GUI

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 09:35:51PM -0500, James Knott wrote:
> That's a huge question.  There are many things in it, that I couldn't do 
> more than scratch the surface.  If you're looking to just point and 
> click, any shell will do.  The WPS can do so much more, that I don't 
> know where to start.  Everything on the desktop is an object, with full 
> properties, which can be use for many things.  For example I used to 
> download stuff from Compuserve.  In the properties for a file, there's a 
> page for descripton, history etc.  When I downloaded a file from 
> Compuserver, the application I used, (Golden Compass) would pull the 
> file.idz from the download, and place the contents in the description 
> box.  The download date etc., would be stored in the history and so on. 
>  Then you could use the searching capabilities of the WPS to search on 
> the contents of the description, history, access dates and times and 
> much, much more, in about a complex of search as you could imagine. 
> Another nice thing, was the "shadows", which would be similar in concept 
> to hard links in Linux, in that instead of having the "shortcut" as in 
> Windows, the shadow was actually another instance of the original 
> object.  This means that changes in one affect all.  Also, the object 
> you see on the desktop, is actually part of the attributes of the file, 
> and not a separate file pointing do it, in the way that icons are linked 
> to files in Windows and Linux.  This means you avoid the problem you 
> have in Windows, where it's possible to move a file in such a way, that 
> the shortcut loses track of where it is.

Shotcuts yes, but if the file is actually in the 'Desktop' directory it
will just be the file itself you see.

> It would be a whole lot easier to show the things the WPS is capable of 
> than to try and describe them.
> 
> Also, I have found the multitasking in OS/2 to be better than Linux and 
> far better still than Windows.  For example, on my Athlon XP 1700 system 
> with 512 MB, opening Konqueror will interupt the playing of a midi file. 
>  I never had such a thing happen in OS/2, even on a 386!  One of the 
> things OS/2 users used as an example, was to format a floppy in the 
> background, while doing something else, with little effect from the 
> floppy operation.  This compares with the Windows desktop virtually 
> locking up in a similar test.

I find a lot of things on Linux depends a lot on your kernel, how it is
optimized (and 2.4 sure could use some help, which 2.6 is going to
give), as well as which sound card and drivers you use.  The OSS drivers
really suck badly.  ALSA drivers are almost always much faster and more
responsive, and they are always much more feature complete for a sound
chip.  Of course DMA access being enabled on the drives also will help
things a lot.

> There were features in OS/2, back in 1992, that have still not appeared 
> in Windows.

Well my Amiga 500 could format a floppy while playing a mod file no
problem (along with doing other things) on a 7.16 MHz 68000.

> In order to appreciate all the benefits of OS/2, you have to use it a 
> fair bit.  And even though I've used it for almost 14 years and even 
> provided 3rd level support at IBM on it, there's still a lot of it, 
> which I haven't used.

Lennart Sorensen
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