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From: kocks@jessica.stanford.edu (Peter Kocks)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: SunOS vs. Ultrix comparison
Keywords: ANSI C
Message-ID: <1991Jan25.181600.6415@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 25 Jan 91 18:16:00 GMT
References: <8012@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Jan24.074910.6738@pa.dec.com> <1991Jan24.102601@wsl.dec.com> <518@decvax.decvax.dec.com.UUCP>
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From what I hear Sun has good costumer support as far as software goes
(is this true?).  Dec has great hardware support but their ultrix
support has much to desired.  Many times they don't know the answers
to questions regularly discussed in this group.   I think this is
mostly because DEC has for years concentrated on their VMS product and
is not up to speed on ultrix.

I have not used Suns much, but I had one horrible experience.  When
you buy a Sun out of the box it does *not* come with a fully ANSI C
compiler.   Specifically, I tried to port my programs to a Sun only
to find that they do not support function prototyping.  I use
prototyping all the  time to avoid making simple errors (I think
everybody should) and cosequently I could not compile on the Sun.  (By
the way if you prototype you can change the order of the functions and
so when you remove the prototype, you may also need to change the
order of the functions). 

Now it is possible that I just did something wrong with this, but a
Sun employee told me this was in fact the case.  The way around it
is to get gcc or some other compiler that actually works the  way it
should.  Of course, most people have made programs compatible with
suns, so you should not have a problem.  Of course, you may have
problems with you own programs.  

On the other hand, there is not nearly the same software base in
ultrix that there is in sun, but most of what you need is there.

I compared the manuals from Sun and Ultrix and found the Sun ones much
better as regards system management.  They made nfs and yp and it
shows in their documentation.  

Peter Kocks
kocks@jessica.Stanford.EDU