Request for Comments: 386 Unix vs Sun vs HP

[Thomas Hoberg]

On PC's: They are definitely cheap, although once you got a fully configured
system (Super-VGA, Tower, big disk, ethernet adapter, Motherboard, 8+MB RAM)
16" or 20" monitor) the price differences between a [34]86 and SUNs tends to
evaporate. If you need color, that tends to be somewhat more expensive on
a SUN, because for some reason color on a Sun is a luxury, whereas on a PC
it's default nowadays. There are drawbacks however: I have worked at home
and on the job extensively with PC's and souped up PC's configured as UNIX
workstations (386 and 486, both with and without Weiteks). If have cost the
company the price difference to the SUN in maintenance work. On Intel plat-
forms bugs abound. There are all kinds of incompatibilities, hardware and
software. If have spend a lot of time just hunting up device drivers for
all sorts of periferals, everytime we upgraded the operating system. Companies
go out of business and perfectly workable periferals end up unsupported.
On paper you can get all the features on a PC UNIX platform that might be
available on a SUN, but they never quite work. True you got a wide choice
of hardware and software vendors, but trying to integrate things into a
funcioning whole can be a fulltime job--time that should rather be spent
working on the *real* tasks. Once you have into trouble, try getting
support: you might be lucky with IBM, AIX and a PS/2 or perhaps with
a DELL, but you see, that's because you'll buy everything from a single
source. With, say ISC's UNIX and a home grown system the only support
available is whatever you are able to supply.

On SUNs: I have never administered SUNs, I have only worked on large and
well maintained and smaller less well maintained networks of Sun-3s and
Sun-4s and working on a SUN when compared to PC UNIX is a joy! SUN sells
UNIX workstations, hardware *and* software as an integrate whole and they
make sure it works. All those add-ins (networking, X-Windows) are integral
parts on a Sun. Any UNIX software is first and foremost available on a Sun.
Lots of stuff from FSF and otheres: just say 'make' and you are done. With
a UNIX PC or any other System V, that usually requires some work, even if
it's officially a supported system. SunOS is now what System V.4 may be
two years from now. It's already very much an integrated system (BSD and
System V) so for starters you *could* ignore that it's not just System V,
but after a while you won't want to. Sun is *developing* V.4, so they
are bound to be the first to offer stable implementations of it and it's
going to be a much smaller step from SunOS to V.4 than from V.3 to V.4.
Sun's aren't really all that expensive, as long as you don't buy
hardware upgrades and peripherals from them. Memory, disk space and
servers are expensive, but you don't have to buy those from Sun!
Get some SLCs (noiseless and pretty) and go buy your memory and disks
somewhere else, after all they all have SCSI ports. If you need color
and floating-point number crunching you should look somewhere else
(e.g. DG Avignon, HP/Apollo, or even 486+Weitek or i860). Sun's for
ease of use and a great programming environment, and on the long term
enhance productivity will by far outweigh the price difference between
a PC and a SUN.

  Tom