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From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: The NeXT machine has been announced! (was long)
Message-ID: <24926@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 18 Oct 88 15:26:42 GMT
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In article <530@sactoh0.UUCP> sjrudek@sactoh0.UUCP (Steve J. Rudek) writes:
>There are obviously a lot of USENET folks jumping up and down and
>salivating because (a) NeXT is offering an "educational discount" and
>(b) they are "students" (I surmise).  Is it correct to assume that
>*individual* students will also be eligible for this price discount?
>(If so, I suppose I can always go back to school for a quarter:)

That would have to depend upon the deal that NeXT has made with your
local University computer store.  There are certain restrictions and
qualifications on just what sort of student can buy Macintoshes
through OSU, for instance, though I don't know the exact terms.

Besides that, they can't ramp up production fast enough to satisfy
that kind of demand, so the cubes are being sold to carefully selected
departments and projects that can make them shine.  Individual
students may have to wait.

>I keep hearing that MACH is *derived* from UNIX -- and, in one
>previous message, that the new release of the OS will be free from
>AT&T licensing.  This, to me, raises the obvious question: is MACH a
>*complete* UNIX clone?  Does it include basically *all* the utility
>programs that come pretty much standard with AT&T/BSD UNIX?

No, Mach is just 4.3BSD, with no SysVisms thrown in (that I know of).
A Mach machine is one of the purest 4.3 systems you can find any more
from a commercial UNIX producer, since they're all mixing in varying
amounts of SysV in various ways.  In fact, FSF says that the Mach
group is working hard on removing any residual code that's still
subject to the SysV license, so that FSF can use Mach in GNU.  See the
ongoing discussion in gnu.announce.

>Just how (a) buggy and (b) compatible can we expect it to be?

(a) They took CMU's Mach and "commercialized" it, removing a lot of
the parochialisms found in CMU's distribution, like a dependence upon
a printer named "third" because all the printers in Science Hall are
on the third floor.  They also cleaned up a lot of bugs.  I don't know
how much they're feeding back to the Mach group at CMU, but I
understand they're in close communication, which will help all the
other Mach port vendors as well (BBN, Encore, FSF, etc.)

(b) If you had a VAX running Mach, you could run a 4.3 VAX binary on
it.  How much more compatible do you want?

See the ongoing discussion in comp.sys.next.
-=-
Zippy sez,								--Bob
Are you still an ALCOHOLIC?