ENIX?

[Evan Leibovitch]

In article <31129 at bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd at bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost) writes:
>In article <178 at csun1.UUCP> weyrich at csun1.UUCP (Orville Weyrich) writes:
>|Also, does anyone have any experience yet with using ENIX? The configuration
>|I am considering using it on is:
>|     a 16-MHz 80386-based AT-clone (Goldstar Technology GST-386) which
>|is built around a Micronics motherboard and which has an Adaptec 2372 RLL 
>|controller (1:1 interleave), Seagate ST-4096 hard drive, 1.2 Meg floppy, 
>|8087 coprocessor, two standard RS-232 ports, two standard parallel ports, 
>|a CGA video board, 2-Meg of main memory, and AWARD BIOS version C3.03.  

Our setup is almost identical, except 5 meg, no 80387, and no RLL.

>We set up ENIX about a week ago and have had several problems.  First,
>ENIX comes with virtually no man pages, a serious problem to serious
>users.

Enix comes with two levels of documentation. The first, and cheapest
level, assumes you have the 9-volume Prentice Hall set of Unix SysVr3.2
manuals. All that's supplied are release notes.

Everex will, for about $300 more, sell you what they call 'complete
documentation', which is essentially the P-H set in Everex binders.

The release notes, themselves, are OK in content but miserably laid
out. The info here deals with hardware specifics, descriptions of
new features (plus a good list of the Xenix-compatibles). Also tucked
away here is other information which may not be on the P-H set, like
how to create a distribution disk usable by 'installpkg'.

>Second, the ENIX manuals are often incorrect or incomplete
>(one such case is the information on altering the key table which is
>both inaccurate and incomplete).  Third, some packages (such as the X
>addition) are poorly implemented and may not include things which are
>generally considered "necessary" (such as xset).

I can't speak about these. On our setup, installation and operation
have been as expected with no surprises. We haven't had to remap
keys or use X-Windows.

>Additionally, we
>found that several of the ENIX disks were marked incorrectly (ie
>diskette "2 of 5" and "3 of 5" were actually two copies of "2 of 5"),
>making installation impossible.

That didn't happen here.

>Some of these problems may be corrected as ENIX becomes more mature,
>but in general we were not impressed.

There is a new release coming out which is supposed to address some of
the earlier concerns. BTW, it's now called OSIX, as SCO's lawyers thought
Enix was too close to Xenix.

We have been using our system for software development and as a medium
sized Usenet node. No problems to date with anything we've compiled so
far.

I've also found the Everex technical people on the phone to be technically
competent and quick to respond.

PS. I've suggested followups to this go to comp.unix.i386. They've been
debating some of these Interactive vs. 386/ix vs. AIX issues for some
time.
-- 

Evan Leibovitch, SA, Telly Online, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
   evan at telly.on.ca / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
Scientists have proven conclusively: Research causes cancer in lab animals