'386 Unix Wars

[James Van Artsdalen]

In <355 at metran.UUCP>, jay at metran.UUCP (Jay Ts) wrote:

> And it won't markedly improve the functioning of their existing
> software, either.

| Well, what about job control, BSD-style line editing (I'm not sure
| what BSD calls this), long file names, etc?  Something in there seems
| useful.

> Job control, line editing?  Do you think that office workers use the shell?
> Mostly, they are entering data and making menu selections.

Sounds like their existing software is Mess-DOS.

> Long file names are a noticeable improvement.  Well, maybe.  Just
> offhand, I don't remember seeing any truncated filenames in users'
> home directories.  Not many, anyway.

Even Mess-DOS has line editing.

The only thing about SysVr4 an "office worker" is likely to really
notice is that TCP/IP and NFS work much better than SysVr3, and then
only if they're running over NFS or something.  The big win for SysVr4
is for the programmer.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james at bigtex.cactus.org   "Live Free or Die"
Dell Computer Co    9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759         512-338-8789