Favorite operating systems query

[Jon Krueger]

In article <339 at valid.UUCP> sbs at valid.UUCP
(Steven Brian McKechnie Sargent) writes:
>	1) For the VMS fans out there: what's your favorite feature(s) of
>	   the system?  Why do you like it?  How does it help you?

My favorite VMS feature is its all-around functionality: you can put batch
streams, high-end number crunching, transaction processing, real-time data
acquisition and process control, document processing, graphics, simulation
and number crunching, database management, casual use and computer
education, highly interactive applications like spreadsheets and exploratory
data analysis, software developement, expert systems, network interface, and
so on through the entire gamut of applications ON A SINGLE MACHINE!

With networking and clustering, you can put all of the above on a single,
homogenous, manageable network or cluster.  All your code will execute on
any node.  Needs for speed can be balenced against price of a given node.
In other words, VAX is a good general-purpose computer, and VMS is a good
general-purpose operating system.  You can buy one box, support your
applications and users under one environment, and stop there.  The costs of
fragmenting applications and user communities are just too high to justify
any other way of doing business.  The costs of maintaining a heterogeneous
network are currently high, but may drop someday, which will change the
picture.

Other bright stars in VMS world: the debugger, sharable object and image
libraries, the BACKUP, INSTALL, MONITOR, SYSGEN, ACCOUNTING, AUTHORIZE
utilitiies for system management and tuning, the common calling standard
(call a C run-time library routine and get printf from FORTRAN, COBOL,
assembler, PASCAL, run a mixed FORTRAN-C or FORTRAN-COBOL shop), the
transparency of file access in a DECnet.

>	2) Likewise UNIX  fans.
My favorite Unix feature is vendor independence: getting cheaper, faster
hardware to execute all my software.  VMS cost DEC a lot, and DEC has to
charge this back to its customers.  Will Unix development and porting
continue to add functionality to Unix faster and cheaper than DEC's hardware
innovations can support cheaper copies of VMS?  Probably.  Right now, I see
advantages to either system.

Much of the chances for and rate of a swing to either system depends on the
vendor.  If DEC comes out with more VAX options, gets more competetive on
hardware pricing, drops the BI bus fascism, and continues enhancing VMS, and
ATT continues to give non-3B2 boxes second-class citizenship as Unix hosts,
then Unix may end up being known as the first portable operating system, and
of great historical and zero commercial significance.  If ATT doesn't try to
make us buy ATT hardware to get vmunix, but supports commodity hardware
markets based on their licensed software, and DEC continues its BI bus
childishness and hardware pricing, then VMS may end up as the last
proprietary operating system, of interest only to a small and unhappy group
of VAX owners.