Coherent (vs. 'modern Unix...')

[Jan Zawadzki]

Greetings...
	For all of you out there considering purchase of Coherent:

	I bought it in early April, when they first started advertising it.
Since then I toyed with it considerably.  Few things you should be aware of:

1.  small memory model.  If you think it is not so bad, just think about it.
    It does not sound as bad as it really is.  Most of the stuff you are used
    to will not port under Coherent (probably).  Almost nothing of the GNU
    stuff...  The problem is with the kernel (according to MWC)  They are
    planning a re-write, but will not give a probable release time.  Might
    be a year or two...  ON THE OTHER HAND:  if you are hoping to have some
    fun, and to learn something about UNIX and system administration, this
    is it.  The weekend I got Coherent I learned more about UNIX than in the
    two years I spent playing on our BSD machine.  It is quite different from
    behind the wheel...   Hopefully you will not write anything larger than
    64K for the heck of it...  Again, as a learning tool it is a steal.
2.  If you are serious about development at home, it is still possible, IF
    you are willing to make some sacrifices.  Coherent was done in the spirit
    of the original UNIX: simple and fast.  Working with Coherent will force
    you to go back to the good old days, when a program did one thing and did
    it well.
3.  It is a UNIX.  It does have awk, grep, vi, sed, m4, and many other things.
    Some of the utilities have problems: me, the MWC version of MicroEmacs will
    drive you up a wall if you aren't willing to use vi.  Their tar sometimes
    has problems (Here is an exception: GNU tar ports!).  A lot of people are
    porting stuff over though.  There are two sites where this stuff is av
    available (forget the addreses now, but will post), there is a mailing list.
    You will be surprised to find that MWC is on that list - frequently they 
    will answer questions and try to resolve your problems by email.
4.  If you expecting tcp/ip, X, sockets, or anything like it you will have to 
    wait.  (According to MWC: ) Coherent was designed and buit a simple system,
    and porting stuff like X will require the large (huge?) memory model at f
    first, and then there will be speed and efficiency considerations.  
    Coherent runs well on slow machines with little (relatively speaking) memory
    and X would pretty much stink under such conditions.  Networking has not
    been mentioned on the list yet.  It is probably because so far the system
    did not gain suffiecient interest as a XENIX (or whatever) competitor.
    At this point it really isn't.  (A 'funny': there is no swapper! Quite a
    shock when you first ps -xa !  Actually it is an option: you can run it
    if you want to...)

In all, it is very good system (for what you pay).  Don't expect a freebie, it
is not one.  For home use it should be more than sufficient though.  With the
optional device driver kit you get to mess with the kernel, it's fun (how
many of you get to do that at work..?).
	If you don't like it, you can always return it, anywayz...

Jan

Disc: I am simply a satisfied customer...

yahn at midget.towson.edu