A/UX Release 2.0 (long)
Daniel J. Oberst
oberst at phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Thu Mar 22 14:17:52 AEST 1990
Some early reactions of an A/UX 2.0 beta tester:
A/UX 2.0, the latest version of Apple's UNIX offering, is what
Apple's UNIX should have been all along. When I first installed the
software,it appeared that the installation had failed, and I tried
to re-launch the installer program--surprise!! A/UX *WAS* installed!
Only the Mac Desktop and icons looked and worked so much like MacOS
I couldn't superficially tell it was UNIX!
Basically, A/UX lives in one Multifinder layer that lets you set up
multiple terminal windows from which you can run UNIX (A/UX)
applications,moniter UNIX processes, and do other UNIX-y sorts of
things (much like the 'term' program from earlier versions plus a
console window). In the other layers you run whatever MacOS
applications you want. Appletalk works (either over Ethernet or
LocalTalk); you can access AppleShare volumes; print to a networked
LaserWriter, use Broadcast, or do whatever you would otherwise do in
a Mac environment. Your MacOS/Multifinder environment gets a chunk
of memory equivalent to your installed RAM. So a 4 MB Mac with A/UX
2.0 gets a 4MB Multifinder environment, and A/UX's memory management
keeps it and the MacOS side of the house happy in that space.
What's best is that MacOS disks and hard disk volumes are
transparently visible to MultiFinder and the Mac applications
running under A/UX!! Stick in a floppy and its Mac files can be
read. Attach a hard drive with your MacOS files and applications and
they become accessable to the system, right on your desktop. (Note,
we encountered problems with some non-Apple drives, but we
understand that new drivers/disk formatting utilities will take care
of this problem).
Tired of waiting for a good tn3270 for A/UX? Just use Brown
University's tn3270. Need to do a Tektronix emulation? Just use the
NCSA Telnet you're used to on the Mac. Hypercard, MacWrite, MacTCP,
they all work just like in the Mac OS.
Furthermore, your UNIX files can also be accessed from the desktop
(or via the standard UNIX command line if you wish), directories
appear as folders, your NFS-mounted remote files systems just show
up as folders within your "root" volume (it appears as a hard disk
with the name '/') on your desktop. If you have AppleSingle or
AppleDouble files on your local UNIX disk (or on some remote NFS
mounted system) such as the Gator box creates when it emulates
AppleShare, they will appear as Mac icons that can be launched by
double clicking. There's even a Mac-friendly editor to deal with
UNIX text files if you don't want to fight vi.
If you want or need it, though, you have a command line environment
available. It also includes a powerful 'Commando" feature.(UNIX die-
hards would call it a crutch.) Based on a utility found in MPW, it
allows you to start a command, and then call up a window that lets
you select options and arguments using radio buttons and menus, and
interactively builds the command line for you. So if you forget how
to sort a directory listing by date of last access, the Commando
brings up a dialog box with that option. For those who have spent
too many hours at a Mac and can't even remember the 'ls' mnemonic
for directory or 'grep' to search for a string, there is a folder of
"Useful Commands" with short descriptions of each.
There are some provisos: Only '32-bit clean' Mac applications are
guaranteed to work in the standard login environment. Apple has been
pushing vendors to make newer versions of their software 32-bit
compliant, but there is a 24-bit login environment that will allow
earlier versions of software to run. In addition,(for the hard-core)
there is a bare-bones standard command-line-only login environment,
as well as an X-Windows environment. The login screen offers a pull-
down menu to give the user a choice among these options before
logging in.
Running the 24-bit environment, some niceties are lost (like the
'Commando' command completion). If you run the X-Windows
environment, you lose the Multifinder windows, and get only a
'standard' X-Windows desktop. However, the announced-but-not-yet-
released MacX will run under the 32-bit MacOS environment, so you
can have your X-cake and eat it too! In fact, you can have an X-
window 'client' program running under A/UX, but displaying in the
MacX 'server 'window which runs as one of the Multifinder layers.
Note also that while MacOS applications and the desktop are aware of
the UNIX files and file system, the A/UX side of the house can only
deal with its own (and NFS-mounted) files. Now of course if MacOS
ran an NFS-server...
All this flexibility comes at a price. Running a very early beta
release of the software on an 8 MB MacII, responsiveness was
sluggish at times. Handling remote file systems, updating the
desktop, spooling print files, background processes, all take a
slice of the CPU's horsepower. If A/UX is the UNIX we have been
waiting for, the zippy new Mac IIfx maybe the machine *A/UX* was
waiting for. However, having your whole Mac environment suddenly
living on top of UNIX is quite a tour-de-force. We will be
installing A/UX 2.0 on an early test version of the IIfx to see how
it performs on this machine. A/UX is reported to make good use of
many of the enhancements that have been incorporated into this
machine
X-windows mavins will be pleased to find, however that the latest X-
11 release 4 version of the software is much improved, and performs
very nicely under A/UX 2.0, even on the MacII we first used to test
it. We saw none of the 'rubber-banding' with resized or dragged
windows we saw in earlier versions, and drop-down menus were
responsive and snappy.
The 'battle for the desktop' now has several contenders, with Mac-
on-UNIX added to NeXTSTeP-on-UNIX, Motif-on-UNIX, OpenLook-on-UNIX,
and Presentation-Manager-on-OS/2 (not to mention Apple's own System
7 which debuts this summer) all fighting to win the GUI (Graphic
User Interface) Wars. In terms of a migration strategy, however,
A/UX 2.0 seems like a real a break-through that will allow users to
move to a multi-tasking operating system without losing their
environment and software investments.
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