Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a577
From: a577@mindlink.UUCP (Curt Sampson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Where is MINIX going?
Message-ID: <4037@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 4 Dec 90 04:45:54 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 34

> mat@emcard.UUCP writes:
> 
> In article <8395@star.cs.vu.nl> ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
> >How much
> >does full XENIX, with C compiler, cost these days?
> 
> It would be more fair (from a quality, support and program size point of
> view) to compare to Coherent, don't you think???? ($99.95)

I think so.  I've been using Coherent for a week or so now.  A friend is
loaning me his copy of Minix while he goes away for Christmas, so I'll drop
that into another partition and do a head-to-head comparison. If anybody cares,
I'll mail or post my opinions.

From what I've read here and my playing about with Coherent I'd say that
they're rather differently oriented.  I've not yet been able to crash Coherent
(even by doing nasty things like filling up the process table).  I've found a
few things that are definite problems, though they can be worked around.
Coherent has some nifty features, such as the /dev/ram driver and a sixteen bit
compress.  On the other hand, I really wish I had the source to ls so that I
could fix it to interpret the second letter of the command name as an option.
I also wish that their manual pages were in a normal man format rather than the
Coherent Lexicon format.  I wish I had a gotten a lot more technical
documentation with the thing (though I gather I can write away to get the goods
on writing device drivers and the like).  In short, it's definitely got some
nifty features, it's well supported, has few bugs, and is cheap.  There's
supposed to be a large model compiler coming out soon, too.  But it's not very
BSDish, and still no source code...

cjs
--
Curt_Sampson@mindlink.UUCP
{uunet|ubc-cs}!van-bc!cynic!curt
curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca