wanted: UNIX or clone

[Tim Wright]

In <1991Apr29.212706.17365 at unixland.uucp> bill at unixland.uucp (Bill Heiser) writes:

>In article <1991Apr29.031654.17360 at agate.berkeley.edu> ilan343 at violet.berkeley.edu (Geraldo Veiga) writes:
>>In article <1991Apr28.225644.10469 at nstar.rn.com> larry at nstar.rn.com (Larry Snyder) writes:
>>>ilan343 at violet.berkeley.edu (Geraldo Veiga) writes:
>>>
>>>>By the way, are there any mainstream commercial applications
>>>>(WordPerferct, 123, Dbase, etc) that won't run under  some 386 Unix
>>>>variants? 
>>>
>>>Sure - look at Norton - they are specifically for Interactive.
>>
>>Is this for real or is just Interactive's marketing?  They distribute
>>Norton, right?  Does the software use any ISC specific feature (file
>>system, drivers) ?
>>

>Well, I for one wouldn't even consider trying to run something like
>Norton Utilities on a system which was not specifically supported by
>Norton.  It does such specific things (such as dealing with disk sectors)
>that it could make a real mess of things in a hurry.

Indeed, the norton utilities for UNIX have their own device driver(s) and
are intimately linked to the ISC fast file system. Hence it will not
run on non-ISC (derived) versions of UNIX. The biggest problem I have seen
is with packages for SCO UNIX. They usually work *IF* you can persuade them
to install. Not always easy since they sometimes check for such things as
"The SCO internationalisation supplement" - hard to find on ISC !! It would
be nice if software developers could use the generic sysv/386 stuff unless
it really is vital to stray outside.

Tim
-- 
Tim Wright, Dell Computer Corp., Bracknell    |  Domain: tim at dell.co.uk
Berkshire, UK, RG12 1RW. Tel: +44-344-860456  |  Uucp: ...!ukc!delluk!tim
Smoke me a Kipper, I'll be back for breakfast - Red Dwarf