Open desktop

[Daniel Wynalda]

>In article <394080 at neabbs.UUCP> omeer at neabbs.UUCP (OSCAR VAN.DER.MEER) writes:
>>I am suprised that there is no news about SCO's Open Desktop.
>>Am I in the wrong area for message? If not could anybody who is using
>>the product send me a short review of their experiences with the
>>Open Desktop. 
>

I agree with most of what was replied in the first response on Open Desktop.
We had SCO ODT running here at the Grand Rapids Business Expo about a week
ago.  We were running on a DELL EISA 80486/25 machine.  This machine really
ran nice.  We tried installing a BUNCH of packages to see what would/could
run under ODT.  We had 16MB RAM with a SuperVGA card in it.  The ODT wasn't
able to use the SuperVGA modes at this time, just standard VGA I believe...

The DOS emulation appears to work quite well (DOSMERGE) as I was able to
pop up a DOS window, load MICROSOFT WINDOWS in the WINDOW, and load Lotus 123
from Windows.  All ran and worked on a dynamically sized screen.  Graphs worked
to the screen as well.

All of the Xenix stuff we loaded was able to run.  We had representatives
out from SCO to the show.  They brought the 80486 Server version of the
NFS and TCP/IP.  We didn't ever use it but I imagine it is similar to the
Xenix TCP/IP implementation.  I've never played with NFS so I won't pretend
to comment on that yet...

One nice thing I ran into -- you can use all of the standard Unix multiscreens
even if you are in ODT on some screens. --- thus, multiple sessions with 
multiple windows.  The version of ODT we had was loaded with toys to demo
the X-window capabilities.  I don't know if the release version is... We had
X-eyes (eyes that watch your mouse pointer), xclock, dclock, alot of the
PIC, and GIF files with a viewer, some games, etc.  I had never used Microsoft
Windows up till this point but the windows were all very intuitive to the
computer types... 

As far as performance goes, I didn't see any real degradation due to the
graphics interface.... Of course I wasn't serving 16 terminals or anything
either.... 

In short, (coming from a first time X-Windows user), the package appears
to be quite robust.  Nothing I loaded up trashed the windows server at
all.  The system never locked up on my beyond where I could just close a
window and watch it go bye bye.   There are about 100 copyright notices 
you see on boot.  I find it amazing all of this stuff integrates and runs
without the usually massive EASY TO FIND bugs (like VP/ix had/has).

If you need X and are interested in running it on an 386/486 platform, I'd
look into it.  For our needs at this time, we have to continue to run
Xenix.  Both for lack of faith in a prototype operating system and because
I need to feed lots of terminals.   I have 2 Xenix machines running TCP/IP
now with Xenix-Net on it.  I might think of adding another machine to the
net running SCO Unix or ODT and tying it in with the ethernet in one way
or another.


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Daniel Wynalda       | (616) 866-1561 X22  Ham:N8KUD Net:danielw at wyn386.mi.org
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