[Info-vax] Where to locate software

[Simon Clubley]

On 2016-06-09, Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
> On 2016-06-08 23:18:47 +0000, Paul Richards said:
>
>> I'm running OpenVMS 8.4 on FreeAXP and am a comparative newbie. So, a 
>> noob question: I am planning to install some of the HP Open-source 
>> software and Freeware.
>> 
>> For those applications which don't automatically install where should I 
>> locate them such that I can run them from any directory?
>
> Welcome!
>
> I'm one of the resident curmudgeons, and deal with more than few 
> packages and tools, and have worked with more than a few open source 
> packages on OpenVMS.  And I use a mix of operating systems beyond 
> OpenVMS and Windows.
>
> This is an excellent question!   That's something most folks arriving 
> from competently-designed systems might wonder, too.
>

Sorry Stephen, but I think you have gone a bit too far there. VMS _is_
a competently and well designed system and is damned good with it's
traditional workloads.

However, that design originated in another era and it's owners, instead
of investing the resources to keep it up to date with current trends,
have instead chosen to take the profits from the existing users only and
have allowed VMS to fall into irrelevance.

This is no different from how Linux in the late 1990s was compared to the
Linux of today. Linux is still the same basic operating system underneath
but it's had major investment to make it still relevant to today's needs.
How dominant do you think Linux would be today if people were still
having to do things like run XF86Setup and friends and edit modelines as
well as all the other stuff you had to do manually in the old days ?

BTW, it's only now that some vendors are starting to catch up with VMS
when it comes to clusters. Kerry posted a link the other day and I
noticed that one of the amazing new features of Microsoft's 2016 version
of clusters is that you can now do rolling OS upgrades of your cluster
without having to take the whole cluster down for an upgrade. I've
never heard of anyone being able to do that before.

I also noticed that Microsoft relies on VMs to implement quite a bit of
it's clustering functionality instead of doing it down within the
operating system itself. For example, if I understand the referenced
material correctly, Microsoft's response to what on VMS would be a
mount verification appears to be to suspend the VM itself instead of
just stalling I/Os to the malfunctioning device.

What I am trying to say Stephen is please don't assume an elegant
design from another era was not competently designed simply due to
it's inability to meet current standards because it's owners failed
to invest in that operating system.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world