COMPARISON OS/2 <-> UNIX: Info wanted

[Sebastian Snoopy Schmitz]

Dear Netters/Netteresses,

I am currently writing a study for a large German computer manufacturer 
which compares the applicability of UNIX and OS/2 systems esp.
concerning the commercial arena (i.e. banks).

Since I am a UNIX person I know fairly little about OS/2 (I am
just starting) and especially I have difficulty here in Germany
in tracking down people who use OS/2 systems on a large scale.

The idea is also that OS/2 and UNIX systems should integrate
nicely. Hence I am looking for users who are willing to share
some of their experiences. I will be able to give you credit in
the study and I will surely do so (if you wish) but I will
only post a small summary because the whole study will run to about 150 pages
and I cannot possibly translate all of those.

Needless to say I also have some specific questions, listed below and I
would be very happy if I could get some answers. But please - I do not wish
to start religious wars. And so please do not flood my mailbox
with flames about me even going near OS/2 etc. etc.
Its difficult enough to be objective already, so please do not try
to make it harder on me by posting flames. I do read these newsgroups but
sometimes a lot of messages get lost over the Atlantic so its probably
best if you mail your responses.

I WILL SUMMARISE BUT IT WILL TAKE UNTIL DECEMBER WHEN THE STUDY IS
COMPLETED ! PLEASE TRY TO BE PATIENT.

Also I know all about the purity of Open Systems and the inherent evil
of Proprietary Systems and I will mention these aspects but I will not
crosspost to alt.sex.bondage ! ;-)

The questions: (all concern OS/2 1.2 and System V.4)

1- Large Networks
How well suited is OS/2 for large networks (i.e. several
hundreds of machines) ? Any help administering them ? How about
software distributions and installation ? Servers ? Can OS/2
subnets be easily administered from large IBM hosts ? How is
the performance ?

2- Software stability
How stable is the software ? Does it crash often ? Are there any
glaring stability problems which allows easy hacking into the
system ?

3- Programming Environment
How good is the OS/2 development environment ? Compilers, Debuggers,
profilers, editors and source code control systems ? How does it compare
to UNIX ?

4- Administration
How easy is the administration of OS/2 systems also regards to network
admin ? How easily can one identify performance bottlenecks and remedy
them (tuning) ? Software installation ?

5- UNIX <-> OS/2 Integration
Shared data - how can OS/2 get at data on a UNIX beast and vice versa ?
Can programs communicate with each other within OS/2 easily ? How do
these mechanisms compare to UNIX sockets/streams etc. ? Can a prog under UNIX
send data easily to one running on an OS/2 host (like RPC) ? How does the
interface to the LAN Manager compare to UNIX RPC/NFS etc. ? How does
this affect portability ?

6- User Interfaces
How easy can one port a program from OSF/MOTIF to Presentation Manager and
vice versa ? What about the Xvt people ? Do they have something to help ?

In all of the above I would love to hear from real OS/2 users and
administrators and not only programmers/developers.

Your help is deeply appreciated. Please do let me know if I may quote you
by name in the study or of you prefer to have your input paraphrased
and your anonymity preserved...this goes for the study as well as for the
summary.

Thank you very much in advance...

Love,
Snoopy (Sebastian)
---
uunet!unido!ixos!snoopy -or- snoopy at ixos.de
"Every passing hour brings the solar system 43,000 miles closer to globular
cluster M13 in Hercules - and still there are some misfits who insist that
there is no such thing as progress." - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.