Berkeley Utilities & Other Questions (long)

[Bob Debula]

In article <3635 at rodan.acs.syr.edu>, avilla at rodan.acs.syr.edu (Aldo
Villa) writes:

> Facing the prospective purchase of a personal (laptop/transportable to be
> precise, but this has little importance here), I have since a long time been
> involved in the effort of trying to understand differences and similarities
> between the various UNIX-clones.
> A part from the fact that there are various releases of these two versions
> already, but when you go to the commercially available versions of
UNIX, then 
> the field expands almost with no limits.
> 
> I have read of the following clones:
> 
> 1) UNIX system V release 3.2 by AT&T

This is the current release of SysV which is readily available from most
of the 386/UNIX vendors.  It is the release currently in use at the AT&T
ed centers for their current courses (just got back from "Shell Scripting
for Programmers" a few weeks ago & this is what we used off a 3B2/600 
(bleah!)). Xenix binaries are supposed to be supported in this release
(and beyond).

> 2) UNIX system V release 4.01 by AT&T

This is the Unix International SunOS/AT&T SysV/Xenix merged product
which was scheduled to get everyone together in one big happy boat.
This (will be) SysV.  Then came OSF.....

> 3) ESIX by Everest (sp?)

Everex's port of SysV (release 3.2 most probably).  "Port" in this sense
means that they got it to work on the 386 platform and probably added
some non SysV features (but the key point is that it should do anything
you can do on an AT&T 3B2 SysV 3.2 system).

> 4) XENIX from SCO (Santa Cruz Operation)

The latest version of Xenix is actually a UNIX SysV port (SysV 3.2, I 
believe as this would make sense).  This has been ported and "customized"
much as mentioned in ESIX, no doubt.
 
> 5) UNIX from SCO (Santa Cruz Operation)

See 4)  ("Xenix" per se is a thing of the past per SCO's current direction
I believe).
 
> 6) Open Desktop from SCO (Santa Cruz Operation)

SCO's implementation of a Window Manager for XWindows at a guess, not
a UNIX per se, but a product for (their brand of) UNIX.> 

 
> 7) UNIX-AIX from IBM

Many, many flavors of this (AIX/370, AIX RT versions 2.x and below I think,
AIX V3.1 for the RS/6000 (the current version, I believe), AIX for PS/2
(don't know the version).

> 8) UNIX-SUN 4.01/2 from Sun MicroSystems Corporation

SunOS in all it's incarnations (3.50, 4.0.1, 4.0.3, 4.1
(current version, I believe)).  SunOS runs on SUN workstations
or their clones (Solbourne, Toshiba). SunOS is
customized BSD (with select System V enhancements).  

> 9) UNIX from Interactive

386/ix is a SysV port with "customizations" (see 4).

> 10) UNIX-Intel (previously Bell-UNIX) release 3.2 (??)

386 port of SysV 3.2, etc.
 
> 11) UNIX-Intel (previously Bell-UNIX) release 4.0.(??)

386 port of SysV 4.0, etc.
 
> 12) UNIX-AUX for Mac computers

Apple's flavor of UNIX for MacIntoshes (MacII with PMMU,
any 68030 based Mac).  I *believe* (correct me if I'm
wrong please) that this is based upon SysV 2 and select
Berkeley enhancements.

> 13) UNIX-ULTRIX (for Hewlett-Packard micros?)

Wrong, ULTRIX is DEC's UNIX.  HP-UX is Hewlett-Packard's
(HP-UX is SysV release 2 based with enhancements from
BSD).

> 
> I'm somehow discouraged by all the above; and I'm even more discouraged when
> I read of the attempts to standardize UNIX worldwide; but then it comes out
> that there are two of these standardization consortiums; actually, not true:
> they are three: OH MY GOD, WHAT A MESS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Open Software Foundation (IBM & cronies) & UNIX International (AT&T, Sun, and
cronies) are the two I know about, who's the third?  (Keep in mind some
folks belong to both consortiums).


For a 386 PC-AT clone based system, you've got your choice of Everex (ESIX),
Interactive (386/ix), SCO UNIX 3.2, Bell/Intel UNIX 3.2 or 4.0,
a Dell version I think, and Microport (I think I heard they're back in
business with 3.0e -- i.e. UNIX SysV release 3.0 "port").
Taking a wild stab at picking one, I'd probably pick SCO as they *seem*
(from my reading of the newsgroups anyways) to have the best support and
support for a broad range of attached devices.  I had Interactive 386/ix
a while back & ended up selling it off from sheer frustration with
machine incompatibilities (things *may* have improved since).  Microport
UNIX 3.0e we have a site licesnse for & it seems to be reasonably
functional, but is now somewhat obsolete.

AIX for PS/2 I have no personal experience with, but I hope that it
is better developed than the RS/6000's current version (AIX v3.1).
We are field testing an RS/6000 model 320 and thus far it seems to
have (quite) a few bugs and some distinct differences from the systems we are
used to (SunOS & HP-UX). 

=============================================================================
Bob DeBula                    | Internet:   bobd at hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu
The Ohio State University     | Disclaimer: These are my views, not the U's
Davros sez:   When my Daleks compute they use X-TER-MI-NALS!