Dual Universes

[Martin Weitzel]

In article <130311 at uunet.UU.NET> rbj at uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:
:Some vendors have "dual universe" machines, where you can
:pretend that you're on a machine running Berkeley Unix or
:one running System V. Other vendors start with one as a base
:and add features of the other. Of course it is easy to just
:add missing pieces; the hard part is resolving conflicts.
:
:Given this state of affairs (pre POSIX) how do y'all feel
:about the relative merits of dual universes vs merged systems?
:
:Which model do you think serves customers better?

Well, that totally depends on the demands of the customer. If the
users at the customer's site usually are totally split up and only
work in one or the other universe, the former model has its benefits.
But as soon as they start to pick one thing from here, something else
from there (and boy, they do, they do, I only know too well!) dual
universes get a real pain in the back. At least this is the experience
I've made on a tripple universe system: 'Conditional symbolic links' are
exactly that sort of thing that make me turn and step away if I can (as
you may guess: I could not step away sometimes because there were some
work to do ...)

Merged systems appear a bit smoother in my opinion, but I must confess
that I more and more look over to rid of all those bloated kernels that
have grown by the factor of 20 in size but only by the factor of 2 or 3
(at most) in functionality, because most of the additional functionality
duplicates other existing functionality with minor variations. (I think
I'll give COHERENT a try on the Notebook-PC I'll buy as my next personal
system.)
-- 
Martin Weitzel, email: martin at mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83