God <root%bostonu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> (11/18/84)
Ok, as a person in charge of system software and hardware maintenance on 15 Vaxen (some UNIX, some VMS), a 2060 and several other machines here is my view: Software Maintenance Ok, VMS is maintained by DEC for a flat rate. But what does that mean: It hardly has a mailer, so you go out and get a mail system from somewhere else. It barely has word processing (runoff??!) so you go out and get word processing from somewhere else. Ooops, no graphics libraries...let's look through the ads again hmm, only DECNET...well that's ok if all I do is talk to myself or other VMS vaxes (support across other DEC OS's is poor) but maybe I better do something more generic....get another vendor (by the way, dec's support when DECNET breaks is poor at best) etc, etc...(hey, let's put up all these neat, free DECUS programs...maybe then we'll have software...) THEN........they distribute a new version (3.701823) which breaks all your software. Sooooo, you call all your vendors and start listing promises (sorry, but understand we get the new VMS when YOU get the new VMS...gonna take a few months until your network/mail/word processing/graphics works again or you can shelve your updates until we are ALL ready) But of course all of these vendors come to your site and install their new versions of the software and define all the X**N logical names which always clash cause they don't ever have lunch together. And of COURSE DEC WILL NEVER DROP TOPS-20...oops, sorry, I meant VMS..... And of COURSE you only want to buy DEC machines for the rest of your life no matter if they fit your needs or not (workstations...next year maybe, PCs...next year maybe, MAINFRAMES??? depends what you mean, if you don't mean mainframe maybe we can help you, super-compute engines??? aint 4MIPS on a 8600 enuf for you? What...your 3081 is already getting 15MIPS???? And the CRAY-II is gonna run UNIX not VMS... those philistines!) Most VMS systems I have seen are a nightmare of a patchwork of random, unintegrated software systems that are never quite working even at the basic level. Here at BU many more person-hours are spent trying to keep these crazy-quilts afloat than any of our UNIX systems. Of course, if you don't need software other than an editor and a (admittedly very good for what its worth) Fortran compiler (and a PRINT command) then you probably should use VMS. (and a system call interface that rivals OS/360 in obscurity.) For me, I'll take my 'chances' with UNIX any day. What a nice fantasy...to run a computer system without the need for expertise, I guess it works if you don't actually do anything with the system....or have very low standards. -Barry Shein Sr Systems Manager UNIX guru Boston University Distributed Systems Group
fouts@orville (Martin Fouts) (11/19/84)
I also have mixed VMS/Unix vaxes, and additionally have Unix on
multiple machines other than my vaxes. Every complaint you level
against VMS is true for Unix.
*roff as a word processor, Why not TeX? How about databases?
if you don't have 4bsd, where do you get your network support? And if
you think DECUS is fun for software, how about net.sources (provided
you have a version of uucp/readnews that work together?)
But UNIX is giving me a different headache. I now have three
kinds of computers running five kinds of Unix. Programs from Version X
won't run under Version Y, operator procedures are radically different,
and the user interface varies.
The REAL point I would like to make isn't that VMS is superior to
UNIX in any sense. (For each place where VMS is better, some version
of UNIX is better somewhere else, and otherwise. . .)
The REAL point is that a system which was integrated and well
supported would allow more people to do more productive work than a
system full of odd variants, half thought out ideas, and large
quantities of Bugs.
So why can't we herd UNIX off in that direction?
Marty
----------leon@mmm.UUCP (Leon Schilmoeller) (11/24/84)
> > I also have mixed VMS/Unix vaxes, and additionally have Unix on > multiple machines other than my vaxes. Every complaint you level > against VMS is true for Unix. > > *roff as a word processor, Why not TeX? How about databases? > if you don't have 4bsd, where do you get your network support? And if > you think DECUS is fun for software, how about net.sources (provided > you have a version of uucp/readnews that work together?) > > But UNIX is giving me a different headache. I now have three > kinds of computers running five kinds of Unix. Programs from Version X > won't run under Version Y, operator procedures are radically different, > and the user interface varies. > > The REAL point I would like to make isn't that VMS is superior to > UNIX in any sense. (For each place where VMS is better, some version > of UNIX is better somewhere else, and otherwise. . .) > > The REAL point is that a system which was integrated and well > supported would allow more people to do more productive work than a > system full of odd variants, half thought out ideas, and large > quantities of Bugs. > > So why can't we herd UNIX off in that direction? > > Marty > > ---------- I marvel at all of the article referring to RUNOFF, nroff, *off as word processing packages. I like to refer to them as text formatters and useful for documentation preparation, but I would not necessarily call them word processors. OA users would probably find difficulty in relating these packages to word processing also!