On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Ryan Ware wrote:

> Linux is a lowest common denomenator operating system.  It runs on 
> commodity hardware that everyone and their dog has.  VMS doesn't. That 
> makes it more likely that things get ported to it first.  That doesn't 
> mean Linux is better than VMS in quality only that more stuff is ported 
> to it.  Incidentally, portability has been why UNIX has expanded while 
> other "superior" OS's have shrunk in market share.  C is portable 
> assembly for the most part, so UNIX could be made to run on any hardware 
> that came down the pipe easily or at least easier than almost anything 
> else.

Essentially, the claim here is that a single superior feature of 
UNIX/Linux has caused it to outsell VMS even though VMS has many superior 
features when compared with UNIX/Linux.  So C code compiles more easily on 
UNIX/Linux than on VMS?  Maybe it was true even a decade ago that more 
software was readily available for UNIX than for VMS.  I can believe that, 
but does anyone know if that is true?

Mike

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