[Info-vax] OpenVMS as a User Client (was: Re: Final Orace release on VMS.)

[Stephen Hoffman]

OpenVMS as a user desktop, the old VAX/VMS "desktop to the datacenter" 
slogan, etc.

On the present trend and outside of a few hobbyists and VSI developers, 
the numbers of folks using OpenVMS as a desktop client—without a 
Windows or Mac or other client, and with various client apps also in 
use—will be somewhere between sparse and inconsequential.


On 2020-11-17 17:41:52 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <rp0tjh$15dr$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, Chris 
> <xxx.syseng.yyy at gfsys.co.uk> writes:
> 
>> Seems to me, a lot of people arguing why VMS should *not* have a web 
>> browser, again relegating VMS to a dark corner of serverism, when every 
>> other major OS has a web browser support and is expected as a standard 
>> feature. You run a web server, then you need a local browser to work on 
>> it ideally, not on another machine elsewhere.
> 
> Exactly.  And it avoids having to have an additional machine just to 
> run  the web browser.

Approximately everybody is running a client device to access OpenVMS, 
whether that's a Windows system, or a macOS system, or otherwise.

While there are some few folks still using DECwindows locally and some 
few using DECwindows remotely, most folks use remote ssh or maybe 
telnet access.

Terminals and X Terminals faded away a very long time ago.  And as 
command-line UIs too are fading.

>> The more capability any system has just increases the possible market 
>> depth and usefulness, but with such attitudes, is any wonder that VMS 
>> is treated as a joke in some quarters ?. It's 2020, not 1985..
> 
> Of course, VSI can't do everything, and priorities have to be set.
> No-one expects a web browser on VMS to have a high priority, and it  
> might have a priority so low that it never gets done.  But what 
> surprises me is the number of people who think that it is somehow not a
> good idea.  Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds might not be the best 
> programmers, but they sure are good about making people believe that 
> they should drink the kool-aid.

I once thought that, too.

For routine web-rummaging in lower-risk server configurations, mounting 
a share on the server and using a client browser works fine. OpenVMS 
once again has semi-recent SMB server support, too. Be nice if SMB was 
integrated too, but VSI prolly isn't looking to build or buy SMB 
support. But I digress.

Where I do have an interest in browsing directly from OpenVMS, that's 
usually because of some omission or misfeature within OpenVMS itself, 
such as app and patch access within the installation and app update 
tooling. Something else that should probably be added or overhauled. 
Native SMB client share mount support would be nice addition, 
too—particularly given how ubiquitous NAS is now.  Digressing, yes.

And this is all before discussing the work involved with web browser 
porting and upgrading and of supporting and updating prerequisite apps, 
not the least of which is X11. And updates around password management 
and certificate management, and around better app isolation, among the 
other areas that OpenVMS presently lacks. And the need for quick 
patches, when vulnerabilities are identified in the hypothetical web 
browser, or in other parts of OpenVMS. Oops, digress...

For production use, I don't need and usually don't want something of 
the scale and scope and complexity and security exposures of a modern 
web browser in use on a production server; whether Chrome or Firefox or 
Webkit or otherwise. If web access is needed for accessing a remote 
file or maybe for scraping remote data where sftp fails, curl works. 
Yes, I know from and have used Lynx, though not in a decade or two in 
production. And curl scripts more easily than most web browsers.

For client use, I did what you are doing here; running an OpenVMS 
desktop for most client tasks. The effort involved became incrementally 
more work and more effort than it was worth; more for ever-worsening 
results. And that's all ignoring license costs and access, and app 
(un)availability and costs, too.  For resuming my client use of 
OpenVMS, VSI has a decade or two of client-computing-features 
catch-up—as well as necessarily massive license price drops and massive 
app availability increases—to try to lure me back over to an OpenVMS 
client. And yes, a competitive web browser would be part of that.

Errata: VSI is prolly headed for an Arm port circa 2030 too, given what 
Apple M1 is showing for performance and for power efficiency—and before 
discounting M1 battery-related discussions, y'all can safely assume 
that data centers are very fond of server performance, power, and 
cooling efficiency, too. And data centers are interested in what new 
servers will be showing up in the rest of this decade, particularly as 
the Arm processor vendors all react to M1. If Microsoft decides to 
continue past their current dabbling with Windows-based Arm ports, 
this'll all get very interesting for a whole lot more folks working 
with both client and server devices. But, well, I digress.

Errata: VSI has moved to Burlington Massachusetts, near the mall. Darn 
it, there I digressed again.



-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC