Re: [pc110] Benefits of LINUX on PC110

Vaughan Pratt (pratt nospam at cs.stanford.edu)
Tue, 30 Dec 1997 13:02:47 -0800

>I am just curious as to what the real benefits are to running LINUX on a
>PC110

I run my PC110 in two basic modes. On the road I use it as a PDA, at
home or work I plug it into the net and access it remotely from my
desktop, or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

For the former mode I'm not really sure how big an advantage Unix is
over Win95. However for the latter there is absolutely no question:
Unix beats Win95 hands down, and so that's what I run on my PC110,
which is why I don't know much about the former.

Everything you can do at the machine, X-windows lets you do remotely,
only better because you have a full-size keyboard and a much larger
monitor letting you bring up any reasonable number of large and
readable windows. Win95 offers nothing like this, in fact it doesn't
even ship with a telnet daemon! To get even a fraction of the
capability of Xwindows under Win95 requires very expensive third-party
software.

For all I know Win95 might do other things badly too, but its medieval
networking philosophy is preventing me from finding out what its other
failings might be.

Vaughan Pratt