Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!sungod!davidsen
From: davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (ody)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: ENIX V.3.2 info
Message-ID: <1539@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 8 Aug 89 18:09:54 GMT
References: <4YlaPoO00WB5QCWGBM@andrew.cmu.edu> <803@micropen> <36041@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 44

In article <36041@bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost) writes:

| As a development system, I recommend Interactive over both ENIX and
| XENIX.  I expect ENIX will grow into something more usable, but in its
| current state it's pretty tough to develop on.  XENIX is, well, XENIX,
| with all that implies in terms of strangenesses, compiler problems,
| etc.

  It depends on what your target is... if you need to run in UNIX and
MS-DOS the Xenix cross compiler will save you a lot of time. You can use
one make file to roll both versions, and Xenix/286, too. That's
important if you resell (or give away) your software. And the new
development set has the AT&T compilers included. The MSC compiler also
supports a lot of ANSI stuff not in the IN/ix compiler (as of June). I
don't think you can broadly say one is "the best," because they all have
advantages.
| 
| One last thing to note:  XENIX will run beautifully in 4Mb; the others
| really want 6Mb or more.  But for the price difference you can get
| quite a lot of memory.

The street price is about $300 more for Xenix. That will just about buy
the 2 extra MB. Before I bounght Xenix I got evaluation copies of
Xenix, IN/ix, and MicroPort. MP wouldn't run serial ports without
double panic, and both systems with the AT&T compiler failed on some
simple programs (the compiler generated asm source using registers not
in the 386). I chose Xenix because it was the most solid I could get.

If I could wait until October I would look at Open Desktop. With TCP
(including a good SLIP), X11R3, DOSmerge, NFS, and a database for <$1k
list, it seems like a really good deal. I don't know what the
development kit will hold, but it should include the 3.2 stuff, which is
MSC and AT&T both. I also assume it will have the fast filesystem from
3.2 (any comments, SCO?) which is good.

I am happier giving facts and letting people decide what fits them.
Obviously I have been using SCO for many years, but I also have used MP
and tried IN/ix, and they are both a good fit for some people.

The recent issue of _MIPS_ on disk controllers and UNIX on 386's is
relevant to a decision, also.
	bill davidsen		(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me