Favorite operating systems query
thomas at utah-gr.UUCP
thomas at utah-gr.UUCP
Wed Jun 18 03:18:56 AEST 1986
In article <452 at geowhiz.UUCP> larry at geowhiz.UUCP (Larry McVoy) writes:
>1) the BSD fortran compiler is the worst excuse for a compiler the world has
> ever seen (reports of 4 to 400 times slower than VMS fortran).
Ultrix(tm) now comes with the "VMS" Fortran compiler (per report).
>
>3) Likewise with DCL (Dec Command Language). It's like sh with more obscurity.
This is a plus??
>4) EDT - the VMS screen editor. Somebody already fixed this by writing an emacs
> interface to emulate EDT.
See (3).
>6) File system. Why, oh, why, must the Unix file system be so fragile? VMS
> never loses your files.
I can count on the fingers of one foot the number of times I have lost a
file due to "file system fragility" in the last 5 years on a Unix
system. This "myth" is just that, and it's time to lay it to rest.
>8) Robustness. VMS almost *never* crashes. Unix crashes all the time.
See (6). Well, not quite that good. But the number of crashes not
related to something like device driver development or installation of a
half-baked remote file system has been VERY small at our site. I have
seen a Vax stay up between PMs (every three months).
Re: mail (one of your unnumbered comments). I think that a system that
requires a remote machine to be up in order for you to send mail to
someone on that system s**ks the big one. Maybe they've fixed it, but I
doubt it. I remember watching a friend in France trying to send mail to
Massachusetts, and having it fail because a connection couldn't be
established to the remote machine *at that time*. No queueing, just try
to send it later! Sheesh!
Also, when was the last time you could run VMS on a Sun, or an Apollo,
or a Gould, or a Pyramid, or a Cray, or ....
'Nuff said.
--
=Spencer ({ihnp4,decvax}!utah-cs!thomas, thomas at utah-cs.ARPA)
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