Re: alt.religion.your.operating.system.sucks

You wrote: 

>The only real barrier left to UNIX becoming the OS of choice is 
>commercial app support (things like word processors and etc. becoming 
>readily available and inexpensive).

I don't mean to toss gasoline onto this fire, but......

Unix as we know has a vanishingly small probability of ever becoming 
'mainstream'. There's a two-orders-of-magnitude gap between the installed 
base of Dos/Windows and that of Unix. That gap has grown, not marrowed 
over time. This is however no reflection on the obvious technical merits 
of Unix. Market dominance is based not on technical superiority, but 
rather on technical sufficiency. Once an OS acheives technical 
sufficiency any further technical improvements will have a diminishing 
marginal effect on that OS's market performance. Once the OS is 
technically sufficient, non-technical factors begin to dominate. The 
market failure of WinNT is a classic example of this. Its failure is 
unrelated to its technical merits (or lack thereof), but rather on 
econmic and social factors the even a company withe the marketing muscle 
of MicroSoft has not yet been able to overcome. (OS/2 is of course an 
example of an even more dismal, perhaps terminal, failure for many of the 
same reasons.)

Dale H.

> 
> I don't mean to toss gasoline onto this fire, but......
>

Too late...

 
> Unix as we know has a vanishingly small probability of ever becoming 
> 'mainstream'. There's a two-orders-of-magnitude gap between the installed 
> base of Dos/Windows and that of Unix. That gap has grown, not marrowed 
> over time. This is however no reflection on the obvious technical merits 
> of Unix. Market dominance is based not on technical superiority, but 
> rather on technical sufficiency. Once an OS acheives technical 
> sufficiency any further technical improvements will have a diminishing 
> marginal effect on that OS's market performance. Once the OS is 
> technically sufficient, non-technical factors begin to dominate. The 
> market failure of WinNT is a classic example of this. Its failure is 
> unrelated to its technical merits (or lack thereof), but rather on 
> econmic and social factors the even a company withe the marketing muscle 
> of MicroSoft has not yet been able to overcome. (OS/2 is of course an 
> example of an even more dismal, perhaps terminal, failure for many of the 
> same reasons.)
>


UNIX is a _networking_ OS, in my mind, above and beyond anything else
which the 'mainstream' may desire.

If I want Excel, Word or Powerpoint, I'll use my PC (which is completely
compatible, via PPP, and able to exchange data) to work within these
obviously proprietary formats. :-)

Microsoft hasn't really made any attempt to enbrace the UNIX community.

Why should we emmrace Microsoft?

- paul

 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ferguson                         
US Sprint                                          tel: 703.689.6828
Managed Network Engineering                   internet: paul@hawk.sprintmrn.com
Reston, Virginia  USA                             http://www.sprintmrn.com

On Sun, 29 Jan 1995, Dale Harrison wrote:

> You wrote: 
> 
> >The only real barrier left to UNIX becoming the OS of choice is 
> >commercial app support (things like word processors and etc. becoming 
> >readily available and inexpensive).
> 
> I don't mean to toss gasoline onto this fire, but......
> 
> Unix as we know has a vanishingly small probability of ever becoming 
> 'mainstream'. There's a two-orders-of-magnitude gap between the installed 
> base of Dos/Windows and that of Unix. That gap has grown, not marrowed 
> over time. This is however no reflection on the obvious technical merits 
> of Unix. Market dominance is based not on technical superiority, but 
> rather on technical sufficiency. Once an OS acheives technical 
> sufficiency any further technical improvements will have a diminishing 
> marginal effect on that OS's market performance. Once the OS is 
> technically sufficient, non-technical factors begin to dominate. The 
> market failure of WinNT is a classic example of this. Its failure is 
> unrelated to its technical merits (or lack thereof), but rather on 
> econmic and social factors the even a company withe the marketing muscle 
> of MicroSoft has not yet been able to overcome. (OS/2 is of course an 
> example of an even more dismal, perhaps terminal, failure for many of the 
> same reasons.)

so your point, basically, is that the public will settle for whatever it 
can get, and get easiest and cheapest, when it comes to software and 
operating systems in particular.  This may be the case, but there is 
certainly a growing market for internet-capable systems, and the most 
internet-friendly OS around is, of course, UNIX.  In that fact, and in 
the growing importance of having an OS that utilizes the full 
capabilities of increasing powerful personal computers, lies the future 
of UNIX.

    Bryan Venable               | c642011@cclabs.missouri.edu
    Student & MOO Administrator | wlspif@showme.missouri.edu
    U of Missouri - Columbia    | spif@pobox.com
    SGI/Netscape/MOO addict     | spif@m-net.arbornet.org
    Spif or Turmandir @ MOOs    | http://www.phlab.missouri.edu/~c642011 

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