Re: Re: MISC personal computers

[Jaap van Ganswijk <ganswijk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi dreamers,

At 17:24 19990208 -0500, dirnfir wrote:
>Hmm, it seems you and I have seperate views on this subject...  If I had the
>technical ability / funding / whatever to start a computer company, it would
>operate thusly: there would be no 'commercial operating system'  I would
>sell a MISC motherboard that came with operating system disks.  On those
>disks would be an open source Forth development system, graphics and I/O
>libraries, a basic GUI, ASCII text editor - the bare essentials.  The system
>would be targeted at geeks.  When the first modifications were written, I
>would incorporate them into the operating system and bundle them on the
>disks with the next batch of boards.  My company would contribute by doing
>quality control and correcting Human Interface issues.  After a year or two
>of that, I would be ready to attempt to sell to the average user.
>(Remember, my staff would be preparing it for mass consumption during the
>"geek" period.)  The system would still appeal to geeks, but would also be
>suitable for home users.

Let's try to learn a lesson from history:

OS's and hardware are almost always 'grown' seperately.

Independent OS's:
- Unix
- NewDOS (alternative but much better OS for the TRS-80)
- CPM
- MS-DOS
- Xenix
- Windows 3
- Windows 95
- Windows NT
- Linux
- BeOS

Dependent OS's:
- AppleOS
- GEM (=AtariOS)
- AmigaOS
- SinclairOS
- Commodore64OS
- OS/2
- NextStep

I could say a lot of each point seperately but basically the independent OS's
did much better than the dependent ones. Even after changing category later
in life (like GEM, OS/2, NextStep) they didn't make it. Only AppleOS is still
alive...

Ergo, to promote a new computer/OS combination would be silly. Let's seperate
the problem and see what questions are left:
1. Why would I like to write a new OS for the MISC?
2. In what way would a MISC be better for running an existing or new OS?

At 1. Why write a new OS? We already have too many. Port Linux.
At 2. I don't know... It would really have to execute compiled C code fast,
because of the vested interests, I think... And you really can't compete with
the pentium-boards industry. Going multi-processor is a weakness offer
(and adding an enormous amount of undue complexity at the same time).


Greetings,
Jaap

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