OT: OS/2, Linux and Windows (was Re: TZ)

[Steve Lamb]

Tuesday, March 21, 2000, 12:56:42 PM, Simon wrote:
> All these componenets or their equivalents are "done" under OS/2:
> OS/2's kernel, GUI, SMB networking support, SMP and DOS support are 
> far far in advance of linux's (probably 10s of man years worth of 
> develoment better).

    And?  SMP is not in advance of Linux'.  If I remember correctly SMP is
only in the older versions of OS/2 server, not in the latest releases.  SMB is
Samba and Samba is the implementation to beat, even by Microsoft.  DOS
support.... why?  The only realy need for /DOS/ support is, uhm...  You know,
I can't think of a single reason to have DOS around any more.

> Much more in fact - OS/2 is much bigger than linux!

    Define Linux.  Larger then the kernel?  Yes.  Larger than the kernel and
bare minimum for user space?  Yes.  Larger than a good distribution (say,
Debian with 2 CDs worth of packages), no.

> It takes a long time to unlearn 10 years worth of know how, and learn
> something different (and often inferior).

    Trust me, OS/2 is the inferior part here.

> Unix is flexible and powerful and allows you to build tools out
> of it's components, but its incredibly user unfriendly and arguably
> highly old fashioned, it is also very, very inconistent in operation,
> and enjoys little or no binary compatibility accross versions and
> distributions.

    I find that quite the contrary.  In the past 5-6 years of using different
versions of unix I have found that is has been one of the most consistent and
user friendly environments I've ever had the pleasure of working with.  I have
gone from SunOS on old Sparcs on my first Netcom account to working on FreeBSD
at a local ISP to running Linux on my server at home and now work on Ultra-2's
running Solaris 6 at a national ISP.  Until a few months ago I used the same
editor, the same shell, the same configuration files!

    As for binary compatibility, what do you expect?  OS/2 doesn't run DOS
programs natively so you expect FreeBSD to run Linux binaries?  Why?  That is
unreasonable.  Of course that ignores the fact that FreeBSD can run Linux
binaries just as well as OS/2 does DOS binaries.  Distributions do enjoy
binary compatibility.  I can pull ls from pretty much any distribution and get
it to run on my Debian system.  Of course, that is really moot since it is so
easy to recompile things (unlike on OS/2) and with the more advanced
distributions of Linux (Debian, Red Hat and its clones, Stampede, even
Slackware) pretty much everything is compiled and tested for that
distribution.  With Debian they also get things compiled pretty darn fast.
Quite frankly I find "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade" much more
friendly than the service packs.  "apt-get install" is much nicer than trying
to find the latest on Hobbes and mangle the install.  dselect with apt is a
dream.

> OS/2 is nicely placed in in the middle, it's friendly (still has
> the best GUI I've ever seen, despite it's warts),

    GUI != user friendly.  CLI != user-unfriendly.  Simply put I find "cat
mainlog.1.gz | gunzip | eximstats | less" to be more friendly than having to
use 3-4 GUI tools to do the same job.  I also find the idea of controlling
three boxen from a single interface quite powerful.  My Windows box is one, X
from my Solaris box exported to it is another, X from my home machine 20 miles
away is the third.  All with a nice GUI.

> and allows you build tools etc (with rexx and the WPS) without having to buy
> a program or be a computer expert.

    Wow, that describes Linux.  You get REXX.  I get perl, python, tcl/tk, C,
C++, two versions of Pascal.  All I need to install most of them is apt-get
install blah.

> OS/2 is more networking neutral than Unix or windows (which
> prefer their own "native" networking to a greater extent than 
> OS/2)

    I beg to differ.  Haven't had any problems with my Samba mounts yet.

> OS/2 has rexx as standard (Unix has shell scripts, ha, ha ha, ha!),
> and windows has, er, no real native scripting), so under OS/2 you
> can knock up quick little tools, automate stuff etc *simply* and 
> portably with low resource overhead. Unix is similar but shell script
> is arcane in the extreme.  Under Windows you're got batch files (useless)
> or visual basic (overkill, resource intensive and non-portable)!

    Unix has pretty much standardized on Perl.  You'd be hard pressed to find
one that doesn't come with Perl installed.  Maybe Solaris, I think that is it.
Perl is available for OS/2 and Windows.  Perl is also a far cry more powerful
than REXX ever will be.  In all the years I've used unix I've never had a need
for shell script.  Whenever my job here requires me to modify shell script I
usually rewrite in perl.

    You're "arcane" bias is showing.

> Most Unix programs are simple to port to OS/2 (thanks to emx
> which is not part of OS/2, but has been there since OS/2 1.x days),
> which means the defacto-standard GNU/unix tools and tcp/ip stuff
> are all available easily.

    As a person who compiled some versions of slang for OS/2 and used joe
under OS/2, it is not as easy as native.

> Linux has appalling mutithreaded capability (one reason why Java has
> taken so long to port and performs so badly under linux), OS/2 has
> an efficent natively threaded scheduler, so Java runs faster on 
> OS/2 than *any* other intel platform (until it hits the GUI, since 
> graphics performace under OS/2 is usually fairly poor).

    Threads?  Oh, you mean processes.  I used to think mutliple threads were a
great thing but they really aren't needed.

> Under Linux, you have to compile your software to get it to
> work (different distributions use different libraries and
> executable formats).

    To be blunt, stop talking out your ass.  The /only/ thing I have compiled
under Linux in the past *two years* has been the kernel.  Something you cannot
do with either Windows or OS/2 but I really wish you could.  Unlike you, I
/KNOW/ my kernel isn't loading anything that isn't required.  I /KNOW/ exactly
how much memory it is taking up.  I pared it down to exactly what I needed.

    Furthermore the different distributions of Linux use ELF as their binary
format.  Hell, the a.out/ELF transition was /OVER/ 3 years ago!

> Windows and OS/2 support shrink-warp software properly

    That's a joke.  Neither has a decent packaging system.

> and OS/2 has had about the best backwards compatibility of any OS (apart
> from on mainframes).

> With MS you have to buy new or updgraded apps at the whim of MS, under Unix
> you have to recompile, but OS/2 runs 10 year old DOS and OS/2 1.x binarioes
> fine (usually!).

    Linux has the best of them all, the source.  While your system is bogged
down by supporting how much legacy code I recompile, /if I have to/, and I am
done.  OTOH, if I need the older libraries I can just install them.  My server
happily runs glibc1 (libc5) binaries just fine.  It runs a.out binaries just
fine.

> If you use the OS/2 server version, there a whole load of additional 
> ways it beats Linux and NT (e.g. higher performance, client agnostic,
> better disk and network subsystems).

    Cites, please.  I simply do not believe you.  I've seen what my boxen can
do and remember what my OS/2 box couldn't do.  Linux is just as client
agnostic as OS/2 is.  "Better disk and network subsystems" are highly
debatable.  Quite frankly, it looks like you've been stuck on OS/2 for the
past 3-5 years and have dismissed /ALL/ developments on the free variants of
unix in that time.  A lot of your information is outdated and flat out wrong.

> But I can't be bothered with anymore, suffice to say there are
> good reasons for sticking with OS/2, *IF* you're an OS/2 user,
> there are not so many reason for moving to OS/2 though!

    No, there aren't any good reasons for sticking with OS/2.  There is 1.
WPS.  However, that isn't enough.  There aren't any reasons to move to OS/2.
IBM has done its best to kill OS/2, it has been a dead platform for years.
The only OS/2 users that remain are of the same mindset as the people who
cling to their aging Amigas and state emphatically to one another that it
outperforms the P2's of today, it was that advanced.  IE, only the blind
fanatics without a shred of factual evidence and only a lot of hype.

-- 
         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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