rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) (12/06/89)
In what ways does Xenix differ from, say, System V Unix? I notice now that SCO has a System V lookalike as a separate product; how does this differ from Xenix? If vastly, what good is Xenix? If not much, why two products? I am only interested in answers as they relate to a 386 platform. I *could* be asking SCO these questions, but they have never returned a single phone call of the many I have made to their sales department...
scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker) (12/07/89)
In article <9309@spool.cs.wisc.edu> rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Scott Rose) writes: >In what ways does Xenix differ from, say, System V Unix? I notice now that >SCO has a System V lookalike as a separate product; how does this differ >from Xenix? If vastly, what good is Xenix? If not much, why two products? >I am only interested in answers as they relate to a 386 platform. Xenix was originally created by Microsoft as an alternative to the expensive Unix license. As I understand it, they took the actual Unix source code, fixed some bugs, and added some features (such as file/record locking). Six years ago, Xenix was kind of a cross between ATT Unix and Berkley Unix. Xenix can be thought of as another "flavor" of Unix. I have found the differences between the two to be minor (at least as far as the kernel goes). Today, the need for Xenix is not as great since ATT Unix is cheaper and easier to get. SCO understands this and is merging the two into one system (called Unix). Xenix will eventually go away. -- Scott Amspoker Basis International, Albuquerque, NM (505) 345-5232 unmvax.cs.unm.edu!bbx!bbxsda!scott
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (12/07/89)
Xenix has a number of BSD features, as well as features which ATT has dropped (like dump and restore). The system admin is far easier than SysV, due to lots of sysadm scripts and stuff. The documentation is better, by almost every review, and organized into sections with names instead of numbers, like S for system calls. There is also an index of all man items in the front of every manual. Xenix has some added features like nap(), which make some things possible which just don't work otherwise. Xenix users are not rushing to SysV, although, since SCO is not developing the product any more they will mostly migrate to SysV. *Which* sysV is somewhat a question, however. I haven't seen SCO UNIX yet (not for lack of ordering it, just not delivered). I'm told that it is totally compatible with all the other implementations around, a selling point for SysV users from other machines. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon