Mail Archives: opendos/1997/05/07/15:49:08
I will de-lurk momentarily to reply here:
On Wed, 7 May 1997, David Cantrell wrote:
> I can't let this go unchallenged.
>
> "Nicholas R LeRoy" <nleroy AT norland DOT com> wrote:
>
> > > "We mustn't forget to carefully study what has been done before.
> > > The UNIX guys didn't, and look what they ended up with" :-)
> >
> > The most powerful and open operating system available.
>
> Most powerful? Nope. For some jobs, VMS is more useful (I assume
> that's what you mean by powerful?) For some, Win95 is more useful,
> for some DOS is more useful, ...
>
> The most open? Please, Mr. AT&T, let me have the sourcecode! I
> can't? Oh well, I guess it's not that open then. Even OpenDOS is
> more open!
>
You can get the source code for at least 4 variants of unix (unless you
mean the AT&T original SYSV source, of course)
> Seriously, having sourcecode is not wonderful in itself. Only a few
> developers need it (even if the hordes _want_ it for the perceived
> cool factor). My job would not be simplified if I had the sourcecode
> for the operating systems I use.
But others are, so?
>
> > The OS for which
> > C was created. The OS which gave us pipes and I/O redirection. The OS
> > which gave us a choice in shells. The OS that gave us the "device looks
> > like a file" concept. The OS which gave us all this and more....
>
> Yes, it has a wonderful history. So did the Holy Roman Empire. Your
> point is?
>
> Plan 9 takes the 'everything is a file' concept much further. Having
> pipes and redirection is no longer a unique selling point either -
> they're supported by all the other major OSes, including all those
> from the House of Bill.
Come on, you can't say that DOS supports pipes with a straight face, can
you? :-)
>
> > Now, with Linux, the OS which gives us a choice.
>
> What choice? The choice between Dos/Windoze and Yet Another Unix
> Clone? Wow! What a choice!
What other choice can an OS give you?
>
> > I'll be honest here -- I run Linux 24/7. The only time I run DOS (indeed,
> > OpenDOS) is for apps that don't have a Linux counterpart (YET!). And, many
> > of those I run under DosEMU.
>
> I'll say it again. There is no reason for me to use Linux. There's
> no reason for me to use ANY Unix. Either at home or at work. Don't
> get me wrong - I recognise that Linux is a wonderful product, but it
> would NOT help me in my computing tasks.
Don't use it then. But If you told me what your computing tasks are, maybe
I could give you a reason :-)
>
> > Sorry about the ranting, but it pains me to hear unsupported crap like that,
> > most of which comes from people who have never actually USED Unix. The
> > M$ FUD engine at work.
>
> I _have_ used Unix, whilst working for a major defence manufacturer.
> Yes, it does have its place. So does NT, so does Win95 - so does
> Atari TOS. Unix is not The One True Operating System. Some people
> seem to have a rather unhealthy religious fervour about Unix (fools!)
>
Don't insult whitout a reason, please. Otherwise, Linus Torvalds will
come down in a cloud of thunders to punish you for your sins ;-)
[snip]
> > Now, back to the original point. ext2 is a very good file system. Source
> > is available. Works quite well. Fast. Flexible. Let's not create
> > another VFAT or other such abomination.
>
> I have yet to hear a convincing argument that VFAT or NTFS are so
> evil. VFAT exists for a damned good reason (compatibility) and does
> not give problems to most users. NTFS only lacks links, and is
> streets ahead of ext2 when it comes to security features.
VFAT is evil because:
1) It doesn't support paths longer than 255 chars.
2) It's awfully fragile
3) It lets DOS utilities believe it's FAT and break all the long file names
4) It's godawful slow
NTFS is not evil, but
1) NTFS is *very* slow.
2) NTFS is proprietary, so you can't get the specs, so it can't be used in
OpenDOS, so it's not an alternative.
>
> > Let's take something that works
> > and leverage off it. Anything else (IMHO) would be a complete waste of
> > time.
>
> ext2 is good - for a Unix filesystem. For DOS, though, it has some
> undesirable features (such as thisfile!=ThisFile) and is lacking some
> of the features which may be desirable (such as custom sort-orders
> and a more flexible security model).
Making ext2 case unsensitive is a 3 line hack.
Unless you have 1000's of files in a directory, the sort-order is absolutely
unimportant. It could however be added to ext2.
And about the security: you complain that case sensitivity is too
difficult and you want something more complex than the ugw security model?
Anyway, some people is working on adding ACLs to ext2, so that could also
be used.
> ext2 would be a good place to start, but as it is right now, I
> wouldn't use it. It needs many changes before it would meet the
> requirements which have already been discussed.
But what other alternatives are there?
Your requirements seem to be:
a) Case insensitivity
b) Flexible security model
c) Custom sort orders
No fs that's already written and could be integrated into OpenDOS has
these (If I'm wrong, please let me know).
Adding them to ext2 will probably be less work than writing a whole fs
from scratch that supports them.
Adding them to FAT will be ugly (except for the case insensitivity, FAT
already has that :-).
Support for ext2 makes OpenDOS<->Linux interoperation easier (I know you
don't care, but it's a bonus, anyway)
So? What alternative do you have to offer to taking the ext2 and
improving it?
Since it's the only alternative, this argument seems to be fairly useless.
[I'll snip the MS-bashing and the UNIX bashing, because I don't really
give a damn]
> /~~^~~\ David Cantrell
> /~~\ /~~\ part-time NT/SQL Server/Web techie
> /~~\ /~~\ full-time chef, musician, homebrewer
> ( )
> (____/ \____) phone 0171 817 9694 if you really want
> | |
> /----\| |/----\
> /----\___/----\
> /----\___/----\
>
> http://www.thepentagon.com/nukeemup/index.html
>
And back to the lurk-mode.
Regards
("\''/").__..-''"`-. . Roberto Alsina
`9_ 9 ) `-. ( ).`-._.`) ralsina AT unl DOT edu DOT ar
(_Y_.)' ._ ) `._`. " -.-' Centro de Telematica
_..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.' Universidad Nacional del Litoral
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.' Santa Fe - Argentina
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