Checksum: 08565
Path: utzoo!utgpu!woods
From: woods@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Greg Woods)
Date: Wed, 23-Nov-88 00:13:25 EST
Message-ID: <1988Nov23.001325.2577@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Organization: Elegant Communications, Inc.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re: The 'cost' of a '532 system.
References: <433@sdrc.UUCP> <2659@sultra.UUCP> <1041@raspail.UUCP> <256@aber-cs.UUCP> <2667@sultra.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU (Greg Woods)
Followup-To: talk.bizzare
Distribution: eunet,world
Keywords: cheap nsc 532

In article <2667@sultra.UUCP> dtynan@sultra.UUCP (Der Tynan) writes:
> In article <256@aber-cs.UUCP>, pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
> > I am going to buy a 386 box with S5.3.2.  Remeber, the only real superiority of
> > BSD over 5.3.2 is the Fast file system, and Interactive's version of 386 5.3.2
> > has it...  in BSD you do not get mapped files, streams etc...  I am going to
> 
> I beg to differ.  Granted, I've never used Release 3, but I have definitely
> used S5.2.1, and found it nasty (I'm fighting to avoid using stronger words).
> BSD also has sockets.  Not to mention 'csh', and many more features.  However,
> you're certainly welcome to your opinion.  But, don't expect AT&T to continue
> to support release 3, when 4.0 is in the wings, and don't expect 4.0 to run
> on your AT box.

Ok, here comes another blast furnace....

I'm a SysVr3 fan.  Let's get that out in the open...

The only significant kernel features that I miss in SysVr3 are job
control, and support for long filenames.  EVERYTHING else you should
ever need in a kernel is in SysVr3, and often implemented in a much more
elegant fashion than the BSD equivalent.  Look at STREAMS for example....
Sockets can be built on TLI, and PTY's are just device drivers (and can
even be implemented using STREAMS).  Admittedly, poll() should work on
any file (ala select()), but I can live with it as-is.

With the recent declaration that BSD only code will be free, any little
feature you miss in the utilities can often be added.  As for csh, it's
too buggy and hard to use in face of ksh, which is easy enough to find.
The only BSD feature I can argue either way for is the symbolic link.
If it was trimmed to only allow directory links I could live with it.
-- 
						Greg Woods.

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