chet@uwovax.uwo.ca (07/13/90)
There have been so many complaints about Coherent in this newsgroup that a defense seems in order... (1) I've installed Coherent on a 286 (Phoenix Bios, Miniscribe MS 8438 HD, Hercules-clone video adapter) and a 386 (Award Bios, Micropolis 1335 HD, STB VGA card) without any difficulty. (2) I've ported applications which I need for my work with no trouble at all. These include the UNSW Prolog interpreter, version 4, and a morphological analyzer and generator which make extensive use of curses. In general, code developed on PDP-11's and under Minix should be easily portable to Coherent. (3) While I too use csh at work on a Sun and miss some of its features, in all honesty, life without it/them is not impossible. (4) Not only is Coherent nearly identical with Unix, version 7, consider the additional features--kermit (which works beautifully BTW), Microemacs (which although not extensible, should be easily modifiable since the code and a makefile are included), a driver for the Laserjet printer. (5) The system appears to be nearly bug-free. So far, the only problem I've encountered had to do with communicating with lpt1: and it was easily fixed (log in as superuser and type: #ln -f lpt2 lp) (6) For someone who is already familiar with Unix and C, who does not require the large memory model, and who doesn't like the cumbersome feel of SCO on a 286 or 386 machine, Coherent is perfect. I know there are many people who do require a larger system, but there is no reason to knock Coherent because it doesn't meet their needs. It was not intended to. Hopefully MWC, or someone else, will produce a system which meets the needs of this class of user at a reasonable price. (7) I know there will be much disagreement with the following, but an analogy with automobiles may be appropriate. My first car, purchased when I was a teenager for $100 (earned picking apricots and prunes in what is now Silicon Valley) was a 1946 Chevrolet coupe. I've had many cars since then, but that first car did everything that a car was supposed to do, and if someone would start producing it again, I would jump at the chance to buy it. I'm delighted to have the chance to do the OS equivalent with Coherent. Chet Creider creider@csd.uwo.ca