Re: Unix not the Only Place for "Vanguard" Applications

[tcmay@sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 12:24 AM 7/16/95, alex wrote:
>MS-Windows boxes and Macs still don't do multitasking well;  that's going

Agreed, certainly.

>The preeminence of unix in a lot of the work that's being done isn't the
>result of snobbishness or even personal taste.  It's just a nice,
>convenient platform to do the work on.

I certainly would never say the success of Unix is due to snobbishness,
though personal taste does play a role. And, historically, the
academic/pedantic aspects of Unix played a role in its adoption.

(Most important, I think, was that the proliferation of minicomputer and
mainframe operating systems was controlled by Unix killing off all the
proprietary, vendor-specific OSs.)

>People pick the tools they feel comfortable using, and they match them to
>the job at hand.  I can't run Pagemaker on my linux box so if I need to do
>some layout work I use a mac or ms-windows.  But if I want to set up a web
>server I use linux because it's quick and cheap.  If you want to edit a
>feature film, use an SGI workstation.  If you want to set up a word
>processing system that someone from the temp service will be able to run,
>use ms-windows and word.

Sure. Same here. All I was addressing was the claim that no vanguard apps
ever appear on PCs, that Unix is where it all happens.

>I'm sure that when windows-95 comes out officially, good tools will appear
>for that platform.  But the lack of solid multitasking and freely
>available development tools in ms-windows 3.11 is the reason that more
>robust crypto tools for that platform don't exist, not an ivory tower
>mentality on the part of the people doing the work.

I certainly have not claimed that. In fact, I'll be the first to concede
that Mac users are more ivory tower types, in the sense of being fanatics
and advocates for their platform. (Though there are some Unix bigots out
there, notably now on Linux....I don't see Linux making any strides in the
workstation (SGI, Sun) market, just on the cheap Intel-based boxes
people--mostly non-corporate, it seems to me--are buying.)

--Tim May


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