Re: MS gets creamed!
Danny Yee (danny@staff.cs.usyd.edu.au)
Thu, 23 Oct 1997 22:12:56 +1000 (EST)
Glen Turner writes:
> And of course, the cost of installation and maintenance is
> higher. Then there is the joy of upgrading the operating
> system. Anyone that was involved in a MVS/XA to MVS/ESA
> upgrade will recall that most of the work was verifying that
> version X of utility Y would or would not work under ESA and
> then arranging for the necessary utilities to be upgraded at
> the same time as the OS. And it gets worse, as some
> utilities depend on other utilities working, so you must
> upgrade the OS and utilties in the correct order. All of
> which is not something I want to inflict on my parents, who
> own a computer just to do word processing.
Why is it that neither MacOS, any form of Windows, or any commerical Unix
I have seen has any kind of decent system for managing installed software
and handling upgrades? Red Hat and Debian Linux demonstrate that such a
thing is perfectly possible, and not even particularly hard to implement.
It's amazing what making the operating system and most of the software
free and having competition for distributions of it can do...
Elsewhere we have Microstuft controlling the playing field -- and
moving the goalposts regularly -- and not particularly keen on making
installation of anyone else's software easy.
Danny http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/