newbiesforever, it's outrageous how Scott Adams misrepresents & insults *NIX users.
even 24 years later, this is unacceptable.
I think you should go and burn him on his web page, maybe even hit him over the head with a linux laptop!
actually, you should call together a squad of loyal *NIX users to do that!
/s

I think I know what type of servers you're talking about. They're not uncommon in websites that use chat to assist visitors with queries, technical issues and the like.

These days operating systems are gathering steam to become ubiquitous since each can run at least some of the others apps. There was a time when nothing from one would run on anything else and Users were like rabid dogs and those running just about anything but Windows were smug and haughty about it. The most common advice back then was "RTFM !!!". There were message boards that grew so heated that some actually resorted to death threats. Way more then than today what OpSys one preferred was an Identity. If you ever were a fan of Wayne and Garth, you may recall the scene at the end of the 2nd film in which Garth spots a geeky girl carrying a Unix manual and instantly falls in love. That's just part of the same "cloth" that makes the cartoon funny. Unix was only known and preferred by elitist geeks, but they kinda had earned that. Everyone else was just ignorant plebs.

LOL I remember that Dilbert comic strip, imo calling any computer a Unix, Linux, Windows, Apple, etc. is fine because that is what a person has on it. my Dell had Windows 10 when I bought it but no more because I installed Linux over it so now it's a Linux computer.

It was funny, and still is. You don't seem to have read that entire 'story' leading up to that, since it's not an insult. Nor are you thinking about the context and time it was written...since there WERE (and ARE) 'Unix Computers'. HP/UX systems ring a bell? AIX? Those are 'Unix Computers', since getting anything else to run on them is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. While there were (at the time) Unix distros (Bell SystemV and SCO come to mind) that would run on PC grade hardware, they certainly weren't used widely.

Since most of the 'real' Unix systems at the time ran on specialized hardware, like SPARC from Sun, which were:

1. Not mainframes
2. Not PC's
3. ONLY for running Unix

...that makes them 'Unix computers' doesn't it???

So which display of ignorance are you talking about here??

Sorry, but that's a waste of time and you have made me waste enough time already, so no. I told you before to go to the point.

@TB0ne,
Bingo! Right on the button!

I'm glad I didn't see that (luck, or I wasn't old enough), but--take your pick: the forum elitists of old threatening to kill you, or the merely snide and passive-aggressive trolls more common now. If nothing else, you could respect the old elitists for the honesty and courage they expressed their hatred and arrogance in. While you thanked heaven that the internet separated you and made it unlikely they would find you. (Actually, that applies perfectly well to both kinds. The "silver lining" surrounding all the soft cyber-bullying I find in forums is that it's so easy to walk away.)

There used to be four distinct classes of computers - Big Iron, Midis, Minis, and PCs and they all had dedicated and utterly separate operating systems until IBM started the OS/2 project to create a single operating system that would run efficiently on all four. So back when the cartoon was created it was common and accurate to define computers by what OpSys they ran. OS/2 grew out of DOS and Unix and spawned Windows NT, Linux, and BSD that also will run on most hardware and no longer limited to one or two of the four. Now that various embedded systems are becoming common in every field and for good and for ill Smartphones and Tablets are becoming an ever-increasing, all pervasive form of computing, the path is no longer a muddy trail and approaching at least a paved 2-Lane Highway, so to speak, where it won't be many years at all before the OpSys becomes superfluous.

The very reaction that apparently forgets (or never knew) that computers used to be tightly defined by their operating systems shows we are well on the way. It won't be long before any operating system that survives will run on essentially any new hardware that comes out and the choice of which is entirely based on whether you wish to be your own Admin or you leave that to the manufacturer of the hardware. This cartoon will become completely confusing, probably within another decade, two at the most.

When I was working in libraries in the 1970's, the procedure was to find programs that would do what you wanted, then buy a computer that could run them. You never bought the computer first because there was no guarantee that it would run your preferred program.

But wasn't UNIX the first OS that would run on any mainframe or mini because it was written in C and not in machine code?

That sounds slightly similar to my researching components for the new desktop computer I will build soon. I've been telling myself I should choose the CPU before the motherboard, not vice versa.

It's satirical humour. There is no real insult intended to anyone. So I have to say you're reading far too much into it.

(It's been posted on LQ before, I'm sure of it, but probably several years ago.)

I personally feel extremely offended by the cartoon [I don't know why, I'll have to come up with a reason].

I've certainly been to an academic institution at the time in which the cartoon was published and they had "Windows Computers" (transitioning from 3.something to 95) and "Unix Computers" (Silicon Graphics machines). That was the terminology on the campus. I seem to recall also that my brother, who was in the industry at the time, referred to things in a similar ways.

-hello? yes, I saw them again, five guys, dancing like girls! in the TV!, it's really offensive!!
(...)
I don't know, the neighbourhood boys or something like that....
(...)
ah yeah, backstreet boys..., well, I find it offensive and and I want that thing banned right now!!