[UFO Chicago] Other Free Operating Systems

[Neil R. Ormos]

Jordan Bettis wrote:
> Jay F Shachter wrote:

>> NeWS was unquestionably superior to the X
>> windowing system, but it never surpassed the X
>> windowing system in popularity, because the X
>> windowing system was adequate, and programmers
>> who were accustomed to it did not feel a need
>> to learn how to use a better windowing system.

> [...]  X.400 is superior to IETF Email in just
> about every objective way, and I believe it does
> still exist in many places, like as the basis
> for internal formats of groupware such as Novell
> or Exchange. If someone came to you wanting to
> learn email programming and you taught them
> X.400 though, I think they'd be justifiable in
> being upset.

> The triumpth of 'good enough' over 'great' is
> the history of Unix. Perhaps you should be
> teaching your students VMS programming when they
> come to you wanting to learn Unix. There are
> even still a few places using VMS.

The "triumph of 'good enough' over 'great'" is
indeed the history of most commercial products,
including MS-DOS/Windows, and the most popular
mainframe operating systems, but applying that
notion to Unix is an ostentatious and absurd
slight.

Throughout its history, Unix was not merely "good
enough".  For general-purpose, multi-user,
time-shared computing workloads on relatively
small computers, Unix was demonstrably superior,
on the whole, to other operating systems for
equivalent computers and of the same vintage.
Unix started out as an operating system for small
computers.  Its early designers were brilliantly
successful at jamming tremendous functionality
into an operating system that ran in limited
memory on computers with limited CPUs and limited
special-purpose hardware, while employing limited
development resources.  The pursuit of design
excellence has been a much more significant driver
of the multifarious development of Unix and its
derivatives than it has been in most other
surviving operating systems. [*]

Anyhow, I welcome Jay's invitation that we discuss
Solaris and BSD.  I would like to learn more about
what they do better than, for example, Linux.
Jay, I hope you will be prepared to explain why
one might want to run Solaris, not just from the
under-the-hood viewpoint that you often admirably
elaborate, but also from the end-user perspective.

[*] That said, I don't mean to deny that
Unix-derived operating systems have defects or
involve compromises; it's just that the defects
and compromises in most other operating systems
are bigger or worse.  Nor would I deny that other
operating systems may be superior solutions in
particular problem spaces.

BR...

--Neil