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From: ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Review of MKS toolkit
Message-ID: <27731@usc>
Date: 26 Oct 90 16:01:21 GMT
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I bought MKS toolkit recently.  In case you didn't know, The
Programmer's Shop gives you a educational discount, I paid
something like $125.  The toolkit == MKS Shell + MKS Awk + a huge
bunch of /bin programs.

You can install it in several different configurations, each
implies a different extent to which it "takes over" your machine.
The minimal configuration involves leaving your setup essentially
untouched, and filling /bin with 250ish programs which you can
use at will.  The maximal configuration is for the MKS shell to
come up through config.sys.

Personally, I hate MS-DOS so I've given over my machine
completely to MKS.  The only catches derived from the fact that
I'm a 386 and the installation manual doesn't really talk much
about how to do a good job of installing on the 386.  My "best"
solution is pretty weird:

	config.sys starts with 386-max as memory manager, and uses
	it to put all device drivers into high memory.  Last, it
	starts up MKS shell as shell=

	profile.ksh (the autoexec of the MKS shell) fires a strange
	batch file called msdosstart.bat.  This chap uses the
	386-max programs maxhi and maxlo to load a large sidekick
	into high memory.  The reason this is done using a MS-DOS
	batch file is that it leaves me more memory for the SK
	notepad (i can explain further over email).


Goods:
	- Awk is fantastic. It's better than the GNU awk.
	- I don't like the kornshell (or the bourne shell) but it's a
	huge gain over command.com.  I say things like q `which td` 
	all the time and it works!
	- The /bin utilities are largely welldone and faithfully
	replicate a Unix environment, with some limitations.
	- if you have a ramdisk, he makes pipes work through the
	ramdisk, which is great for pipes faster than command.com.
	- In all, I can't live without it.

Bads:
	- the shell commandline editing mechanism is terrible,
	- Kornshell is inferior to cshell, IMHO, in many ways,
	- it takes a while to move mindsets.  Also, running DOS
	programs from MKS Shell is sometimes downright irritating.
	I sometimes fire a command.com for the purpose :-(
	- there are more bugs than I'd have expected from a
	commercial package.
	- the documentation is good but not great.

Bugs I found:
	- If you exceed the size of the commandline he can deal
	with (max = 8192 instead of microsoft's 128), he hangs.  In
	my /bin which has a huge number of progams, ls *.exe hangs
	him.
	- I tried on tar-compress-uncompress on a large file system
	and the uncompressed version was different from the
	original.  It worked correctly on a few other files, but I
	can't use it with peace of mind anymore..
	- A few other minor shell+/bin bugs.

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ajay Shah, (213)734-3930, ajayshah@usc.edu
                              The more things change, the more they stay insane.
_______________________________________________________________________________