[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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