From: Phil Fraering        <pgf@tyrell.net>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 95 05:23:04 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The OS wars and DOOM...
Message-ID: <199507211218.AA20295@tyrell.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



This is a point I want to bring up regarding the current
OS war being waged on this group.

Apps have migrated from Unix to the Mac and the PC before in
the past. In the further past, this has included curses and
other-types-of-text-control packages such as PC versions of
Emacs and nethack and the like.

Of course, this was not done with graphical programs; everyone knows
that graphics isn't Unix's strong suit, and what it has is so different
from the PC, etc., blah, blah,...

Except that for the past two or three years, it's been WRONG.

One of the hottest games on the PC, DOOM, was originally written in
Nextstep (a Unix variant, and a ghetto even amidst the "ghetto" of
Unix) and then ported to the PC.

I don't know which Unix environment they're using in the "master"
development effort before porting to other environments today.

Given that games usually program close to the hardware, and are 
therefore the _most_ difficult things to port from one environment
to another, it really makes one wonder why Excel isn't out for
(for example) Linux or BSD today.

Then again, SCO WordPerfect is...

Phil