System V Release 4.0 Developer Conferences

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

  I'd like to post a few comments on the ATT V.4 conferences. I haven't
been yet, but have a few general comments.

In article <1988Sep26.213223.407 at utzoo.uucp> henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:

| The kernels will be very big, probably needing a 16MB machine just to get
| started.  Nobody liked the sound of that.

  A Sun rep told me that it would run on our 4MB Sun/3 and 386i
machines. He didn't know or wouldn't say about the Sun/2.

| Training people to use and administer such a complex system will be
| lengthy and difficult.

  I really doubt that the user will know or care what the kernel does.
Certainly most of our users don't care if a file is local or NFS
mounted.

| There was inadequate detail on the commands that will be part of the
| standard environment.

  I heard the same thing.

| ABI implies that a conforming machine must have kernel support for both 
| NeWS *and* X.  This is ridiculous for people who plan to run neither.

  I would expect most if not all of that to be in device drivers. ABI
doesn't imply that all machine have all possible devices, as far as I
can see. Programs from identical version of V.3 won't port if the needed
hardware isn't supported.

| The over-friendly system-administration interface isolates even the
| knowledgeable administrator from what is really happening underneath.

  ATT seems to have gone from "having to know all the nuts and bolts" to
making them inaccessible.

| In general, overall, the system is not getting simpler or cleaner.  Quite
| the contrary:  it is getting bloated, complex, and slow.  It will be
| difficult and expensive to run, support, and learn.

  It's not getting smaller, for sure. If the extra features are added in
a modular fashion I would expect that it would be cleaner.

Disclamer: I've identified the fact, comments, and opinions pretty clearly.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me