[Info-vax] OT: Arun Kishan

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11-01-2010 04:23, Michael Kraemer wrote:
> JF Mezei schrieb:
>> Lets not forget that for a company such as HP, it isn't just the chip
>> that is different, but also the systems.
>
> I don't get it why people believe in x86 as being the saviour.
> I can't remember any ailing OS ever having risen from
> the ashes by switching to x86 (or any other hardware platform).
> An OS has to survive by its own virtue.
> BeOS for example was cool when it ran on PPC boxen.
> Switched to x86 and went under.
> Data General's DG/UX ran on 88k, switched to x86 and went under.
> Etc, etc.
>
> It's not just that some code has to run natively on x86,
> the hardware built around it is at least as important.
> Look at OS/2 for example, it's x86 right from the start,
> but listening to the respective NGs it's pretty hard to find
> current x86 hardware to run it, in particular the coolest one,
> i.e. net- and notebooks. The same is true for
> Linux until very recently, when it became commercially
> interesting to offer netbooks with Linux rather than Windoze,
> i.e. to avoid the M$ tax on top of hardware costing $1xx.
> So even if (!) HP would bother to port VMS to x86,
> it'll most likely run on proprietary HP x86 boxen only,
> and in this case you're not much better off than with
> proprietary Itanics.

First I don't think that the argument (at least for most) is that
VMS on x86 will be a huge success - more that if IA-64 disappears
then being able to run VMS on x86-64 is a lot better than not
being able to run VMS at all.

BTW, other OS's have moved to x86 & x86-64 with better result
than those you list: Solaris, MacOS X, *BSD.

Arne