[Info-vax] openvms and xterm

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Mon, 6 May 2024 16:28:12 +1200, David Goodwin wrote:

> Why does Unix need a text file to store information about mount points?

Linux does not need a text file to store information about mount points.

> Been a long time since I've seen PowerPC or MIPS PCs on store shelves...

They are used in computers, just because the stores you frequent don’t 
carry them, is merely a reflection on the kinds of stores you frequent.

> The PowerPC port ended when IBM stopped including ARC-compatible
> firmware on new machines.

It didn’t stop Linux from continuing to support POWER, though.

> The MIPS port ended when you could no longer
> buy MIPS workstations with ARC firmware.

So Windows needed some special handholding to run on non-x86 
architectures, where Linux was able to operate without such training 
wheels.

> Microsoft could have taken on supporting these platforms with whatever
> random firmware they have like Linux does. But Microsoft is selling a
> product here ...

Funny, isn’t it. The Linux kernel project has maybe 1000 regular 
contributors. Microsoft has not one, but close to two orders of magnitude 
greater developer talent on its payroll. Yet those Linux developers are 
managing to support about *two dozen* major processor architectures, while 
Microsoft struggles to get beyond one.

> None of them ran into technical problems.

I didn’t say they did. But they were just too expensive and difficult to 
maintain. Windows simply wasn’t designed to make this sort of thing easy.

> Would be interested to see Linux using fat32 as the root filesystem.
> Last I checked it wasn't possible due to missing features in that
> filesystem.

Linux will boot off any filesystem that GRUB will read.
<https://askubuntu.com/questions/938076/install-boot-on-fat32-partition>