The purpose of this group...

[Craig E. Smith]

In <26E3F766.2F57 at tct.uucp> chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:

>...is to discuss "MS-DOS running under Unix by whatever means."

>So to get the ball rolling:  Those who have used both Merge/386 and
>VP/ix, which do you prefer?

I have seen VP/ix demonstrated, but have not used it. I have Merge/386,
use it once in a while, and have come to two conclusions based on my
experience with it:

1) Their is very little I can do with DOS that I can't do in
plain UNIX (with the exception of playing some of my favorite
video games and writing user programs that directly address hardware).

and

2) For the amount of money I spent on Merge/386 (including an
expensive upgrade to get it to work on my VGA monitor), it would
have been more cost effective to simply buy a used IBM/PC as a second
machine, and not mess with my UNIX kernel (why do I start getting negative 
numbers in the SZ field of a 'ps -le' after running MERGE?). 


In short I find MERGE an interesting toy to play with, and as
a software developer it seems an interesting concept, but I don't
find it to be really worthwhile for my own use, especially considering
the cost as compared to an actual PC, which is less likely to have
any compatibility problems.


-- 
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 No great man ever complains of want of | Internet:     csmith at cscs.UUCP
 opportunity.   - Ralph Waldo Emerson   | UUCP:     ... uunet!cscs!csmith
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------