ODT questions

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <3024 at anomaly.sbs.com> mpd at anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) writes:

| First, its an incredible memory PIG. If you don't have 8mb of RAM, don't
| even think of using XWindows. (And, why buy Open Desktop without X Windows?)

  Here's a man who remembers when we could run everything and 16 users
in 2MB. I just paid $52/ea for 1MB SIMMs. You need 4MB to run any
reasonable UNIX, so you're looking at a hot $200 for the upgrade. And I
can say from experience that ISC and Intel UNIX are pigs running X in
4MB, too. We do have one system with 4MB, X, and two users running ODT,
so it can be done (big fast disk).

| The documentation consists of 2 rather thick manuals, and tons of on-line
| documentation. This to me is a drawback, since I prefer tons of manuals
| to wade thru, instead of attempting to access online help (which, from
| what I saw, required you to run XWindows.)

  I don't know what you're looking at, the complete set comes to a good
size box. And I would never, ever, run a system without online docs again.
| 
| He had to go thru the installation procedure *5* times before he got the
| system configured correct (and, this guy's been doing UNIX for YEARS, not
| a few months) each time wading thru the 40+ disks which accompany the
| software package.

  And he probably let his experience save him the trouble of looking
something up, right? I've put in ODT and Xenix without trouble or a
manual, but I always have to look with Ultrix. I've seen it installed by
total morons, so it can't be that hard.
| 
| Disk space is tremendous, and if you install all of the packages on the
| system, something in the order of 160mb is required.

  By "all the packages" I assume you mean every package from every
vendor, not what somes in the ODT pack. I'm looking at a working copy of
the disks as I type, and they are in four boxes. I admit there might be
15 rather than ten disks/box, but still 60*1.2 < 160. With all the
packages, big /tmp, and big swap you can fill a 160, but it will install
on a 120 with room for a user or two.

|                                                      Also, boot time is
| incredible with all software packages installed - I've seen my IBM 4381
| boot in less time!

  Here I agree, the boot time can be slow, particularly as it mounts all
the NFS partitions and stuff. Still, it's less than a minute, and how
often do you do it? I boot monthly because a few things seem to overflow
about then, but it doesn't fall down a lot, so you don't do it often in
normal use.
| 
| >	3)  Is any one running this on a system as whimppy as a 20MHz
| >	386sx with an mfm drive and 4Mb of memory, if so how slow are
| >	things (esp. X)?
| 
| He ran his on a 16mhz 386DX, which is probably as "fast" as a 20mhz SX,
| but he had 8mb of RAM. Still SLOW.

  I run my window manager on a Compaq 20MHz at work, 4MB, and I do it
because it's faster than the Sun 3/260 (load average of 7). It's
acceptably fast as a single user system, or one "real" user and 2-3
window managers.
| 
| My decision on the product based upon what I've seen (the points above
| being the "important" issues to me) is that I'm not going to waste my
| money, until a more streamlined product becomes available.

  I like it because it's so much cheaper than the competition. By the
time you add NFS and DOS capability to the others, you get over the cost
of ODT. Unlimited user license is a lot higher with ODT, no question
about it. And The development set is a bargain if you use the xenix/DOS
cross compile and codeview, but pretty pricy otherwise.

  ODT is a great bargain if you will use most or all of the features. If
you don't need ODS, NFS, SP/ip, X, SQL, then it's probably not cost
effective. It packs a lot of stuff in a package which goes about $650
street price.

  And wait until the end of the year to see the pricing on some of the
V.4 ports with everything but the kitchen sink bundled...
-- 
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