bobm@qip.UUCP (Bob Maccione) (09/28/90)
I noticed in a issue of PC magazine that Coherent is offering the OS for sale for $99. This includes the compilier, etc. Does anybody use this OS and what are the drawbacks. I currently use U*NX at work and QNX at home and well $99 is kinda cheap. thanks bob
rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) (10/02/90)
In article <4740@qip.UUCP> bobm@qip.UUCP (Bob Maccione) writes: >I noticed in a issue of PC magazine that Coherent is offering the OS >for sale for $99. This includes the compilier, etc. Does anybody use >this OS and what are the drawbacks. I currently use U*NX at work and >QNX at home and well $99 is kinda cheap. This is starting to fall into the Frequently Asked Questions category for this group... Since you only ask about drawbacks, I'll focus on those. Bear in mind that, as a committed owner of Coherent, I may be less inclined to flame the product than many other fine Usenet net citizens will be. 1. The compiler supports small model only. This means that many of the tools that you use under BSD or USG and would like to port... won't. Others will. 2. There are some bugs in the kernel and some of the utilities, and some limitations in their UUCP. 3. Source code is not provided. This appears as a deficiency only when you compare Coherent to Minix, for which source code *is* provided. 4. Its much like V7. That means no csh. No networking support. Not Posix compliant. No vi. 5. Only works on an AT or better, and does not like some BIOSs. Supports only MFM and RLL drives. I think that sums up the downsides reasonably well, although I'm sure that there are others. The product seems to be finding reasonable market acceptance, which is probably a more important criterion than any other in evaluating the product for purchase, IMHO. There is an internet mailing list for those interested in details of the product, which I maintain. Write to "coherent-request@cs.wisc.edu" to subscribe. Back traffic is available upon request, and can be FTPed from piggy.ucsb.edu, which is also an archive site for software ports, of which there is a reasonable quantity. There is also a mail-based archive server at a location that escapes me at the moment. Hope this helps... -- Scott Rose rose@cs.wisc.edu