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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!enews.sgi.com!lll-winken.llnl.gov!hookup!news.mathworks.com!news.duke.edu!usenet From: Charles Reese <reese@chem.duke.edu> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: 22 Apr 1996 22:38:56 GMT Organization: Duke University Lines: 109 Message-ID: <4lh1q0$6vj@news.duke.edu> References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <4l2u61$fdg@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <4l8o73$i28@news.missouri.edu> <4laudl$q55@news.duke.edu> <4lgq8c$ffc@vulture.dmem.strath.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: async187.async.duke.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:21867 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:723 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3362 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3204 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:17774 comp.os.linux.advocacy:46442 -- nbc@vulture.dmem.strath.ac.uk (Neil Brendan Clark) wrote: >Charles Reese <reese@chem.duke.edu> wrote: >>I have >>written macros that can accept raw data files from our instruments, load >>them into word, reformat them into tables, transfer them to Excel >>spreadsheets, do some preliminary math operations and then write them to >>files that MATLAB can read. > >This is more or less exactly the kind of work I have done with UNIX in the >past and present, i.e. collection and presentation of real data. The >various tools available under UNIX provided an excellent basis for this, >allowing formatting of the input data, simple mathematical operations >and presentation of whatever you want - tables, graphs and so on, with the >bonus that it only took me a few days to write the scripts and so on. I am >not a shell script guru by any means BTW - I have met people who could do >this sort of thing in an hour or two, or even less... > >It's not that I'm being insulting here or anything, I'm merely stating that >UNIX is amazing at the type of things you are doing. > No offense taken, I know alot of people here at Duke that use Unix for most of their work. Our Dept. system is a Sun cluster and a number of people use Suns or DECs for their personal work stations. I don't have anything against Unix and indeed I am setting up FreeBSD machines at this very moment. The point I was trying to make is that to really use any complex program well requires practice so most people are reluctant to change unless there is a very pressing reason. Thats not just Windows to Unix but Mac to Windows, Windows to Mac etc. I didn't mean to make my argument against trying to take over Windows with free Unix a personal one. I think my attitude is representative of the bulk of people who use Windows now. My first computer was a KIM which was programed in assemply lanquage with a modified hexadecimal keypad, then I went to a Commodore Pet, then an Apple II,a Macintosh,a Mac+, a PC-AT clone and finally I know have a 486 DX2 50 and temporarily 4 486DX4 120s. The point of making this list is that it shows I will change computers and OS when there is a compelling reason to do so and I have used a lot of OS besides Windows. In fact for a long time after I gave up my Mac+, I thought MSW was very inferior. >>This sysinstall program could be expanded a bit, for instance it would be >>nice if one could change the setting for some of the devices. > >You can do this - when booting you will see a kernel prompt. Type -c in it >before it goes away and you get a nice "visual" (cringe ;) editor. > >>What 'Windows' users don't want in an OS. >>NO COMPILING (at least no known compiling). > >But compiling is good, as long as you don't *have* to do it! For example, >to compile a program for FreeBSD so that it is optimized for your machine, >Here's what you do; (in this case I'll compile xearth) > > cd /usr/ports/x11/xearth > make install > >And that's it. The files are fetched automatically, the man pages and so on >are all installed in the right places, and even better, if I want to uninstall >it, I just type; > > pkg_delete xearth-1.0 > >How less difficult could it be? In addtion, with a compiler available, there's >always the opportunity to do some programming if the need ever takes you. >That's how I and many others got into computing in the first place. > Well I do a bit of programming too (Visual C++, see http://www.adeptscience.co.uk/act for a demo program) and I just tried to compile a custom FreeBSD kernel and, following the directions in the Handbook, all seemed to go well except that there was no file name kernel after it was done and no error message! Que Pasa? >>To ask me to compile a program is like me asking you to run a synthetic >>reaction. > >No it's not, it's like me asking you to type a few lines! See above! ;-) Vide Infra! :-) >Unfortunately you are right in many respects in that people using MS >products are incredibly partisan. IMHO it's very sad :-( > Please don't make me a Microsoft partisan, I waited with baited breath for OS/2 to come out but it didn't have builtin network support so I stuck with WFW 3.11 and I always liked the Mac but it just didn't give as much value/dollar as the PC. Note that I haven't switched to Win 95. >-- >Neil Clark >Transparent Telepresence Group ><http://telepresence.dmem.strath.ac.uk/> Cheers Charlie Reese