LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: David Drury <idavid@smug.adelaide.edu.au>
  To  : Mike Andrew <mikero@norfolk.nf>
  Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 01:42:26 +0930 (CST)

Re: More space required

Hi,

The point you've missed about the IBM PC architecture, and one that it
excelled at was that it was cheep. IBM was faced at losing a sizable
proportion if the Mini/Micor computer marcet to the Apple computer. It
needed a desktop Microcomputer fast to establish its place in the market.

They therefoe did what any sensible business does in the same place (and
in some respects made good engineering sense in terms of keeping price
down),they used cheep off-the-shelf products to establish something that
could compete on the same level as the Apple computer.

Thanks to Lotus 123, the IBM PC actually took off, and the rest is
history. The problem we face now is not so much one of crappy initial
design (the design met the initial needs), but one of extensive backwards
compatility being imposed by software and hardware manufacturers.

What it will take is for software and hardware manufacturers to work
together to bypass the limitations of the PC architecture, whilst
retaining binary compatibility with existing Wintel software/hardware.

It really requires the PPC in the Wintel market. If an oportunity were
presented to use say an Alpha Chip with PCI BUS, and SCSI interface, and
priced at Desktop prices, linux could actually be a winner here.

You could supply a new PC, running Alpha Linux. Applications would run
native for Alpha Linux, but it could also run FreeMWare, and thus everone
could run their favourite M$ applications, and play all their Fav games.

Dreaming of better days.

cya

-- 
David Drury

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