Re: Unix and Xywrite and whatnot

[Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx]

RH asks:

> Very interesting post, Harmon. Tell me a bit more. Can you run Virtual PC
> processes in full screen text mode?
>
    Yup, and switch back and forth from window to fullscreen
instantly. With a multi-sync monitor, of course.


>  Does the Mac even _have_ something like a
> full-screen black-and-white text mode?
>
      Well, in Virtual PC it does, otherwise --- ??? I suppose you
could turn the whole screen b&w but why?/


> Can you run Linux as a child process? What
>
     That I have not tried so far. You can dual-boot to the PPC
Linux, of course. As I do to BeOS, but I've Linux running on 3 other
machines at the moment, and haven't exactly felt the need for another.
Frankly, I'm too busy exploring the Mac still, but sooner or later I'll
probably try Linux under Virtual PC.


> about COMM stuff and the quality of TCP/IP?
>
    You have access to serial, parallel, and ethernet ports under
Virtual PC. However, I'm not sure at all why you would want to use those
COMM and TCP/IP funtions instead of the native Mac ones -- which work
extremely well, and are very un-problematic, like most Mac stuff.


> And suppose you don't run ANY graphix
> programs -- no PageMaker or Photoshop or DTP -- are there still advantages?
>
    So you mean your just essentially running DOS and XY, and maybe a
browser, and fax/comm app? Well, then I probably wouldn't bother. Then
you don't need windoz, or w95, or anything either. However, for the
computer neophyte, or the technically impaired, I now heartily recommend
they buy one of the new I-Macs for the sheer ease and painlessness of
the experience compared to setting up even a simple DOS box, let alone
any windoz stuff.


> What about file management, grep, that sort of thing: is there a command line?
>
   File management is pretty simple -- you can choose icon view or
"list" view, which like a dos or windoz file manager, gives you the file
names, sizes, etc. but you can still drag and drop the files. I switch
back and forth all the time. Have some folders -- directories -- open as
icons, others open as hierarcheal text lists at the same time. I've got
a egrep utility that is exellent -- but the new "sherlock" finder that's
built in is pretty slick as a search engine that works on your
harddrives, cdroms, or the network and internet. OTOH, here's where
MacOS falls down -- as of v 8.5, there still is no pre-emptive
multitasking (that won't be here until MacOS X, the next full release I
think) and so some things can slow you right down. Still, the G3's are
so fast that it's not bad. You can really see the difference tho when
you boot BeOS on the same machine.
   No command line per se -- unless you get something like
CodeWarrior, which let's you into the guts of MacOS, compiles, etc. And
you know, not having a command line was always one of those things that
made me turn up my nose at Macs -- but when you start playing around
with the Mac way of doing things, I don't really notice it not being
there.
    I'm sort of amazed at it really -- if anyone had told me a couple
of years ago that I'd be buying a Mac, I'd have flat out laughed in
their face. And when I did buy it, I told myself that I'd be putting
Linux on it right away and just boot to MacOS when I wanted to use
Pagemaker, Photoshop, etc -- but I still haven't bought PPC Linux and
don't even know if I will, the MacOS is quite intriguing.

> Are there command line utilities?
>
     Let's say you can do everything you need to do, it's just
different.

> When you say it runs "most" W9x/NT/OS2, could
> you amplify on the "most" part? What doesn't run?
>
    You have to install w95 or NT or OS/2 in Virtual PC, it won't
just run the apps. And you can create a number of VPC "disk images" with
one OS on each, and then start up one of the other. The only apps that I
know of that people have problems with are some of the PC games, and
that's mostly a matter of speed. But if playing w95 games is a big thing
for you, well -- and Mac games are pretty outstanding in their own
right. I'm sure their are w95 or NT apps that make a lot of hardware
calls that won't work -- for instance, you can't install a PC MPEG
decoder card in a PowerMac PCI slot and expect to run the w95 MPEG
software -- that's a pretty silly idea.
    Don't know why you would want to run *any* windoz app in
emulation under VPC when you could run a native Mac version anyway. The
Mac version of Photoshop, for instance, has more functionality than the
windoz version, as do many other graphics apps.



>
> And speaking of OS/2, does Apple have a future? If the OS/2 analogy holds,
> excellence doesn't necessarily mean dominance or, as you would have it, a future.
>

    Well, since the new IMacs came out 3 months or so ago, they have
outsold all other computers, and 29% of those sales are to first time
Mac buyers, with a third of those people who were switching from wndoz.
And Mac users were already 22 million strong. A fairly large newspaper
-- I think Portland, ME -- just dumped their other computers and bought
all Macs, and a lot of universities are spending a lot on Macs again.
Plus Apple is obviously pretty committed to their product, whereas IBM
just wasn't, and have now essentially dropped OS/2 development. Apple
seems to be going great guns for development at this point.
    One thing you have to realize -- you are, I know from past
conversations, very aware of the sort of media bias which did it's best
to kill off OS/2 --- well, the exact same thing has been happening for a
long, long time with Apple, I've come to find out. Look on this
website:  http://www.mackido.com/Myths/mt.html for some of the exposes
of media FUD. Another one, http://www.macaddict.com has a fair amount
of it as well from time to time.

> - but what do I care? Whereas, if your standard is the "excellent" StarOffice
> leviathan, which I've installed, also free, under OS/2, then we have radically
> different ideas of quality.)
>
     I only have really used StarOffice under Linux to any real
extent, and yes, as far as any of the other heavyweight, GUI based
wordprocessors are concerned, I much perfer StarOffice. Not in the same
league as XY for pure writing, but I prefer SO to WP or Word. It's big,
yes, but so is Microsoft Office or Corel WordPerfect Office. Obviously a
word processor that instantly becomes a browser, a html editor, a
spreadsheet, or a draw or chart program is going to be a heavyweight. XY
is in a different universe -- not sure about Smart Words or whatever.


> But if a Mac could really run all those OSes *concurrently* -- run them exactly as
> they run natively, communicating with devices and etc etc -- well I'd buy one in a
>
    Well, now, you're asking a bit much there -- I don't think
you'll get them all running *concurrently* --- one at a time, yes. There
are memory constraints, this is a finite universe. I've got 160 meg of
RAM. I allocated a minimum of 64 meg to Virtual PC (and another nice
thing about Macs is that you can allocate RAM to an app on the fly -- as
long as you've got it to give, but Macs want a *lot* of RAM), and had to
run VPC in fullscreen mode to get OS/2 to install, although after the
install it will run in a window on the Mac desktop.
    Oh yeah, you know how XY4 won't go into graphics view in a OS/2
window? You have to switch to fullscreen first? Well, running XY4 under
straight DOS in VPC, it goes into graphics view no problem in a window.
Pretty neat. And so far I haven't found any keystroke problems --- and
you can do DO whatever, just as well as you can in DOS. In fact, you are
in DOS, whatever DOS you prefer (I prefer Caldera's DRDOS, it's free and
open source code and the best mem management). I installed OS/2 more as
a toy than anything else, don't see much point in booting it to run XY,
and I really never had many native OS/2 apps anyway. Native Mac Netscape
sure beats the pants off of OS/2 Netscape anyway you look at it, and
there's just no end of Mac utilities.



> flash just as a server. I guess the bottom line is, are you overstating the case
> for the Mac's ability to run apps that belong to other OSes?
>
   The Mac only runs them in Virtual PC -- well, there are a couple of
other emulators as well. Softwindows is supposed to be pretty good, but
a lot of people say VPC is better. Then there's RealPC, which gamers say
is better for PC games. For me, I decided that there were very few
windoz apps I really needed, as long as there were native Mac
equivalents. Pagemaker, Photoshop, Painter, etc. Anything else I've got
-- XY, CorelDraw, I sure can't see any difference between it and a real
PC.
    I think you'll find that there are very few apps that won't work,
and probably none you can't do without --- I mean people in this group,
writers, not into a lot of weird hardware stuff. And then, of course,
the people like that -- mostly people who are into heavy A/D traffic,
doing sound, video editing, etc. are largly using Macs, BeOS, or other
workstation equipment anyway -- not windoz boxes.
    In this vein, it should be said that Macs are really not
competing with PC's, they are instead the low-end of the workstation
market, in the realm of Sun, HP, and SGI workstations.

> a moment that the Linux folks are polishing daily, and I suspect that Linux lies in
> my future. Is Red Hat 5.2 a significant improvement?
>

    You bet! We run a bunch of Linux servers at work, and on that
front, there have been simply major improvements, especially in
security. But also in ease of installation, etc. Don't know what sort of
"instabiltiy" you were seeing, as Linux has been extremely stable for a
long time, but if you had problems it was more likely because things
didn't get configured right from the beginning, rather than any basic
problem in Linux itself. Don't know as I can say the same for OS/2 Warp
4, I had many more problems with it than with 3. But then I wasn't
bothering much at that point anymore, Linux had won me over. My
daughter's and wife's machines still run on Warp, but I haven't a lot of
patience with it anymore. Of course, compared to the @!#@#% nightmare
that w95 is -- and believe me, I know all about how to deal with it, we
have to use it on a few machines in the library, gag!
     That's why I've become so infatuated with the Mac ---
everything just is so effortless, you install something and it just
plain *WORKS*, no screwing around, no fighting, pulling out your hair,
it just works. I mean, nothing's perfect, eh? But this is sure as hell a
long way ahead of most of it. I don't mind all the work of a unix system
because it's pretty straightforward for the most part -- it's work, yes,
and time consuming, and takes a fair amount of knowhow (or else I
wouldn't have a good paying job), but it's not a demented nightmare like
w9* or NT. Macs are a bit like a holiday.

--
Harmon Seaver hseaver@xxxxxxxx
http://harmon.bml.usouthal.edu
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All is impermanent, but this too shall pass away, and the way of the
Samurai is death -- so speak your mind now, or forever hold your peace.
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Copyright, Harmon F. Seaver, 1998. License to distribute this post is
available to Microsoft for US$1,000 per instance, or local equivalent.
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