ant3@sphinx.UUCP (02/14/87)
Hello Net-land! OK, now that I got that out of the way, here's my
question. I'm in the market to get a UNIX for my AT compatible. The two
that I've looked at previously are SCO XENIX (which I actually worked on),
and Microport System V, which I only got to play with a little at COMDEX. My
question is, does anyone have preferences, and if so, why? I plan to do C
development work, as well as just plain having fun with UNIX on my AT.
I'd really appreciate any comments that anyone has, and I imagine that I'm
not the only one out there who might have questions of this nature, so why
don't we post the responses to this.
Thanx in advance...
Butch Anton
Systems Analyst, University of Chicago, Dept. of Mathematics
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Chicago, IL 60637 romwa@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Mark Dornfeld) (02/23/87)
The last issue of UNIX World had an article comparing the three major 286 bases UNIX Systems. There are +'s and -'s with all of them depending on your needs. I can only speak about SCO XENIX. I have put up 5 SCO systems on Sperry IT's where nothing but some office automation and some extremely sophisticated troff-ing is required. These systems have been excellent. I surmise that the real differences will be with the compilers and lots of other internal things which an end user is not interested in. I cannot help you there, though a fair bit of software taken from mod.sources has compiled and run quite well with SCO XENIX. Mark T. Dornfeld Royal Ontario Museum utgpu!rom!mark
cmi@dartvax.UUCP (02/23/87)
In article <1146@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> ant3@sphinx.UUCP (Butch Anton) writes: >Hello Net-land! OK, now that I got that out of the way, here's my >question. I'm in the market to get a UNIX for my AT compatible. The two >that I've looked at previously are SCO XENIX (which I actually worked on), >and Microport System V, which I only got to play with a little at COMDEX. My >question is, does anyone have preferences, and if so, why? I plan to do C >development work, as well as just plain having fun with UNIX on my AT. > We are a software house specializing in Xenix/Unix/DOS communications software, and we just brought up a Sperry IT (a good AT clone) under both SCO Xenix V and Microport System V. I can tell you a few things we've learned. Other more general information can be found in the February issue of Unix/World magazine, which has a feature articale comparing the operating systems, including IBM's Xenix also. As far as a development enviroment goes, I would say SCO Xenix is the choice. The main reason is that they are using the Microsoft cmerge compiler, which is one of the fastest, tightest compilers I have ever seen on a small Unix box. As an example, our software package, which has 40 modules or so, compiled and linked in 22 min. On a Vax or other large mini, it ususally takes at least 15 or 20 minutes, even on an unloaded system. Under DOS on the same machine, it takes over half an hour with the Manx Aztec compiler. The Microport compiler, which does have the advantage of producing more portable COFF format code (used by the AT&T 6300+ and others in the future), takes well over 45 minutes to compile and link the same code on the same machine! The difference in the code size is amazing. The main binary for our software is about 90K under Xenix, and about 170K under Microport Sys V! I don't know if they're linking in excess library routines, or what, but that seems like a bit much. The last point that I think is really significantly in favor of SCO Xenix is that the Microport compiler only supports two models, small and large, where the SCO compiler supports at least 3 or 4 models, including a the medium model, which from my experience is the best model to use in many cases when developing applications for the AT. In favor of the Microport Unix is the fact that, yes, it is in fact a full-blown System V port. If your code compiles on a 3B2 or Tower, it's almost guaranteed to go together without any errors or missing library routines (assuming your careful in coding for portability). So those are some impressions I've gotten so far. I might post some more remarks after using the two systems some more. Theo Pozzy, Corporate Microsystems, Inc. ...!decvax!dartvax!cmi (UUCP) cmi@dartmouth (CSNET) cmi@dartmouth.edu (ARPA) Box A-58, Hanover, NH, 03755 (USPS)