From: dfox@hip-hop.suvl.ca.us (David Fox) Subject: re: why would I want to run linux Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1993 17:46:29 GMT
rozum@hpmtay.hp.lvld.com writes:
>I have a simple question to all those who use LINUX.
I got a bounce from that address, so I'll post.
> *** Why should I want to use LINUX? **
>Before you start flaming me with "If you need to ask the question then
>you don't need LINUX" please tell me the applications you are using it for.
>I know that LINUX is UNIX operating system for PC's, but unfortunately
>it can't run my DOS base programs (i.e., Borland C++ compilier, Amipro,
>games, Mktools, etc...).
As a former user of DOS, and a current user of Linux (and for about
ten months or so, a user of 386BSD, which is another alternative for
a free Unix-like OS) perhaps I can add something to the messages you've
already gotten.
I've run DOS for years, but for sometime have really wanted to use Unix
instead. When the Intel 80386 came out, I figured it might be a decent
platform for it. Finally I was able to purchase a modest 386(SX) system,
and considered some versions of Unix (commercial ones) but they were much
too expensive. Then I found out about Linux and 386BSD. FWIW, I put
386BSD on first because at the time it was easier for me to obtain (thanks
to an 'installation party' at a local PC/Unix user meeting).
Mostly the reasons for running Unix as opposed to DOS are because it
can do multiuser/multitasking, has virtual memory, and there are literally
hundreds of utilities and useful programs that form part of the base
operating system. If you wanted similar utilities for DOS, you'd have to
go looking for each one separately.
I did use Desqview and Windows on the 386, prior to using Unix, and
it was sort of OK, but as a user of Turbo C and MSC for DOS, I wanted
to get it to handle some of the more advanced hardware features of
a 386 processor. (After all, I did pay for it, and I might as well
get to use it). Sometime later I was able to get the GNU compiler for
DOS (the DJ Delorie port) but it didn't work well, and in particular I
couldn't get the math emulator to work at all (at the time, I didn't have
a coprocessor, but I've got a Cyrix one now), and it wouldn't run with
QEMM installed, so I had to boot up from a special floppy.
Speaking of Desqview, I wanted to add something. DV has extremely
primitive task-switching capabilities compared to Linux. DV also
has to add multitasking on top of a single-tasking OS, whereas Linux
is built from the ground up to do that. For example, in DV I don't
have very much control over priorities - each application gets interrupted
every 18 times a second, and about all you can control is the priority
of background vs. foreground tasks. In Linux (and on Unix systems in
general) you can control priorities in a variety of ways, and the system
is set up to dynamically adjust priorities based on need. As a result,
I can do things like ray tracing in the background, and still use the
system in the foreground or on another virtual (or real) terminal -
something that would be difficult to accomplish on DOS. I did try this
under DV, and the foreground response time was so slow as to be unusable.
Also, I began to notice that increasingly things wouldn't work with my
DOS configuration, and I ended up having to do lots of adjustments to
config.sys and autoexec.bat (as well as the windows stuff) in order to
get a program to run well.
Linux, while possibly more difficult to use in other areas, makes this
no longer an issue. Also since I got 4 megs of RAM, I'd like to use them
_directly_ (in the so-called 'flat' mode) rather than getting at them with
EMS, XMS, Extended, DPMI, VCPI, or any other kludge that people come up with
to get at it.
Since Linux has its own GCC (featuring not only C and C++, but Objective
C as well) and since it's free with the base OS (which is also free) one
need not run BCC or the other DOS compilers. GCC has several advantages
that one will not find on the DOS compilers, such as the lack of memory
models (memory is memory is memory anyway) which lets you do things like
malloc() as much RAM as you want. (Incidentally, I was thrilled when I
wrote a simple program that allocated two megs of RAM and it worked.)
Also it optimizes very well for the 386/387. DOS compilers can't even
come close. (I did look at MSC 7.0, which at one time purported to
add 386 code generation, but they ended up taking it out.)
As far as applications go, linux does have a DOS emulator that more or
less works. New versions can even run highly graphical games like F19
and probably the Sierra games, as well as character based applications
such as Word Perfect and Quicken. (With sufficient RAM and swap space,
and a sufficiently fast processor, one can run easily multiple instances
of the DOS emulator, each running a separate application. Early versions
of OS/2 only had one "DOS box" and I doubt it could run as many applications
as the DOS emulator can now.)
And it also has lots of other applications that will run directly. There
is a great wealth of fre programs out there that will compile without
much modification (zero in some cases) that once compiled, work on
Linux. In addition to the standard utilities there are systems like troff
and ghostscript (troff is a text markup language for document processing,
ghostscript takes Postscript output, runs it, and derives a bitmap that
can print on a dot matrix or laser printer), and TeX which serves well
for some word processing tasks. (I get comparable output with TeX and
ghostscript to Word 4 Windows, BTW. Also I used Publisher's Powerpak,
and for some strange reason, equations in documents, while looking OK
on the screen, always came up using different characters on the printer.
Of course this works right in TeX and/or eqn, an equation preprocessor
for troff.
>Stephen Rozum
>rozum@hpmtay.hp.lvld.com
David E. Fox email: hip-hop!dfox@amdahl.com
5479 Castle Manor Drive
San Jose, CA 95129 Thanks for letting me change the magnetic
408/ 253-7992 images on your hard drive.
-- David E. Fox email: hip-hop!dfox@amdahl.com 5479 Castle Manor Drive San Jose, CA 95129 Thanks for letting me change the magnetic 408/ 253-7992 images on your hard drive.