'386 Unix Wars

[Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR]

As quoted from <51823 at bigtex.cactus.org> by james at bigtex.cactus.org (James Van Artsdalen):
+---------------
| In <355 at metran.UUCP>, jay at metran.UUCP (Jay Ts) wrote:
| > 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.
+---------------

Most of our (Telotech, no relation to ncoast) customers run either Uniplex or
MS Word, either Informix or Unify 2000, and/or RealWorld accounting --- all
from AOM menus.  All Unix.  And very few of them ever use the shell or would
know what to do with job control (indeed, I expect "bug reports" from
customers on ACS5000's when SCO Unix 3.2.2 comes out --- we got them on the
AViiON, which has job control).

Most office workers couldn't care less about the shell.  They want an easy-to-
use menu system, the OS is irrelevant.  These are neither sysadmins nor gurus;
they just want the silly computer to do what they tell it to do, and prefer
that telling it what to do be as easy as possible.  (Which I can't fault;
after all, my primary home machine is a Mac.)

++Brandon
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