** Reply to message from SJS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Tue, 13 May 2008 23:12:37 -0700
> Early 90s X11 on a 386 with 5MB of RAM was terrible. It make MSWindows > 3.x look good, but wasn't any (or much) worse than OS/2. But console > access was *amazing*. Your comments were great up until this point. DOS/Windows was not even in the same league as UNIX/X11 or OS/2 w/WPS in the early 90s. If you stripped X11 of its network infrastructure and stripped OS/2 of its CORBA desktop, the WPS, you might be able to compare but still not close enough IMO. DOS/Windows was hardly an OS for more than single task computing with a "new" graphical interface. Heck Borland had GUIs for DOS apps so Windows got you a common print API and a icon based app launcher they called the desktop. It would have died as it should have if Microsoft hadn't controlled the OEM channels and used illegal licensing tactics. Besides that, the technical differences were immense with UNIX and OS/2 being multitasking powerhouses. Sure they all had graphical app facilities but there is way more to it than that. If you pulled out the OS/2 WPS and ran just the PM, OS/2 blew DOS/ Windows away in 4MB of RAM. Throw another 4MB at it and you could be running PMX( XServer for OS/2 ), the WPS shell, and both TCP/IP and Netware networking and it was completely usable. I know because I ran this on a 386/40 in those days. I also ran Consensus UNIX on a 386/40 with X11 but even though I didn't leverage the network capabilities of X, the multitasking was well worth the effort compared to DOS/Windows. Only if you used DOS/Windows as a graphical typewriter, could you possibly think they were comparable to UNIX/X or OS/2-PM/WPS. I see these same kinds of shallow comparisons going on today with comparisons of the OLPC XO with things like the Intel Classmate PC and the Asus Eee PC. They are only comparable if you stand back 40 feet and look at them together. Totally bogus comparisons IMO because so much of what was designed for and what the capabilities are is just being left out. Doug -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
