RE: Cheaper Servers?

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002 rob@dekko.com wrote:

> In your statement about the 400 not having a bit mapped display, were you
> referring to all, or just some of the many clients that the 400 supports:
> PC's, net stations, dumb terminals, etc...

I was referring to none of the clients.

The iSeries does not have a bit mapped display.  When was the last time
you plugged your SVGA monitor into the back of your iSeries?  OS/400 has
no concept of graphics.  Sure some clients do, but are those clients
running OS/400?  Of course not.  The statement (quoted below) said that
linux office applications could be ported to OS/400.  That is not true
because those applications rely on libraries which in turn rely on an
operating system that understands bitmapped displays.

You could possibly port X11 to OS/400 without requiring OS/400 to
understand bitmapped displays.  That would require you to run an X server
on some other operating system somewhere so you could display the X apps
running on the iSeries.  But this would not strictly qualify as using
OS/400 to replace microsoft windows as was the original intent of the
thread.  It doesn't qualify because with windows and unix you don't need
another machine to provide the framework for applications to run (in this
case the actual displaying of the app), whereas with remote X display you
do.  And since you still require another non-OS/400 machine to display
your program, why waste time with the stupid port in the first place?
Just run the app on the platform it was written for.

However I can see that there could be reasons for wanting to make your
iSeries be an X client.  If it was possible to port X11 to OS/400 that
might be interesting and useful.  You could for example write an RPG
program with gtk display possibilities, or maybe a Motif maintainance
program.  The key question to resolve is:  can X11 be ported to an
operating system that has no concept of bitmapped displays?  The answer to
that is:  no, it cannot - at least not entirely.  But enough of X11 might
be portable to make it useful.

> On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Shields, Ken wrote:
>
> >          Issue 2. Linux has a very brisk suite of office tools, all of
> > which I'm sure could be incorporated into an OS/400 pc operating system.
>
> No they couldn't.  Those office tools require bitmapped displays which
> OS/400 does not support.  I am unaware of single office application on
> windows or linux that does not require a bitmapped display, whether GUI or
> command line.  Unless you consider sed to be an office application.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com