Argosoft 4.3 BSD on OS/2

[Alex Martelli]

Interesting ad on Dr. Dobb's Journal october issue - Argosoft Corp.
(voice (451) 795-7921,  fax (415) 795-7948) offers a 4.3 BSD port to
run on top of OS/2 1.2 with HPFS.  We currently use MKS Toolkit, and
are reasonably pleased with it, but MKS does not support long filenames
(despite the HPFS), logins on serial ports (which Argosoft claims to),
file ownerships and permissions (ditto), UUCP, news, RCS, troff, csh
(ok, so MKS's ksh is better, I concur, but some are used to csh!), etc.

I'm also quite interested in the possibility to buy a runtime system
(and C compiler) from Argosoft, to make it easier to port and resell
our Unix applications (...full OS/2 rewrites, like we're doing right
now, are extremely long and costly...).

All in all, it looks like a reasonable approach to put a pure BSD 4.3
on a PC, even a 286 one - and at a reasonable cost too, $499 on special
offer until Nov. 1 (ok, bit too late for that!-).  The unknown is, of
course, how well does it work, particularly the development part; is
it worth our while to switch over from MKS?  One particular problem is,
does it cooperate at all with the OS/2 Tcp/Ip suite from FTP?  MKS does
not, i.e. I can telnet to an OS/2 machine, but then I can't run any
fulscreen editor, including MKS's vi as well as OS/2's own editor.
If Argosoft's vi is able to run on serial lines, maybe it can also
work on top of FTP's telnet?  rsh capability would also be NICE...!

That's all I know right now, although I'm going to fax Argosoft and post
any further relevant info.  Meanwhile, any input would be welcome.

-- 
Alex Martelli - CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Stalingrado 45, Bologna, Italia
Email: (work:) staff at cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex at am.sublink.org
Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; 
Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only), Fidonet: 332/401.3 (home only).