A question on the popularity of SCO Unix

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <1990Dec7.183300.1310 at cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> cy5 at cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Conway Yee) writes:
| 
| I have been reading the thread on the deficiencies of SCO Unix especially
| related to security.  If SCO Unix is just so difficult to deal with, why
| is it so popular?  Why is competition from other versions of Unix
| destroying SCO Unix?  What would be a suitable replacement?

In order of your questions:
 1a) because it is still a good product and you are hearing from a vocal
     minority (which include me) who find the benefits small and the
     cost in system administration large.
 1b) because lots of Xenix users were convinced that this is the wave of
     the future
 1c) good manuals, lots of drivers, lots of marketing, no better support
     available and lots worse, online man pages, cross compile to Xenix,
     OS/2, and MS-DOS.

 2)  It isn't.

 3)  Dell V.4 is a very cost effective system. However, in every case
     you should do a head to head comparison of SCO, ISC, ESIX, UHC
     (V.4), and Dell (v.4) before deciding. Caveat: count the add-on
     package costs if you need them, and look at bundles like
     OpenDeskTop. The big surprise is NFS which may be bundled or cost
     $300-500 depending on vendor. Oh, and hidden costs, like Dell only
     shipping on tape currently.
-- 
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