DDJ article / UNIX vs BS/2

[Bob Burch]

>From Ted Holden, HTE:


...........................

From: John Hardin, HP Information Networks, Cupertino, CA
 
>>                            ... the idea of allowing DEC, HP, Perkin Elmer,
>>IBM etc. to each continue selling their own little proprietary OSs for minis
>>is simply no longer acceptable to the US government as of right now, and will
>>obviously not be acceptable to most corporations either.
>>
>>Ted Holden
>>----------
 
>I'd like to reply to this, but first let me make it clear that although I
>work for HP, I am not representing them here and any opinions I post here
>are my own.  Now that that's out of the way...
 
>Obviously your addition of the word "little" above shows a disdain of the
>other operating systems you mention.  While I agree with your prediction of
>the role of Unix in the next few years, I can also see why there continue
>to be propietary OSs.  One reason is the inefficiencies of Unix.  I am no
>Unix kernel expert, so I don't pretend to know why, but I have seen that
>a propietary OS can support many more time-sharing users than Unix when
>both are run on the same hardware.  Perhaps it's the granualarity of locks
>available or the extra disk accesses to support the multi-level directory
>structure.  Often this extra overhead is more cost for more features, but
>these extra features are usually of most use to software developers, not
>the accounting department in a commerial environment.  Hopefully, we are
>entering an age when the efficient use of the human is of more importance
>than the efficient use of the machine, but in the meantime Unix may not
>be the best answer for everyone.
 
There is a simple and deadly counter-argument to any and all of this and,
again, you don't need to be Albert Einstein to figure it out:
 
At any point in time, you will buy yourself some gain in performance
going with a proprietary OS versus UNIX for a given piece of hardware
which, presumably, wasn't specifically built to run UNIX (something like
one of the Gould "firebreathers" which WAS specifically blueprinted for
UNIX is a different story).  I don't know exactly what the performance
gain is for a typical VAX or HP mini but, for the sake of argument, let's
assume it is 50 percent, which I suspect is being generous.  So you and I
each buy one such computer at the same time, mine with UNIX, yours with
the proprietary OS, and you've got me by 50%.
 
In less than two years guaranteed, and in probably less than one year,
there will be somebody out there selling a machine which is 300% faster
and stronger and sells for 1/3 the price we paid.  No problem for me;  I
just go out and buy one and, one week later, I'm back rolling, 250%
faster than you can roll, and all you can do is think, wistfully, "Gee,
if I only hadn't bought this ____ed-up lemon with this non-portable
operating system........."
 
 
Ted Holden
HTE