> C, C++, and
> Ada are highly portable languages with compilers.
> Perhaps not so "highly" portable. After all, why is there such
>a disparity between DOS Arachne and Linux Arachne. If C is so
>portable, it should be a trivial matter to simply compile the same
>source using a compiler for a different platform.
Graphic libraries tend to be nonportable. I don't know or don't remember which
C compiler Michael was using. A graphic program can be nonportable even between
two C compilers for DOS. Borland's BGI was Borland-specific.
> Maybe there is a future for Arachne. People who don't have enough space to
> really install Linux can use Basic Linux or something similar.
> Is space really a serious consideration any more? In '93 I
>bought a 234MB drive for $325. I bought a 10.2GB drive for $69 in
>'00. The cost of hard drive storage has gone from $1.38/MB to less
>than 0.7 CENTS per MB... or put the other way around, a dollar in
>'93 would buy you 720K, while a dollar today will buy 147MB.
Some users with old computers might be strapped for disk space. Newer hard
drives might not work with older BIOSes or older controllers. My 1.2 GB hard
drive cost about $380 in 1995, not including labor. That hard drive (Maxtor)
went bad in 7 months, was replaced by a Seagate under warranty, but there was a
charge for labor.
