OSX, OS/2, ECS, and Blue Lion (was Re: NuTek Mac comes)

[Liam Proven]

On 17 July 2016 at 19:33, Jerry Kemp <other at oryx.us> wrote:
> windows 95 - yea, even bill gates stated that windows 95 was the pinnacle.

Er, what? When?

> ease of installation - maybe due to the fact that the bulk, if not all of us
> here are experienced users, I've never understood the belly-aching
> concerning installation.  Not for DOS/windows, not for OS/2, not for BSD,
> not for Linux, not for Solaris.

Then I suspect that you have perhaps not experienced the variety of
systems that the rest of us have.

>  Specifically when you are giving the
> installer the entire disk for the OS as a new system install.

What? Since when? I haven't done that since I first got a work PC!
There's always something new to learn, and there are always more OSes
to explore than space to set up multiple PCs. All my machines
multi-boot. All of them. Even the Macs.

> Just grab the
> disk then go.

There's a problem, for instance.

Windows -- any version, 3, 9x, NT, whatever:

[a] copy the files to an installation source folder
[b] run the setup program.

So, for NT4, for instance, I set up a whole client's network of
CD-less machines from a Novell server. Install DOS, install the
Netware client. Connect to the server, copy the files to
D:\SETUP\WINNT4. Reboot with no client, but with HIMEM and SMARTDRV.
CD to the folder, run WINNT.EXE. Proceed with installation.

OS/2 couldn't do that. The installer only runs on OS/2. OS/2 has major
problems with device drivers, which must be copied to media that the
bootable installation disk can see and be corrrectly configured in the
1000+ line, unstructured, CONFIG.SYS file.

You have to correctly configure drivers before you can even start the
installation!

BSD: it doesn't properly understand classic PC partitioning. You can't
install into a logical drive in an extended partition. It can only
take a primary partition and install its own weird alien partitioning
system inside that, so you need 2 levels of partitioning -- one at DOS
level, then inside that, one at BSD level.

And so on.

>  Other settings, like network, even if it is dhcp, have to be
> added somewhere, be it during the install or after the fact.

You fail to spot the much more significant issue of finding a driver
for your network card.

> OS/2 vs the windows GUI - sorry, but the best that anyone is going to be
> able to convince me on here is personal preference.  Its a GUI on top of the
> OS where end users double click icons.

I could give you an illustrated hour-long presentation on the subject,
but there is no point in wasting either of our times on this.

> Aside from the single thread input queue on early WPS, the sole advantage I
> ever saw that windows had over OS/2 was that early on, the *.ini files were
> text based on windows vs binary on OS/2.  At some point, ms followed IBM and
> moved to binary *.ini files.  I don't remember at what version.

No, it didn't.

Windows INI files are still text-based.

However, INI files are deprecated and most config is now in the
Registry, which is binary. A decent editor is provided but alas it
lacks rich global search-and-replace functionality, for which I use
John Rennie's excellent GREPREGISTRY tool:

http://www.ratsauce.co.uk/winsrc/files.htm

Note that it is a simple command-line based text S&R with no relation
to GREP and its famously opaque syntax. I consider this a major
advantage. Others' MMV.

-- 
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