'386 Unix Wars

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <1990Dec30.170614.22573 at ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl at ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes:

| Correct.  Xenix is also damn solid.  As for "limited support of shared
| memory" don't tell that to any of my SVID-style applications which use it
| VERY heavily without trouble!
| 
| Older versions were prone to panicking when heavy use was made of S5 IPC
| features; 2.3.2 and beyond should be ok (2.3.2 is known to be ok here).

  That's been my experience.

| 1) It's "open" about the same way that Sun's Openwindows is -- that is,
|    a window manager with an X environment which others can write to IF 
|    they want to.  It's definately not MOTIF!
| 
|    Ask about something like Framemaker for ODT -- then try to run that copy
|    on someone else's X server, such as ISC's or Dell's.  Good luck!

  I'm not sure what you mean about that one... I have run my WM on ODT
and clients on lots of other machines (Sun, Ultrix, Convex, Xenix,
Stardent) and run the WM from other machines and used ODT applications,
both without unexpected problems. If you mean that SCO is on X11R3 and
the world is on X11R4 about to go to X11R5, that's true. I've given up
on that issue, they have told me about enhancements coming for X11R3,
and asked for a non-disclosure agreement to get a copy of the *public
domain* Athena widgets for ODT. However, the disk is free, and if it
doesn't cost you $500 to run the agreement past a corporate lawyer you
can just ask for it.
| 
| Also, that $995 is somewhat of a loss leader.  Expect to spend another $1000
| on a development system (which anyone will need if they want to program) and
| another $1000 by the time you get everything else you might want (like a NFS
| server, etc).  Also, that $995 is a single-user (perhaps actually two user), 
| single-workstation license.

  For someone who wants to run applications it's just perfect. It needs
no development set or anything else, and you can have one server with
shared applications mounted. A bargain, if it it what you need. I'm
told that the price will go up a lot in 1991, and if that's tre it may
effect our vendor, since we budgeted for a certain price we get by
buying in quantity from a VAR.

| SCO has done the same kind of thing.  BOTH companies seem to feel that you
| have no right of expectation to a bug-free product, or one which conforms to
| the appropriate documentation and standards in the industry -- unless you
| buy a nice expensive support contract.  

  SCO has a nice free machine loaded with SLS's to solve many of the
common problems. They have released things as complex as a new C
compiler there. Many bug fixes can be gotten there.

| Folks, support and bug fixes are TWO DIFFERENT ISSUES.
| 
| Asking how to add an account is support.
| Getting a fix for a persistant PANIC problem is a BUG FIX.
| 
| The first companies should and do charge for.
| 
| The second is something I should be able to get for free, since I paid for a
| WORKING package, not "15 diskettes with whatever happens to be on them".

  I agree completely! I have also asked for an option of four hours of
support anytime for a year, instead of all the time I can use in 30
days. This would allow me to ask the tricky questions when they come up.

| Xenix has ONE big advantage -- it works, and is ROCK solid.  I would still
| recommend it for business use, as you know what you have to spend up front.

  Yes, yes, yes! And it runs in at least 2MB less memory than SCO UNIX.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me