From: utzoo!decvax!cca!ima!johnl
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Title: Re: UNIX System V Release
Article-I.D.: ima.256
Posted: Wed Dec  1 17:39:35 1982
Received: Thu Dec  2 05:08:39 1982
References: hssg40.234

     Unix System V will have a large effect, but more commercially than
technically.  Technically, it is very like System III, and they made a
big effort to make sure that anything that works under System III will
work unmodified under System V.  The main changes are bug fixes, extra
hardware support (new disks, more models of Vax, mostly) and the shared
memory and semaphore stuff.  The switch for users from Sys III to Sys V
should be very easy, unlike moving from V7 to Sys III.

     The biggest effect will likely be that AT&T support will give Unix
much more credibility in the commercial world.  AT&T only supports their
source licensees, so their support will be most appealing to very large
customers (the government signed up a while ago) and Unix re-sellers.
This means that various Unix vendors can truthfully say that they have
the might of the phone company behind their support.  Furthermore, Sys V
is the current Bell version so this gives re-sellers parity with internal
Bell users.  The goal is clearly to push a universal Unix standard.

     Berklix certainly has technical advantages and is cheaper for
educational users who have Vaxes (and presumably SUNs), but the
support of Sys III/Sys V and their increasing availability on all sorts
of diferent hardware makes them the most likely de-facto standard in the
commercial Unix world.

John Levine, decvax!yale-co!jrl, ucbvax!cbosgd!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.

PS:  Before you post a followup saying that "4.2BSD is ten thousand times
better than System V and anybody who disagrees is nuts," please consider
that there are other criteria for picking a computer than profusions of
nifty features and zippy performance on a Vax.  I like Berklix, too.  I
just don't think that it's a serious candidate for a widely used
commercial system, where "widely used" means thousands of installations,
like RSTS or an IBM System 34.