Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!csun!kithrup!sef From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386 Subject: Re: '386 Unix Wars Keywords: sco unix interactive wars Message-ID: <1990Dec31.100329.23178@kithrup.COM> Date: 31 Dec 90 10:03:29 GMT References: <1990Dec30.170614.22573@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1990Dec30.193929.16181@kithrup.COM> <1990Dec31.053142.10444@robobar.co.uk> Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. Lines: 81 In article <1990Dec31.053142.10444@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes: >OK Sean, I believe that, but have you considered how much happier you might >be running SVR4 instead ? Hey, that's a *good* idea...... Actually, yeah, I have. And I've also considered how much happier I might be if I ran xenix. Or ISC. Or (*gasp*) Microport. Or Dell. Or Esix. Etc. My reasons for going with SCO aren't all the same as everyone else's (I mean, not everyone knows the home phone number of quite a few of the kernel engineers 8-)), but I think some of them are relevant. And, as has been demonstrated time and time again, quite a bit of what I want matches quite a few people's desires. Faster kernel, more reliable system, smaller kernel (quite possibly synonymous with the faster part 8-)), bugless devsys, etc. Some of the reasons I do use SCO UNIX instead of some other one (including Mach or BSD, which I can get through various means): familiarity with the product (as if you couldn't guess 8-)), stability, features I want/like, ease of installation, ease of use, ease of maintainance. kithrup has three main uses: email, playing around, and news (roughly in that order of importance). A friend set up the MMDF system while I was in Canada for a while, so I really cannot say how easy or difficult it was. He said it was fairly easy. I've since changed it a few times, in relatively minor ways. While I admit the documentation could be better (all I had was the online stuff), it wasn't too hard. (I think my major gripe with it was the fact that I ended up, at one point, with a 25Mb log file, which had eaten up about three quarters of my available disk space. *grrr* Hooray for the quot command! 8-)) For development, I now only do '386 development. I use both /bin/cc and gcc (with a slight emphasis on the latter, recently, since I've been doing lots of inline assembly lately), and have no real non-standard libraries (I think I replaced the opendir et al in libx.a with the ones from libc, and did some appropriate changes on the header files to match). I run into about as many problems as I did on my Sun-3/50 three years ago, when trying to port stuff from the net. Most of the time, I end up trying to teach programs that BSD systems aren't the only ones with SIGTSTP and company... For news, well, I run trn, rn, and C News. Fairly simple to get working. I spent about three hours worth of work on C news, including compiling times. Using cc, not gcc, incidently. The couple of problems I ran into, I mailed to Henry, and got some feedback. Despite my diatribe against C2, I really do have to admit I run into it rarely. (When I do, I might scream at my snake for a few minutes, though... 8-) 8-)) If it were just a *little* bit more unobtrusive, I think the only reason I would notice it's there is because I use sysadmsh to create users instead of vi, mkdir, and cp. Anyway, kithrup is a very stable machine. uptime reports: 1:57am up 11 days, 6:15, 6 users, load average: 0.14, 0.02, 0.00 (the six users are: root, sef, sef, sef, news, sef.) It was brought down 11 days ago so that I could install an FPU, and move some of the cars around to fit better. Four of those days, I wasn't here at all, and it still handled mail and news (including forwarding three messages to some people who are no longer around to play with kithrup). It took me a shade less than 12 hours to compile the entire X11R4 distribution, a couple of weeks ago (without the FPU, I should add). Although not incredible, I do believe that is credible performance, especially, again, while running other tasks (including news, email, some playing around, and being used as a terminal). Look, this is a bit longer than I'd intended. All I'm trying to say is that 3.2v2 is, I think, worthwhile. I like it, and I *have* considered the alternatives. None of them offers me enough benefits to go with the risk (i.e., a non-SCO supplier [including, potentially, myself!]). About the only thing I want on kithrup right now, I think, is dynamic linking, and I've got a couple ideas about that anyway... This was not intended to be a sales plug or anything. Just reasons why I'm satisfied, for the most part, with what I have. -- Sean Eric Fagan | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; sef@kithrup.COM | I had a bellyache at the time." -----------------+ -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_) Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.