🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8601091624.AA03662@pc.Purdue.EDU> info-atari@ucbvax.UUCP writes:
>In article <12173670725.8.MRC@PANDA> you write:
>>
>>     An operating system that is "not...what [large segments of
>>the computer industry] want" is not "absolutely wonderful."  Nor
>>is it "efficient", since Unix systems typically spend about 50%
>>of the CPU in the operating system.  
>
>   Who cares?  CPU time is cheap, programmer time is not.
>

Actually, you should look at the actual overhead on a UNIX system before
coming up with that 50% figure. On a loaded VAX I can believe 20-40% average
over ten minutes or more, but not 50%. On a single user PC-based UNIX system,
such as XENIX or PC/IX, that number might change, but I would normally expect
it to be lower, and it is on the systems on which I've been able to measure..
CPU time is a lousy measure, since systems such as MSDOS and CP/M spend 100%
of their time in a CPU loop while waiting for keyboard or disk input. Your
program doesn't run at all! No one could deny that these systems are widely
used and useful.

Who decided that large segments of the industry don't want it? I have the
feeling that the reason IBM and Cray are now offering UNIX is not because they
love AT&T, but rather that people *do* want it. Sperry offers UNIX from its
PC's to its top mainframes... same reason!

>>                                    One questions the flexibility
>>of an operating system which lacks file locking, record structure,
>>and shared writeable pages -- granted these are now being shoehorned
>>into Unix, but they should have been in there from the beginning. 
>
>   Why should they have been in there since the beginning?  Some of the
>   most powerful database systems in existence run under UNIX.  They seem
>   to get by just fine.  What type of record system would you like?  One
>   like VMS, one like RSX, one like MACE?  And what happens when you
>   want to move software between the systems?  Some people feel that these
>   type of things do not belong in an operating system; I am one of them. 
>

SystemV UNIX has the ability to do locking. Records structure is an
application concept and has no business in the o/s. To complain about the lack
of locking in an older version of the o/s is like bitching about the lack of
smog control on the model T Ford. It wasn't there because it wasn't needed at
that time.  UNIX was not originally a business o/s.

>>
>>     Are you aware that Dennis Ritchie once said that if he had
>>known about Tenex, he never would have invented Unix?  

I don't dispute it, but (a) I would like to know the source of the quote
(published paper, informal net note, remark at a party, you heard about from a
friend, etc), and (b) I'm not sure I believe it. It wouldn't have solved the
problem of a multitasking o/s on *cheap* hardware.

>							>The goal in
>>designing Unix were to create an quick and dirty operating system
>>on a discarded PDP-7 so a group in Bell Labs (which had been denied
>>their purchase request for a newer and large CPU) could get some work
>>done.
>
>   And the Greeks invention of geometry was so that they could settle 
>   land disputes.  That doesn't make the invention of geometry any less
>   significant:  "Necessity is the mother of invention."  That's not 
>   original, but it is relevant.

Exactly the point I was making about locking. It wasn't a goal, it is now, we
have it now.
-- 
	-bill davidsen

	seismo!rochester!steinmetz!--\
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ihnp4!              unirot ------------->---> crdos1!davidsen
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        chinet! ---------------------/        (davidsen@ge-crd.ARPA)

"It seemed like a good idea at the time..."