Journal SL Baur's Journal: Microsoft Appreciation (but I still love Unix) 2
This is taken from a posting I did in a political forum (certain not to be popular here) on an iphone article. The poster's alias I am quoting and the web site are available upon email request.
Given that Windows is now the only surviving personal computer OS not based on Unix, the point of Microsoft's deflection from Gates' Xenix-centered vision would be interesting to know.
That's a fascinating comment.
in 1979, well prior to MS's link-up with IBM in which they parlayed Tim Paterson's QDOS to IBM as MS-DOS (without telling Paterson what they were up to), Microsoft was plugging a version of Unix called Xenix.
Xenix wasn't a flavor of Unix so much as a licensed port. It was Unix.
Bill Gates himself called MS-DOS 2.0 "the bridge to Xenix," clearly signaling a belief that the future of personal computing rested on this flavor of Unix [cf. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/01/31/ms_sells_stake_in_sco/]. Somehow that vision jumped the rails.
PC-DOS 2.0 was indeed a bridge to Unix. The new DOS calls added were all flavored towards Unix equivalents. I wrote alternative C libraries for two different C compilers in that period (Computer Innovations and Lattice) and already had extensive Unix experience by that point. It's true. The new code was buggy and poorly done in some cases (the globbing code that was more Unix-style than CP/M style was hopelessly bugged in 2.0).
Perhaps IBM drove that... hard to say, and a bit ironic in view of that company's reliance on Linux today. But it could be that the era Ballmer refers to was the turbulent circa-OS|2 era, in which Windows took its current vector.
IBM was driving OS/2 towards a bridge between their mainframes and PCs. I forget all of the details (I was never employed to work on IBM mainframes), but the big deal with OS/2 was supposed to be compatibility between the PC world and IBM mainframe world.
During this time frame, Unix was driving the final coffin nails behind proprietary, lock in systems. See Tracy Kidder's book Soul of a new Machine for the final dying gasp in that era. That was the final OS written by the manufacturer for a specific new machine. DEC VMS was still king in the minicomputer world, but its realm was disintegrating.
By the mid 1980s Unix was making inroads into previously DEC VMS-only territory. I watched that happen in my first job out of college being hired into a VMS shop. By the end of my time there, we were Unix and VMS was a relic of the past.
Microsoft hired the top VMS guys out of DEC to do Microsoft Windows NT in this same time frame. This should have been a clear indication to DEC stockholders to bail on the company, but it took more than a decade for the company to die.
I don't agree with all the things that VMS did, but it (DCL) allowed sufficient customization and had so many cool features that it was possible to reduce the pain level of using that system to a point where you could get a bit of enjoyment out of using the system. EDIT/TPU (which was a DEC reimplementation of Emacs, complete with provided source code for most of the editing features) was part of that. DEC SHELL, which was a native CLI that emulated the Unix Bourne shell was so buggy that I was banned from using it after I caused multiple cluster crashes in one day. Sigh.
I'm a Linux developer, have been before the kernel was a gleam in Linus' eye. I've been a Unix fan since 1981. Unix's strengths have always been a simple system call interface and lack of really complicated things like VMS RMS (Record Management System) which never made much sense and hardcoded extensions having special meaning. If a file has the execute bit turned on, it can be run. If it doesn't it can't. Contrast that to a hypothetical email attachment named sarahpalinnude.jpg.exe in the current Microsoft world.
I'm not particularly a Microsoft hater and I never got involved in Open Source because I hated Microsoft DOS or Microsoft Windows, I never cared for those systems in the first place (exception below). I got involved because I wanted to have a system that was all in source code that could never be abandoned and taken away from me by the company I bought it from.
I got a significant amount of enthusiasm by working on my roommate-of-the-time's PC on PC-DOS 2.0. I thought it was a great idea, no matter how buggy.
I can't find fault with your post (Score:1)
I didn't get into the game quite as soon as you. I've been following along though and I agree with what you've said. You cut DOS 2.0 quite a bit of slack.
What are your thoughts on portability? Specifically I want to know if you consider an environment that lacks to tools and source code to port it to a new platform an "operating system". Platforms have always evolved at a rapid pace and I think that the inclusion of compilers that compile for alien targets and the source code for the OS and apps are cr
Re: (Score:2)
What are your thoughts on portability?
I could say I have mixed emotions on that, but I really don't. I got my real education porting BSD code (downloaded from the comp.sources.* Usenet groups) to my home System V boxes in the mid 1980s. The lessons that I learned have paid my bills ever since.
Specifically I want to know if you consider an environment that lacks to tools and source code to port it to a new platform an "operating system".
At this point, I think you must consider Microsoft Windows a "real" operating system, even as I've defined in it the past - "if you can't do a hundred different things at the same time on your computer, it's just a toy". (Tip of the hat to the former ha