Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!boulder!sunybcs!bingvaxu!leah!uwmcsd1!ig!jade!aurora!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!homxb!whuts!mtune!codas!killer!elg From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Ksh availability? Message-ID: <1903@killer.UUCP> Date: Sat, 24-Oct-87 18:03:15 EST Article-I.D.: killer.1903 Posted: Sat Oct 24 18:03:15 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 27-Oct-87 01:27:06 EST References: <147000007@tiger.UUCP> Organization: Bayou Telecommunications Lines: 56 in article <147000007@tiger.UUCP>, rjd@tiger.UUCP.UUCP says: Since there seem to be a lot of AT&T employees here who have apparently never seen a Sun, first, a brief description of exactly what a Sun is. First, it is not particularly intended to be a multi-user computer, it is intended to be a networked graphics workstation, especially suited to CAD and heavy-duty software design. That is, each person has a Sun on his desk with a bunch of RAM and a 16 to 25mhz 68020 (in Sun-3 models), and a network wire going out the back to a file server (which may be a heavily endowed Sun, in w hich case 4-8 Suns per fileserver give better performance than SCSI disk drives, or may be any of 40-50 vender's machines who have adopted the Network File System). Your file server can have a variety of disk drives on it, including Eagle-class and Super-Eagle class drives (500mb to 1000mb). The operating system run on each machine is a heavily-hacked version of Berkeley BSD4.x (Bill Joy, who was one of the guys behind BSD, is one of the founders of Sun Microsystems), with various networking and windowing extensions. If I recall right, Sun is also under contract with AT&T to help merge together features of Sys V and BSD4.x. This is a completely different class of machine from the aforementioned AT&T machine, which is intended, from the specifications presented, to be sort of a cheap alternative to a low-end Vax (i.e. stand-alone, multi-user, big disk drives, glass TTY terminal interface instead of windowing interface, etc.) As for "general wonderfullness" and "System V - consider it sub-standard", well, I'm posting this from an AT&T 3b2 right now. Believe me, compared to what kind of stuff is available on a Sun, Sys V.2.2, at least, is so plain-vanilla that it's (almost?) painfull. I wouldn't attempt to use Sys V without getting either csh or ksh, and a whole bunch of baubles out of the net.archives (e.g. the "less" pager, "jove", & sundry other utilities). In any event, back to the original topic, if I had $10,000, based upon what I've seen on this 3b2 that I'm using right now, there's a lot better machines that I could buy with my $10,000 besides buy a 3b2. It was a good machine in its time, but what you get for $10,000 is getting rather dated (I won't comment on high-end 3b family machines, which apparently run at higher clock rates with later versions of the chips -- the original WE 32-bit line was the first 32-bit microprocessors ever released, and, technology-wise, are a bit behind compared to later 32-bit microprocessors such as the 68020). I wouldn't necessarily choose a Sun (let's face it, a Sun is expensive, and do I REALLY need one?)... but definitely not a 3b2. > And lastly; No, system V is THE standard. Anything else except maybe > Berzerkly is second-rate. > > Randy That's where he proves where he doesn't know what a Sun is (I mean, Bill Joy is a FOUNDER of Sun Microsystems! :-). -- Eric Green elg@usl.CSNET Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 {cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg Lafayette, LA 70509 Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again....