biggers@topaz.ARPA (Mark Biggers) (01/30/85)
Hello again, Recent responses to my original posting querying the net about Unix-lookalike ** OSs ** for "small" 68k micros have me wondering if people read the request. I like 4.2BSD Unix also, even though most of my work is done under System V. BUT there ain't no way that 4.2 (or probably) System V is gonna run on these new atari machines, or hardware like the Sage IV which I used in the past. I am interested in Uniflex and OS9-68000 for the very reason a lot of system developers might have - (alleged) good performance on minimal hardware like that above. I have heard lots of good about OS-9 running on the RS Color Computer, and gosh, if that ain't minimal hardware, I don't know what is. Yes, you can run Unix-like systems with no memory management, and get good performance. Our Sage IV port of Idris (whitesmith's) used a version of Idris-68k that allowed for a portion of memory to be used as a swap cache. We could run 3-4 users on a Sage IV with pretty good performance - the only slowdown was that the CPU had to manage disk-head seeks on this machine. MY experience with Idris and CRDS' UNOS has shown that at least these look-alikes had some nice features. "Real" UNIX shines in its maturity of utilities and familiar features, over the look-alikes. I guess I should quit being lazy and just *write* to these companies (TSC and Microware :^). Mark seismo!rutopaz!biggers
fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (02/06/85)
In my experience, compatibles aren't.
My one extensive experience with a ``compatible'' was Charles River
Data System Universe 68 with their UNOS operating system (the
particular version of which was claimed to be System V compatible).
UNOS for those who do not know, was reverse engineered from V6 UNIX.
To me, ``compatible'' means that if I take an application from System
V, it will compile and run on the system with minimal changes. The
particular application made extensive use of the System V tty driver,
which UNOS didn't even have any compatability for, and I had a tough time
getting the sucker to work.
The other system I've looked at briefly is Idris, which is also
(originally) reverse engineered from V6, and seemed to be missing a lot
of the typical UNIX utilities when I looked (this was a *very* cursory
glance at a show, however, so this in no way can be considered
definitive).
There are other compatibles out there that I have not looked at (e.g.
COHERENT from Mark Williams & Co.).
In my opinion, if what you want is UNIX, don't waste time with the
``compatibles.''
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucb-arpa.ARPA
dual!fair@BERKELEY.ARPA
{ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,hplabs,decwrl,unisoft,fortune,sun,nsc}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California