dlarson@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dale Larson) (02/19/90)
I am about to start my fourth year of study in computer science. I don't have access to a UNIX box for serious work but would very much like to. I am mostly interested in learning what I need to know to be useful to an employer or (preferably) whomever I do graduate assistantship work for. Given that I need to purchase the machine myself and that my budget will break in the fairly low thousands, I think that a used SUN may well be the right choice. Am I wrong? If not, just what should I be able to do with the box? Open Look? (What would a bare bones system be?) Most recent version of UNIX? (What is the most recent SunOS and how far back can I go without what I learn from it being hopelessly outdated?) Is a SUN/2 such a dinosaur that I should avoid it at all costs? Is there any other advice that anyone wishes to give me (other than the obvious response that I should have picked a real school :-)
glang@uunet.uu.net (Gary Lang) (03/07/90)
In article <5134@brazos.Rice.edu>, dlarson@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dale Larson) writes: > Given that I need to purchase the machine myself and that my budget will > break in the fairly low thousands, I think that a used SUN may well be the > right choice. Am I wrong? If not, just what should I be able to do with > the box? Open Look? (What would a bare bones system be?) Most recent I would say - get a NeXT machine. It's a Unix box that thinks you're a PC user. It's cheaper than almost all similarly configured Suns except used ones, and already has more GUI software running on it. Check it out. [[But can you run X on a NeXT? -bdg]]
lm@sun.com (Larry McVoy) (03/09/90)
In article <5565@brazos.Rice.edu> acad!megalon!glang@uunet.uu.net (Gary Lang) writes: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 74, message 1 > >In article <5134@brazos.Rice.edu>, dlarson@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dale Larson) writes: >> Given that I need to purchase the machine myself and that my budget will >> break in the fairly low thousands, I think that a used SUN may well be the >> right choice. Am I wrong? > >I would say - get a NeXT machine.... Hmmm. I'll plug Sun :-) A SS1 is 9K diskless list. You can get drives for about a grand each from Quantum (I'm told anyway). Probably want one of the 200meg jobbies. That's 10K list. If you can't afford that, then I would move away from this sort of machine altogether and look hard at a 386 running Xenix. They're not bad boxes - for a home machine they beat a Sun3 in several ways - cheap, lots of third party parts, you can replace parts yourself, etc, etc. Check out comp.sys.i386 - they talk about this stuff. You should be able to put together a nice machine for around 4K w/ software (you can get a lot free from FSF). What I say is my opinion. I am not paid to speak for Sun, I'm paid to hack. Besides, I frequently read news when I'm drjhgunghc, err, um, drunk. Larry McVoy, Sun Microsystems (415) 336-7627 ...!sun!lm or lm@sun.com