Unix for 386-PC / Information wanted

[uunet!bria!mike]

In an article, Dipl.Phys. Thomas Wutzke writes:
|many thanks for the information about Coherent, the unix-clone for $99.
|Well, that's not what I need, it has too many restrictions for my use.
|
|So, now I'm looking for a full-flavored Unix, like SCO V3.2 Unix. But
|I still got some questions about it, and the dealers here in Germany
|are not able to answer them [...]

XENIX is the most popular form of UNIX that is floating around.  XENIX 2.3.2
is pretty close to SVR3 (although there are some annoying internal differences)
There are still some problems with SCO UNIX, so I'd be careful on that one.

As far as running DOS under UNIX, if at all possible, avoid it.  At best,
it is a kludge that will swallow your memory and dog your machine.  At
worst, it will crash it (VP/ix has done that to me a few times ... lovely.)

Hardware-wise, if you want good performance on the machine, a 386/33 with
8M of RAM is pretty much a pre-requisite.  If you're going to put anything
besides the operating system on the box, then look for a healthy disk
(at least 120M) and a reasonably fast controller.

Caveats:

1. Support from SCO for us has been excellent (thanks, Scott!), but 
   I have heard many mumblings out there from others who haven't been so 
   fortunate.  Where there is smoke, there is fire, I say.

2. SCO *loves* to nickel and dime you to death.  IMHO, no operating system
   should be shipped sans development tools and text formatting tools --
   SCO charges you extra for both.  If you're eventually looking at TCP/IP
   then that provides SCO with another billing opportunity extravaganza.

You mentioned MINIX a bit ago, and I don't think that this would be the
wrong way to go.  The price is right, and you get the source.  However,
you'd have to be an OS junkie that *loves* getting in the thick of things.
However, if you're an "armchair sysadmin", then a prefab OS like XENIX
is probably the road you wanna take.

-- 
Michael Stefanik                       | Opinions stated are not even my own.
Systems Engineer, Briareus Corporation | UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike
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technoignorami (tek'no-ig'no-ram`i) a group of individuals that are constantly
found to be saying things like "Well, it works on my DOS machine ..."