From: htoaster@yabbs
To: all@yabbs
Subject: winnt vs unix
Date: Wed Jun 15 20:34:51 1994

I won't even justify Windows enough to consider it as a usable system.
However having used unix (and unixlike systems) extensivly, and now using
Windows NT at microsoft for my work here are a few of my impressions as
to plus and minuses of each:

Windows NT:
 pluses:
  - user interface is easier at first
  - windows networked file systems are a lot easier to setup/use than
    NFS (which is the most widely used unix networked file system).
  - user interface is more consistant
  - tons of apps work with it (and lots of good ones, like MS Word)
  - much better kernel design (microkernels are the way of the future).
 minuses:
  - it isn't very customizable.  for instance I hate title bars, I'd rather
    have the extra screen space for my own use.  not possible on NT (without
    hacks).
  - everything i do is done on my machine.  i can't telnet to other machines
    to remotely use them (but i can mount there disks if i just need to get
    to data on them).  In addition my email can only be accessed on it, 
    and all of my code is kept there.  not really distributed, the way 
    unix can be...
  - with the default setup it is easy for a user to fuck himself.  just
    go remove the wrong file and your system is hosed (on unix most of
    the files on the disk are r/w for root only).

Unix:
 pluses:
  - remote connections are cool (how do you think you get to yabbs :))
  - i can customize the hell out of my interface (under X I can use whatever
    window manager I want, any shell, whatever).
  - killing the system (unless you're root) is difficult to impossible.
 minuses:
  - the kernel design really is bad...monolithic just doesn't make sense
    anymore.  and i shouldn't have to recompile kernel to add/remove device
    drivers
  - much harder to learn in the first place

In general unix makes much more sense for a multiuser system, Windows NT
just wasn't designed to be that.  However Windows NT is a nice desktop
OS, esp in a corporate environment.

Also in general people can run unix on a lesser machine.  BSD and Linux
are both very reasonable on a 386/33 with 8megs, but Windows NT really
needs a 486/33 and 16 megs minumum (3.1 isn't too useful with more, but
3.5 (which will be out soon) is much better with respect to memory).

alex