From: tzs@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) Subject: Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Alpha release Linux/GNU/X unix clone on CDROM for PCs Date: 28 Nov 1992 18:03:13 GMT
In article <9211271953.00@rmkhome.UUCP> rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:
>I have seen a comment from SGI, which will sell NT on their bottom of
>the line model, that stated that NT was unsuitable for high end systems
>due to the inability of NT to be configured to system load, etc. This
>seems to imply that SGI doesn't see NT source, either.
It could just imply that SGI doesn't want to *change* the source too much
lest integrating new releases from Microsoft become difficult. If they
change it, and Microsoft doesn't put the changes in subsequent releases,
then SGI is stuck making the same changes in each new release from Microsoft,
or going through new Microsoft releases and picking out the parts they
want to port over to their diverging kernel.
If you are going to use someone else's operating system, a good case can
be made for leaving it alone, except for (1) any changes needed for your
specific hardware, and (2) fixing bugs that the OS vendor is also going to
fix.
Given the possibility of some pretty hot competition between NT and OS/2
and one or two Unix versions, I'd expect new releases of NT to take place
fairly quickly, which would indicate that people with NT source should be
cautious about making changes.
--Tim Smith