jsq@ut-sally.UUCP (08/09/83)
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10.4 Third Parties
The number of organizations dealing with UNIX these
days is quite large.
10.4.1 _O_E_M_s Many companies bringing out new Motorola
68000-based systems recently have chosen System III as the
base for their operating system, with the apparent intention
of moving to System V. To some extent, this will no doubt
lock them into System V, and persons wanting to buy
something close to a small turnkey system will probably wind
up with essentially Bell UNIX.
Other manufacturers with microprocessors likely
targeted for System V ports are Intel, National, and Zilog.
There are several ports of 4.1 to the 68000, and at
least one of 4.2. There are also at least two ports of 4.1
to the National Semiconductor 16032.
Several of the vendors offering System III based 68000
systems claim to support ``Berkeley enhancements,'' the
interpretation of which varies between vendors, but usually
seems to include _v_i, _e_x, _t_e_r_m_c_a_p, and _c_u_r_s_e_s, and sometimes
_m_o_r_e.
10.4.2 _E_m_u_l_a_t_i_o_n_s Several emulations of UNIX are available
from third parties, either software vendors or universities.
Typically these are designed to provide a UNIX environment
on top of another operating system, generally VMS. The
quality of emulation varies from implementation to
implementation, as does the concept of what ``UNIX'' should
look like.
On a slightly different note, a package will be
available from BRL in the very near future which emulates
System V on top of 4.2BSD.
10.4.3 _C_o_n_s_u_l_t_a_n_t_s There is a new class of companies that
produce neither hardware nor software but instead provide
assistance in obtaining and supporting both. These mostly
try to cater to the markets for both systems.
There is a large amount of free software available for
4.1 (and thus 4.1C) that was written principally at academic
institutions. Much of it is portable to System V, though
something like Interlisp that requires a huge address space
is not, and there are problems with many things like Emacs
because of the use of long identifiers.
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Most commercial vendors attempt to produce and sell
software packages to run on either variety of UNIX. Bell is
among these vendors, with the TITroff package, the _S
statistical package, etc.
Many of the commercial vendors using System III
(System V) have produced graphical, menu-driven interfaces
for the naive user, so that it is never necessary to deal
directly with any UNIX shell. These mostly require bit-map
terminals, varieties of which are also available from other
vendors.
The famous Bell Blit bitmap terminal is available from
Teletype (model 5620). Unfortunately, as noted previously,
the Unix software is available only as a System V binary.
10.4.4 _A_u_t_h_o_r_s A number of books designed to assist the
new UNIX user have recently appeared.
Most of these either attempt to steer a neutral course
by describing what is essentially V7, making them less
useful in either a 4.2 or System V context, or they closely
follow System III (V) in hopes of describing what will come
to be a ``standard''.
The 4.1C (4.2) user is left with the traditional task
of reading the manuals.
11. Conclusion
A brief summary may be useful.
11.1 Selection Criteria
One may choose either Berkeley or Bell Unix on the
basis of a particular needed function, such as network
support, because of performance in one area or another,
because of the support of a particular vendor, or for some
other reason. We have touched on all these areas above, we
hope in sufficient detail to indicate the capabilities of
the two systems, so that areas for further investigation
will be clear.
11.2 Combinations
For companies with the resources, the best solution is
probably to run either 4.1C BSD or System V and port the
desired facilities of the other. This is the traditional
route. An alternative is the aforementioned package from BRL
or something similar.
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Even companies with no desire to merge the two systems
would be well-advised to get some sort of expert support
(whether in-house or not), as neither Bell nor Berkeley can
be counted on to offer the really broad support
traditionally supplied by hardware vendors for their
operating systems. This situation may change in the case of
System V as more sites begin running the system and
demanding the support which has been promised, but at the
moment only time will tell. The same applies to DEC's
support of 4BSD.
11.3 Future Directions
A few recent developments may indicate a trend away
from continued fragmentation of the UNIX community, and
especially from the divergence of the systems offered by
Berkeley and Bell.
11.3.1 _U_N_I_X__s_t_a_n_d_a_r_d_s__c_o_m_m_i_t_t_e_e The /usr/group UNIX
standards committee appears to be making progress in
standardizing at least the most basic facilities of the
operating system, and has representatives from most segments
of the community.
11.3.2 _B_e_r_k_e_l_e_y__f_e_a_t_u_r_e_s__a_n_d__B_e_l_l The inclusion of _v_i, _e_x,
and _t_e_r_m_c_a_p in System V, as well as the adoption of a 1Kbyte
block file system, shows that Bell is aware of the work
Berkeley has been doing for years in researching new
directions. Perhaps System VI will go further and adopt,
for instance, _c_s_h, and paging.
11.3.3 _B_e_l_l__l_i_c_e_n_s_i_n_g__a_n_d__B_e_r_k_e_l_e_y Unfortunately, until
recently it has not been possible for Berkeley to include
software from Bell licenses later than 32V, because the
price would have been prohibitive for many of the Berkeley
licensees. Though the recent reform of Western Electric's
licensing scheme apparently came too late to affect 4.2BSD,
perhaps we will see Berkeley adopt some later-day Bell
developments.
Appendix A: Terminology
The official names of the various versions of the Unix
System developed by Bell Laboratories and previously or
currently available from Western Electric are:
o+ UNIX Time-Sharing System, Sixth Edition (V6);
o+ UNIX Programmer's Work Bench (PWB), V6 plus SCCS, etc.;
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o+ UNIX Time-Sharing System, Seventh Edition (V7), the
PDP-11 version of the first portable UNIX system;
o+ UNIX/32V Time-Sharing System Version 1.0 (32V), like
V7, but for the VAX;
o+ UNIX System III (System III), combining PWB, V7, and
32V;
o+ UNIX System V (System V), now being licensed.
There have been numerous Berkeley Software
Distributions of the various Berkeley versions of the Unix
System.
o+ 2BSD is used herein as a generic term for the PDP-11
distributions.
o+ 2.8BSD is the latest PDP-11 distribution in general
use.
o+ 2.81BSD was a an intermediate system that was never
officially distributed, but is in use at several
ARPANET sites with a port of the 4.1A network software
incorporated into it.
o+ 2.9BSD is the distribution just now being licensed, and
is said to make a PDP-11 look like a VAX 4BSD system.
o+ 3.0BSD was the first paging system for the VAX, derived
from 32V.
o+ 4.0BSD was the second Berkeley VAX distribution.
o+ 4BSD is used herein as a generic term for any Berkeley
VAX distribution from 4.0BSD on.
o+ 4.1BSD is the VAX distribution in most common use, and
contains numerous improvements over 4.0BSD.
o+ 4.1A BSD, 4.1B BSD, 4.1C BSD were versions intermediate
between 4.1 and 4.2. None of them were available
outside of Berkeley except for beta test, and none of
them can be ordered from Berkeley.
o+ 4.2BSD will presumably be licensed soon.
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Appendix B: Load Simulation Job
This is contents of the shell file that was used in the
load simulation:
mkdir $1; cd $1
cc -o simple -p ../simple.c
simple
nroff -man ../prof.1
prof simple
tar -cvf /dev/null ../simple.c simple mon.out
rm simple mon.out
nroff -man ../termio.7
cc -o cmp ../cmp.c
cd ..
rm -rf $1