snoopy@ixos.de (Sebastian Snoopy Schmitz) (09/25/90)
Dear Netters/Netteresses, I am currently writing a study for a large German computer manufacturer which compares the applicability of UNIX and OS/2 systems esp. concerning the commercial arena (i.e. banks). Since I am a UNIX person I know fairly little about OS/2 (I am just starting) and especially I have difficulty here in Germany in tracking down people who use OS/2 systems on a large scale. The idea is also that OS/2 and UNIX systems should integrate nicely. Hence I am looking for users who are willing to share some of their experiences. I will be able to give you credit in the study and I will surely do so (if you wish) but I will only post a small summary because the whole study will run to about 150 pages and I cannot possibly translate all of those. Needless to say I also have some specific questions, listed below and I would be very happy if I could get some answers. But please - I do not wish to start religious wars. And so please do not flood my mailbox with flames about me even going near OS/2 etc. etc. Its difficult enough to be objective already, so please do not try to make it harder on me by posting flames. I do read these newsgroups but sometimes a lot of messages get lost over the Atlantic so its probably best if you mail your responses. I WILL SUMMARISE BUT IT WILL TAKE UNTIL DECEMBER WHEN THE STUDY IS COMPLETED ! PLEASE TRY TO BE PATIENT. Also I know all about the purity of Open Systems and the inherent evil of Proprietary Systems and I will mention these aspects but I will not crosspost to alt.sex.bondage ! ;-) The questions: (all concern OS/2 1.2 and System V.4) 1- Large Networks How well suited is OS/2 for large networks (i.e. several hundreds of machines) ? Any help administering them ? How about software distributions and installation ? Servers ? Can OS/2 subnets be easily administered from large IBM hosts ? How is the performance ? 2- Software stability How stable is the software ? Does it crash often ? Are there any glaring stability problems which allows easy hacking into the system ? 3- Programming Environment How good is the OS/2 development environment ? Compilers, Debuggers, profilers, editors and source code control systems ? How does it compare to UNIX ? 4- Administration How easy is the administration of OS/2 systems also regards to network admin ? How easily can one identify performance bottlenecks and remedy them (tuning) ? Software installation ? 5- UNIX <-> OS/2 Integration Shared data - how can OS/2 get at data on a UNIX beast and vice versa ? Can programs communicate with each other within OS/2 easily ? How do these mechanisms compare to UNIX sockets/streams etc. ? Can a prog under UNIX send data easily to one running on an OS/2 host (like RPC) ? How does the interface to the LAN Manager compare to UNIX RPC/NFS etc. ? How does this affect portability ? 6- User Interfaces How easy can one port a program from OSF/MOTIF to Presentation Manager and vice versa ? What about the Xvt people ? Do they have something to help ? In all of the above I would love to hear from real OS/2 users and administrators and not only programmers/developers. Your help is deeply appreciated. Please do let me know if I may quote you by name in the study or of you prefer to have your input paraphrased and your anonymity preserved...this goes for the study as well as for the summary. Thank you very much in advance... Love, Snoopy (Sebastian) --- uunet!unido!ixos!snoopy -or- snoopy@ixos.de "Every passing hour brings the solar system 43,000 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in Hercules - and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress." - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.