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Aucbvax.6493 fa.works utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works Mon Mar 15 08:04:19 1982 Is UNIX really the answer ? >From JGOLDBERGER@Usc-Isib Wed Mar 10 14:58:06 1982 I was glad to see that someone else has the same concerns as I do concerning not only the Works discussion, but the current commercial offerings as well. I am referring to Jeffrey Stone's msg of 10 March. We here at ISI have been going around and around with our discussions concerning what it is we actually want, and/or can get. We currently have 5 TOPS-20's and a TENEX running the usual compliment of editors, mail-readers, and document preparers. Everytime we (the New Computing Environment Project) have mentioned workstations running some flavor of UNIX our researchers have risen in protest. Some of their concerns are "easy" to overcome; Long file names (we have just gotten this working, and Berkeley is rumored to be doing it too), Version numbers, Filename completion, a "real" backup mechanism, to name a few. But there are many other concerns that come from some very fundamental aspects of UNIX.

I must admit that I am not a great fan of UNIX myself, but have to agree that for "small" machines there isn't anything that's better, nor am I advocating porting TOPS-20 to personal computers. My point is that I'm not convinced that its such a win to start with an operating system that has none of the needed hooks in place to build the computing environment of the 80's. Xerox apparently reached a similar conclusion; that is rather than add all the bells and whistles to their ALTO environment (that atleast knew about bit-mapped displays) they developed an entirely new environment starting with MESA & PILOT and ending with the STAR. For a few months we were in heated negotiations with Xerox to try to get STARs with the MESA development environment. At that time (~2 months ago) we were told NO. Now there are rumors that it may be available. Still, there are obvious problems associated with being tied to a single manufacturer for both hardware and software.

It is my belief that UNIX is fantastic as what it is, namely a portable operating system. To my knowledge nothing else has ever come close. The extensions that Berkeley has made (and continues to make) are also great, but already one can see incompatibilities developing. Some of the new features Berkeley has added will probably never find their way into the UNIX that will run on WICATs, SUNs, PERQs, and the like.

The issue for us (atleast) is that our user community is not going to be satisfied with just increased performance at the loss of functionality (as they perceive it), this is what UNIX on a WICAT/SUN/PERQ/... seems to offer. What they would really like is all the things a STAR offers: Fancy editor, Graphics, Multiple Windows, Dazzling user interface, etc. BUT they also want to be able to program the thing and make use of all the neat stuff themselves.

At both the recent ACM SIGOPS conference and the most recent USENIX meeting there were presentations by people who had added some windowing suport to existing operating systems, they were impressive efforts, but not quite impressive enough to be worth the effort (for us).

I wish I had an alternative to suggest, but all I have are these concerns.

- Joel Goldberger -

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