Tektronix emulation (was Re: X11R4 xterm on RS/6000)

[Keith Moore]

In article <1990Aug17.191659.13510 at ibmpa> jsalter at slo.UUCP (James Salter) writes:
>In article <1990Aug17.115057.3821 at galadriel.bt.co.uk> andy at galadriel.bt.co.uk (Andy Howcroft) writes:
(in response to an article by David Battle)
>>Yes...but you won't like it. Try launching the IBM junk out of the
>>nearest window and the buy a 'real' workstation.
>
>If you don't like it you're more than welcome to.  However, it would be
>nice to know why you think it's "junk" instead of casually throwing out
>comments like that.  Specifics, please.  In terms of floating-point it's
>the hottest thing on the market, though thats more my area.

The hardware, however fast, isn't worth a lot without a decent operating 
system and development tools.

I'm sure that after spending a lot of time with a compiler, debugger,
and the BSD UNIX source code, that I could replace enough of the system
so that I could stand to use it.  (The tty and pty drivers would be 
a good place to start.)  No matter how fast the machine, it wouldn't 
save me the amount of time I would spend fixing things that are broken.

Add to that the fact that many of our automated system administration 
procedures (of the form `make this change to every system of type X 
on the net') don't work with AIX, and you'll understand why we don't 
want very many of these machines around.

And when we point out, for instance, that the C compiler is brain damaged 
because its error messages can't be parsed by emacs for file name and line 
number, IBM suggests extensive changes to emacs's message parsing code.
But it's not emacs that's broken -- it's worked just fine for years with 
lots of other C compilers.  It doesn't take too many responses like this
to convince me that AIX is suffering from a severe lack of understanding
of UNIX design philosophy, coupled with a bit of an attitude problem.

My advice to everyone who has asked has been ``If all you need is a
utility machine to crunch numbers, buy it.  But don't mistake the RIOS
for a UNIX workstation.''

Wait until someone (CMU?) ports Mach to this machine and makes it
available, and see how many more machines you sell.

Keith Moore			Internet: moore at cs.utk.edu
University of Tenn. CS Dept.	BITNET: moore at utkvx
107 Ayres Hall, UT Campus	Telephone: +1 615 974 0822
Knoxville Tennessee 37996-1301	``Friends don't let friends use YP (or NIS)''
Keith Moore			Internet: moore at cs.utk.edu
University of Tenn. CS Dept.	BITNET: moore at utkvx
107 Ayres Hall, UT Campus	Telephone: +1 615 974 0822
Knoxville Tennessee 37996-1301	``Friends don't let friends use YP (or NIS)''