.132915ASI509@DJUKFA11.BITNET>, ASI509@DJUKFA11.BITNET says:

>In article <5143@krafla.rhi.hi.is>, karlth@rhi.hi.is (Karl Thoroddsen) says:
>>
>>Sell 13 million copies.
> ^^^^
>  Really ? Sell ? To whom ? If in the cheapest computer shop in town I can`t
>  get a PC without it? So if I leave it there I pay the same as if I take it.
>  What`s the price then? Precisely ZERO $, DM or whatever. I wish they would
>  sell cars :-)

   You think Microsoft is giving Windows away?  I hardly doubt it.  You
think you're getting all that software that comes with a machine for free?
Again, I seriously doubt it.  Simply because it was the same price whether
you left Windows or not, doesn't make it free.  The dealer probably just
makes a little more profit, since he can probably re-sell it.

                                                                [Tim]
From: guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Some more misconceptions regarding OS/2 and NT
Date: 24 Jul 92 00:07:51 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara

>Maybe it's so you can re-compile POSIX compliant sources to run under it?

By which you presumably mean "so you can re-compile Strictly Conforming
POSIX Applications (capitalization as per 2.2.2.1 in 1003.1-1988 :-)) to
run under it"?

I.e., not *all* POSIX-compliant applications can be compiled to run on
an arbitrary POSIX-compliant system, only those that "require only the
facilities described in [1003.1] and the applicable language standards".
For any *given* POSIX-compliant system, non-strictly-conforming
applications that require only facilities present in that system (and in
the form in which they are present in that system) can also be compiled
to run under it, presumably.

If so, presumably Microsoft has done a survey to see how many
strictly-conforming applications there are, and how many
non-strictly-conforming applications there are that don't use facilities
not present in NT; how many are there?
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
From: wcn@cs.brown.edu (Wen-Chun Ni)
Subject: Re: Some more misconceptions regarding OS/2 and NT
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 05:17:21 GMT

In article <1992Jul26.022802.1066@weyrich.UUCP> tnet.com!weyrich!orville writes:
>In article <1992Jul23.192500.26327@microsoft.com> philipla@microsoft.com (Phil Lafornara) writes:
>>In article <1992Jul21.212437.25057@njitgw.njit.edu> dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:
>>
>>>  Microsoft claims that the full NT product
>>>(including POSIX, DOS, Win-16, Win-32, and OS/2 1.x compatibility)
>
>
>Does POSIX compatibility include a Unix style "fork"? That would be one
>feature that would give me serious cause to re-think my choice of OS/2
>in favor of NT. (IBM -- are you listening to requests for "fork"?)
>
>There is just too much Unix software that is hard to port to OS/2 because
>it lacks "fork" capability.
>
>Or is there a fundmental reason why "fork" can't be added to OS/2 without
>causing some major malfunction? If this is so, and NT isn't subject to the
>same problem, then exactly why?

First, I must claim that fork() is an anachronism. Its existence cause
many troubles apart from the one you mentioned. One more example is
the in-process debugging under Unix system (rather than the damned 
ptrace() call).

There are many experts admit that it's hard to add fork into a multithreaded 
system without a lot of hacks. There are also semantic difficulties in
dealing with such a problem. Suppose you have T threads running in a
process P. If any thread calls fork(), the new forked child should
either 
	(1) copy all the threads into the child process and keep them
	running, or
	(2) Only copy the current thread, or
	(3) copy the current thread and the main thread when P began
	running, or
	(4) copy the main thread.

In a singly threaded process, we have no system call to copy the
data area (data+bss+stack) into the new (child) process. If OS/2
supports something like mmap(), maybe this problem can be solved
partially. The remaining problem is to start a new process without
going through the API DosExecPgm. If you use fork() as vfork(),
the direct copy of data area is basically a waste of time. If 
you really need multiple copies of the same program, a combination
of threads calls and  DosExecPgm() seems to be enough.

I think the usage of fork() is very outdated from a more modern
viewpoint. The same effect (regarding pipes) can be achieved
easily under OS/2.

I don't know how NT or GNU Hurd solve the problem. The Mach documents
says that the BSD server is an application program under Mach: all
the Unix processes are merely threads in the BSD server program so
they are not Mach system tasks. This suggests a workaround method
to solve fork() under OS/2:

	Run the Unix server under OS/2 2.0 and all the *unix*
	processes are threads (without mutual protections).

If you want this, forget about anything real OS/2ish.



Wen-Chun Ni
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
From: morton@qucdntri.ee.queensu.ca
Subject: Re: PC and Mac OEs
Organization: Queen's University EE Department
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 15:47:02 GMT

    From day one, the Mac OS was better than MSDOS, however, OS2 has many
features not found on Mac OS (even system 7). The Mac has cooperative 
multitasking. If you want to format a disk, all processes stop. Dead. OS2 (and 
Windows 386 too I suppose) has preemptive (I hope I'm using the correct
terminology) multitasking. Although a GUI interface is great, I think any OS
should also have a CLI as well. I feel the Mac suffers for this.

	Just my 2 worth. Stephen /-----\
                                  |     | ueen's University, Canada
				  |   \	|  Electrical/Computer Engineering
                                  \____\
                                        \
#include <discalimer.h>
Xref: sparky comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:1508 comp.os.os2.advocacy:3139
From: brad@slammer.UUCP (Brad Isley)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows 3.1 hardware requirements.
Date: 23 Jul 92 04:42:20 GMT
Organization: Just me & my computers

In article <1992Jul21.195852.21303@infonode.ingr.com> bbrown@infonode.ingr.com (Bailey Brown) writes:
>Well, if you want to run OS/2 2.0 with "seamless windows", you're
>SOL with anything other than plain VGA.  Yep, that's right, no
>8514/A or XGA drivers.

I'm running Trident seamless drivers 800x600 16 colors just fine, thank you.
-- 
emory!slammer!brad   (Brad Isley)
+1 404 841-4169 Work			 Nopottopeein: "Howzit Goink?"
+1 404 925-9663 Home			  The gang: "Fine, just fine."
From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Who actually NEEDS NT?  Speak Up!
Keywords: NT OS/2 Windows OS
Date: 21 Jul 92 21:10:50 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <1992Jul19.213800.27305@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:

I think you've gone beyond the capacities of today's PC's.

>1) Large corporations with a SQL based system, needing the powere of 
>a parallel machine as their server, with 1000's of workstations.
>OS/2 doesn't scale up to that yet.

For this, an OS/2 workstation will work for each of the 1000's of
workstations.  As a matter of fact, a PC running DOS probably would.
For the server, NT might work, but not on a PC platform.  I'd want a
mainframe to do this scale of database serving.  I'm going to get
flamed for this, but I think the only machine really suited for
database work with 1000's of parallel requests is an IBM 370-series
machine.  An ES-9000 running VMS and SQL-DS is quite capable.  An OS/2
file server make a great front-end to this for the rest of the
workstations to funnel through.

>2) Cad based systems running on IRIS machines.

Anything will work if you've the proper video support.  The bulk of
this type of software deals with rendering the image for the display.
No PC can do this on a large scale without 3D graphics hardware.  Such
as the Silicon Graphics video system (made for PC's and IBM RS-6000's
as well as IRIS machines).  If you have this hardware, any OS will do.

>3) I like it as a development platform.

Well, I'm not going to dictate your personal preference.  Likewise,
you shouldn't think everyone else will share yours.

>4) Any large installment where you need security/multiuser filesystems.

OK.  OS/2 doesn't have this out of the box.  Note that the LAN Manager
software for it does.  And it's very bad practice to leave your file
servers out where people can access them from the console, anyway.

>5) developers for any of the above.

???  How are developers an application?  Or are you going to write an
application which develops other applications?  :-)  I suggest you
re-think this, or your eventual success will put programmers out of a
job! 
-- 
   |)  David Charlap           "I don't even represent myself
  /|_  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu   sometimes so NJIT is right out!.
 ((|,)
  ~|~  Hi! I am a .signature virus, copy me into your .signature file.
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
From: kac@utrcv1 (Kenneth Dreitlein Jr.)
Subject: Re: PC and Mac OEs (was Re: 1 Thing Windows can do but OS/2 can't.)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: United Technologies Research Center
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 21:28:00 GMT

In article <6xpm#wm@lynx.unm.edu>, jfreter@triton.unm.edu (The Myth) writes...

>The first reason that I thought night cause the slowness was due to Excel
>for the mac.  M.S. has good programmers, but they might not have used the
>full features/enhancements of the mac.  So I tried Wingz and Claris Works'
>Spreadsheet module (written by Apple, if memory serves) to see if it was
>M.S.'s fault.  The time for the mac improved a little, but not significantly
>so I figure that M.S. did do a good job of porting.
> 
>Another problem that I can think of was that the 386 is a Notebook
>with an LCD display.  I have no idea how the LCD display would affect the 
>speed of the pc, but I would suspect that it would delay the pc more.
> 
>The machines did have the same amount of real RAM, and were running the same
>sized chunk of virtual RAM, so there shouldn't be much swapping/Disk access
>delays.  I suspect, though, that the mac's sys 7 gobbled up more of the real
>RAM than the DOS command interpreter (4dos 4.0) and windows combined).  This
>might have forced the mac to do more disk swapping (or whatever they call it)
>than the pc had to do, and we all know that data transfer rates are much 
>faster to and from RAM than to and from disk.

I believe the answer to our question may be the presence of the on-board video
in the IIsi.  I read in MacWorld that the performance of the 20MHz IIsi suffers
because of it.  In fact, my 16MHz '030 beat the IIsi(when in 256-color mode).
Their tests showed that when a separate video card was used(or the monitor 
was set to black and white) the operation was much faster(slightly faster than
the SE/30).

I have also read that Intel processors supposedly handle numbers better than
their Motorola counterparts, which factors into our discussion.  Nonetheless,
I would expect both machines to perform similarly.  When I do spreadsheet 
calculations of about the same size(I've done about 20x300), it usually 
doesn't take any more than a few seconds.  Raw performance of the IBM and Mac's
chips is close enough that it's hardly worth arguing about.  Throw in a GUI and
it slows everything down.  What irritates me in Windows is the slow speed of
the interface.  I hate waiting.  I don't enjoy watching a window appear piece-
by-piece(I will admit that I haven't used Windows extensively on a 486, nor have
I used OS/2).  You have to give the Mac credit in this area, if nothing else.
Windows on it appear virtually instantaneously(at least on mine). And I will
give DOS applications one thing, without the GUI you can't beat the speed.
But you(sometimes) give up ease of use.  I guess it's a lose-lose situation.
In my experience, though, I find my Mac to be faster than my 386(not sure about
the kind of co-processor) at work.

My $.02,
K.C.
From: ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: The NT file system
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 02:00:36 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: na
  <1992Jul21.205549.16885@njitgw.njit.edu>

> What will the NT file system offer that HPFS doesn't?  I believe I
> heard something about multi-user protection, but does that make sense
> for a non-networked computer?

Yes, it makes sense.  People have been known to share computers without
hooking them up to networks.  I've often wished for multi-user file
protection on MS-DOS and the Macintosh on non-networked machines.

For one example, consider what happens if Ward and June buy a computer.
Ward wants to use it for stuff from the office.  June wants to keep
her recipes and shopping list.  Wally wants to do schoolwork.  Beaver
wants to play games and keep a database of his comic books.

Even if the machine only allows one user at a time, it would be nice
if there were a logon procedure to identify the current user, and to
allow user-specific configuration, and to protect that user's files
from the other users.

--Tim Smith
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy