Have they given up?

[Steve Lamb]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2000 at 10:41:02AM -0300, Trevor Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2000 09:18:10 -0400, Jonathan B. Bayer wrote:
 
> >And OS/2 < Linux
 
> Probably. But saying:
 
>   the WPS > [any interface linux has ever had]

    You know what I miss the most about WPS?  The fact that all of the colors
were configurable independant of one anther.  That's it.  Everything else was
just so much fluff.  My editor back then was joe from unix.  Now it would be
vim since I no longer use joe.  I read mail in slrn.  I played MUSHes in Tiny
Fugue.  Hell, a large reason why I switched from OS/2 to Linux was because
every day I was using more and more unix applications to do stuff so I figured
I'd go native.  FTP was ncftp.  Today it would be lftp.  Both unix.

    So I lost the ability to configure colors in the GUI the exact way I like
it.  I consider the ability to do the following infinitely more powerful and
most certainly part of the interface:

/dev/hda7              6767524   4342800   2074107  68% /mnt/hda7

    As you can see I have my 7th partition on this drive mounted in "mount,
hard drive a, partition 7".  That is much more meaningful and logical than,
say, F:.

lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           19 Mar  4 21:59 ftp -> /mnt/hda7/misc/ftp/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           14 Mar  4 18:21 home -> /mnt/hda7/home
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           15 Mar  4 18:18 misc -> /mnt/hda7/misc/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           19 Mar  4 21:59 www -> /mnt/hda7/misc/www/

    I then have several services and directories pointed to directories on
that mount.  If I ever need to move them to another mount I don't have to
scour through dozens of configuration files changing F: to G: just because
they are on a new drive.  No.  FTP is still in /ftp.  WWW is still in /www.
Home directories are still in /home.  MISC files are still in /misc.

lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           28 Mar  4 19:39 apache -> /usr/share/doc/apache/manual
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           24 Mar  4 19:39 exim -> exim-html-2.00/doc/html/
drwxr-xr-x    3 1169     1169         1024 Nov  5  1998 exim-html-2.00
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           14 Mar  4 19:39 icewm -> /usr/doc/icewm
-rw-r--r--    1 500      staff        1525 Jan  4  1999 index.html
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         1024 Dec 18 17:10 mrtg
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           19 Mar  4 19:39 mutt -> /usr/doc/mutt/html/
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           16 Mar  4 19:39 proftpd -> /usr/doc/proftpd
drwxr-xr-x    7 500      staff        1024 Apr 10 12:58 rpglink
drwxr-xr-x    2 500      staff        4096 Jan 17  1998 sag
drwxr-xr-x    5 root     root         1024 Apr 10 13:35 urchin

    Furthermore, here is my htdocs directory.  Notice that several links go
off onto other trees, most notably /usr/share/doc and /usr/doc.  As part of
the install of a lot of packages Debain installs some HTML docs into
directories in the doc trees.  Under the drive paradigm I'd have to copy those
over to HTML directories each time I updated anything.  Here whenever I update
the docs in the doc trees are updated and since these point /there/ they are
updated as well.

    With enough effort people could port WPS to Linux, esp. if IBM released
the code.  I don't see IBM moving OS/2 away from drive letters to a vfs any
time soon and, like it or not, that is one of the most basic and fundemental
interfaces to the machine.

    Keep your colors.  

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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