Which UNIX should I buy?

[David L. Markowitz]

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		     evil at arcturus.uucp
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I am hoping to get input from the net.landers with determining which
version of UNIX to get for a 386(/25, if it is important).  I plan to
use it for developing software for resale and for consulting work.  
I am somewhat familiar with SCO XENIX (one of my customers uses it), 
so I am looking for a comparison between SCO's new product (UNIX) and 
the other UNIX systems on the market (I am most interested in ESIX, 
but please don't limit the discussion to that).

I plan on having 8 meg of memory and a 330 meg SCSI hard disk, so
minimum memory and disk sizes do not much concern me.

Software (mine and other vendor's) compatability with other (my 
customers') systems concerns me, so SCO seems a natural choice.  On 
the other hand, how compatable are the other UNICES with SCO (I've 
heard *VERY*).  I would doubt that drivers would be compatible,
but how much effort should it take to port a driver from one to the
other; or, should I not even try (normally, this would be what I would
expect, but I HAVE heard about binary compatabilities, and the hardware
would be exactly the same. . .).

Support is an issue, SCO only gives free support for 1 month (and
I don't think I'll be able to fully exercise the system in that time),
and ESIX seems to be supporting their stuff for life (is that
really true?).  I don't think I'll need much, but it sure is helpful
when you do need it.

I'll be doing some development for DOS, so I'll need to be able to 
move files between UNIX and DOS (on another partition).  Even better 
would be a cross-compile capability (ala SCO), but I can buy Turbo C 
professional to compensate for a deficiency such as this.  I hope to 
use GCC anyway (If I can figure out enough about the copyleft to 
determine what I can do with the results -- I THINK it is okay, but 
that is a different posting :->) so this may not be an issue.  (as a 
side-bar, is VP/IX really worth the bux?)

I will want to deal with X -- it would be nice if a driver were
available for one of the 1024x768 EVGA boards that I am considering,
but not required (I have nothing against writing and selling one :->).
I could port the public domain stuff, but how much code can a software
weenie write before he gets to stuff for which he can charge?

I would like csh (a lot, I'd like it).  If the system doesn't come 
with it, it would have to be available as an aftermarket product 
(is there one?).  I mean, ideally I'd like 4.3BSD (nice signal 
handling, job control, etc. -- hey, isn't version 4 gonna have job 
control? when's that gonna be out?), but I don't know of one on the 
market and I believe I'd have a compatibility problem with the rest 
of the universe.

I'd also like (jeez, I'm starting to sound like my kid :->) a
decent debugger.  I've been using sdb and am about to do horrible
things to small furry animals.  I'd just love something like
Sun's dbxtool (or even dbx) or Microsoft's codeview (on DOS).

And, of course, I will want it to handle the news.

So, guys and gals, with these kind of requirements, which UNIX
should I get (I *KNOW* that some of you hold strong opinions on this).

Thanks in advance for the help.


		     Wade Guthrie
		     evil at arcturus.UUCP
-- 
	David L. Markowitz
	Genisco Technology Corporation
	dav at gtc.com