[Info-vax] OT: IBM to buy Sun
Bill Pechter
pechter at bandit.pechter.dyndns.org.pechter.dyndns.org
Fri Mar 20 23:37:58 EDT 2009
In article <b7346fe8-c8c2-4fc7-ac3a-eab4d5556b06 at h28g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
yyyc186 <yyyc186 at hughes.net> wrote:
>On Mar 19, 7:02 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>>
>> Comparing OS/2 to VMS is like comparing a Yugo to a Porsche.
>
>Wellll....at the time they killed it, OS/2 was way out in front of
>Windows. Of course, that was right after they successfully ripped
>most of the MS code out of OS/2...around Warp 4.5. It came pre-
>bundled with the Lotus Smart Suite (at least I never bought a machine
>that didn't come with both) and SmartSuite was a full decade ahead of
>MS Office. Even today, WordPro is still a full decade ahead of MS
>Word and WordPerfect. It's at least 8 years in front of OpenOffice.
I've used WordPro... it's nowhere near as nice and responsive as the
earlier AmiPro.
I did like Symphony...
>
>IBM simply wasn't willing to fight for the turf. MS truly screwed IBM
>too. The only way you could do driver or kernel development was to
>use MSC 6.0, which had been out of production for several years. Yes,
>IBM had Visual Age for C++ already on OS/2, but they didn't have all
>of the source code required for driver and kernel development. Some
>critical pieces existed only in object form and the objects would only
>work with MSC 6.0. IBM was faced with having to reverse engineer the
>objects to make them work with the existing OS/2 compilers.
>
>Everybody bitched that MS gave driver development kits away for
>Windows driver developers, but IBM charged lots of money. The truth
>is (from those I've talked with who actually worked on OS/2) they
>actually had to license all the stuff from MS.
>
>I actually miss OS/2. I've had a lot of Linux distros on my desktop
>as I follow the industry to Open Source and away from MS products, but
>I haven't found one I liked as much as OS/2. I managed to use Ubuntu
>for a few years. That "Just Works" slogan they had was quite a
>stretch. I've lived through RPM hell with RPM based distros. Sadly,
>I'm back to using SuSE. Ubuntu kept releasing kernel patches that
>broke critical stuff for much of their installed base and never backed
>them out.
I'm running Ubuntu right now on this box... I haven't had a problem with
their updates lately. They went through a patch of wild updates.
I've been using RHEL at work and although I like Ubuntu, I may have to drift
back to CentOS5 or 4 on the desktop here to keep compatible.
Crossover Office lets me run the Lotus Notes. The problem is I need to go
MS Outlook and Office 2007 now. ugh.
Bill
--
--
Digital had it then. Don't you wish you could buy it now!
pechter-at-pechter.dyndns.org
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