Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!news.funet.fi!kannel!Kimmo.Suominen From: Kimmo.Suominen@lut.fi (Kimmo Suominen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp Subject: Re: BSD and HPUX, The Questions Continue... Message-ID: Date: 3 May 91 07:39:15 GMT References: <1991May2.202710.5152@odin.diku.dk> Sender: kim@lut.fi (Kimmo Suominen) Organization: Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland Lines: 50 In-Reply-To: carllp@diku.dk's message of 2 May 91 20:27:10 GMT Disclaimer: These are my opinions unless otherwise stated >>>>> On 2 May 91 20:27:10 GMT, carllp@diku.dk (Carl-Lykke Pedersen) said: Carl-Lykke> I would be much happier with HPUX if [... stuff deleted ...] Well, many of these things you'd like are BSD specific. I like the idea of having a System V environment. Of course HP could provide another set of commands with the BSD style, like for instance SunOS has /usr/5bin and Dell's System V Release 4 has separate /sbin and /usr/ucb. But then, is there really a need? I have been using HP-UX for about 3-4 years now, and I have been more than comfourtable with it. Of course the fact that it is the first Unix I got to use may bias my opininions. I have used SunOS quite a lot, too (about 2-3 years). I use a couple of the 5bin utilities to make myself at home. Basically I can find everything I need on both HP-UX and SunOS. I have also gained some experience on HP Apollo's Domain base SysV environment. On release 9.7 it was plain terrible. I didn't know SysV could be so unfriendly. I really had got too used on HP-UX's adaptions from the BSD world. But then, I didn't like to switch over to the BSD 4.2 environment either. Now that SR10.2 is running on our Apollos I'm getting along much better. DomainOS has some really nice things in it, like environment variables in symbolic links. That would be something to have in BSD and HP-UX too. Finally I might write a couple of words on IBM's AIX. It has quite many BSD features in it, too. Somehow it still doesn't work really painlessly for me. For instance completion in C-shell is a mess, and some important things like cron and printer spooler have been combined in the most weird way (you use "print" instead of all the three commands lp, at and batch). They are all queues, you see... ;-) Of course I have made HP-UX really my home by compiling PD software to implement the things I seemed to miss on HP-UX. Many of these things were missing on SunOS (and others) also, like Perl, Elm (now HP has it, but it is not the same), GNU Emacs, diff, C-News, nn, irc less and many others. Supporting these tools on both HP-UX and SunOS is after all really easy. Of course, sometimes you run into code that simply won't run on BSD, but the HP-UX is System V. On the other hand, the easiest "port" I've ever made was telling the software, that it was being installed on a BSD 4.2 platform ;-) That's my two pennies worth. Regards -- Kim / Internet: Kimmo.Suominen@lut.fi "That's what I think." / Bitnet: KIM@FINFILES