Objectives

Unix must become layman-friendly

It's a sad fact of life that the best doesn't always win. Witness X vs. NeWS, or SQL vs. QUEL. The cognoscenti acknowledge that the better technology lost in both cases, for non-technical reasons.

A similar battle is looming today -- Windows NT vs. Unix. I don't know if Unix is the better technology, but I do know that freeware Unices like Linux are not controlled by commercial interests, and therefore deserve to thrive. Windows NT is controlled by a private corporation, and not any ordinary corporation, but one that monopolises the computer industry and threatens to dictate the way everything is done. The way things are going, the NT/95 camp is going to win.

It's no use saying "That's not relevant to us," or "We shouldn't change Unix for the sake of the rabble".

If Unix doesn't sit on enough machines, it will simply lose relevance and influence.

And then all future technologies will be directed from Redmond. Do we want that?

We've got to get Unix onto Average Joe's machine! But can you picture your mother typing

find . -name *.html -print

Can you?

How can you get your mother to use Unix? Think, think, think!

Simple things should be intuitive and easy to do

Unix makes everything hard. Why should somebody have to type a non-intuitive command like, say, ls to get a list of files? Can't they just see them at a glance?

Difficult things must be easy to derive

I agree, not everything can be reduced to a mouse click. But the OS must provide enough facilities for a user to build up the tools s/he needs, without having to do a man or ask someone. It should all be right there.

I remember I used to back up files with the command

find / -depth -print | cpio -odQcvu > /dev/rmt0

I had to search through manuals, ask gurus, and experiment a lot before getting it to work. It shouldn't have to be this way. Context-sensitive help plus a couple of "wizards" should have helped me build up the command in minutes. That's what I mean by complex commands being easy to derive.

Stick to the spirit of Unix

Unix is the source. Remember, whatever nifty feature other operating systems may boast of, you saw it here first.

Microsoft talks of Windows NT's "true" 32-bit computing and pre-emptive multitasking as though it invented the concepts. Unix has had them for decades.

MS-DOS today gives you piping and redirection. Where did they lift those from, I wonder?

Look at the Windows 95 Find utility. It's a subset of the Unix find, but very well done (It's a subset because there's no equivalent to the general -exec option of the Unix version, only the -exec grep option).

Others have gained success by borrowing from Unix, and extending them graphically. So no matter what we do, the power that stems from Unix's unique philosophy must never be sacrificed.

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