🚀 go-pugleaf

Nilay Patel (warsaw@inc.net) wrote:
: In article <41ga2g$llq@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
: sgoehrin@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (scott goehring) wrote:
: > my OS prof had a short list of things he said an OS had to be to be an
: > OS.  he then showed how DOS failed to qualify on most of them.  in his
: > opinion, DOS is a file system.
: 
:    the point of any OS is (mainly) to be a file system, and (secondly)
: define the user interface. DOS did that. IMHO, DOS is a kickass file
: system, but did a crummy job of defining UI by assigning cryptic commands
: like /cd and DEL path/filename. This set a precedent of hard to use, text
: based programs, while extremely fast (usually) were too diufficult to use.
: THIS is why Windows (shittiest OS ever, with or without a 95 after it)
: took hold. People needed a graphical precedent on their DOS machines, and
: MS provided it. Nobody will support a PC on the basis of windows! it's
: always "but DOS is faster than any Mac."
: so there.

This is the naive way. There were alot of legal/half legal/illegal 
bindings between hardware and software, software and software 
(dos-windows), that killed off the rest of the competition. What MS did, 
was the classic way of "creating a monopoly". Free market is an illusion in
this case (and in most cases, to be the least pessimistic).


-- Ingo Molnar, mingo@csomalungma.csoma.elte.hu