From: davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) Subject: Re: Coherent 4.0 / Linux wrt BYTE Mag. Date: 23 Jul 1992 17:41:58 GMT
In article <1992Jul23.052153.19175@athena.mit.edu>, jgifford@attmail.com writes:
| There is a VERY nice write-up on Coherent 4.0 in the August issue of BYTE, page
| 37. The author says a lot of nice things about it, but it seems that linux
| is better, cause we now have X, and coherent doesn't.
Keep in mind that linux and Coherent have gone very different ways.
Coherent provides a small number of features, well documented and
robust. linux provides a large number of features (X, VM, etc) but there
are multiple solutions to the same problem, tons of undocumented things,
and not everything is of uniform quality.
I think that linux has a great deal of potentioal, but it's not ready
for end users (and may never be). So your definition of "better" is one
thing and someone who wants to use the o/s for regular work may have
another. The people who take the time to package linux parts from many
places are doing a great service, perhaps as great as the people writing
code, because they are drawing people into the linux community who would
not otherwsie make the effort to try it. Some because they haven't the
technical smarts or net access, some (including me) because they only
view linux as another variant to which applications should be ported.
At the moment Coherent and linux are useful to different user sets,
and I don't think either is "better" in an overall sense.
--
bill davidsen, GE Corp. R&D Center; Box 8; Schenectady NY 12345
It never ceases to amaze me that otherwise rational people, able to
understand calculus, compound interest, and the income tax form, can
continue to believe that poker is a game of chance.