avilla@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Aldo Villa) (03/11/90)
I'm a prospective buyer of a laptop (or transportable) computer and I desire to have UNIX as main O.S. with MS-DOS or PC-DOS (or an improved look-alike) as a second O.S. in order to can also run the common ad hoc software. I also want to run SAS on it and, by the way, also for this I need to have MS-DOS available as the SAS institute makes a UNIX version of its famous statistical software, but this is available just for 4 machines: 2 Hewlett Packard and 2 SUN workstations. Now, my ideas of choice are going nowhere as a functions of the following factors: 1) Exploding number of hardwares on the market. Just considering the CPUs there are 80286 and 80C286 based machines running at 10, 12, 16 and 20 MHz; 80386SX based machines running at 16 and 20 MHz; 80386 based machines running at 12, 16, 20 1nd 25 MHz; and, finally, 80486 based machinses and some others like the MAC laptop.. 2) Then there is the problem of finding a suitable version of UNIX running on a PC. My preference would go to a BSD 4.3, but the fact of not having ever heard of any BSD 4.3 in PC version let me suspect that it doesn't exist. Until recently, I thought that XENIX was the PC version of UNIX by anthonomasia with the excepton of UNIX AT&T that I thought was only offered on the prpoprietary hardware (and, therefore, not available an a laptop version). I just recently discovered that XENIX is very close to UNIX system V by AT&T; but at the same time I also discovered that SCO is marketing a new product called SCO-UNIX, different from SCO-XENIX and I read that many people are afraid that SCO will progressively abandon XENIX to its destiny withdrawing its technical support. This seems to make many people mad and makes me doubtful with respect of the opportunity of buying a SCO product in a moment when this company seems to be abandoning its time-honored product in favor of its bugs-full and expensive new one. I also discover that there is a XENIX version for 16 bit computers exactly at the same time that I understand that this product is so very little known up to the point that the readers of comp.sys.laptops engaged on a furious discussion on the topic: "Will SCO-XENIX run an a 80386SX-based machine? Finally, I also found out that DELL computers offers UNIX-AT&T version V on its new laptop. 3) Then there are other problems on which I tend to skip over: SAS-PC exist just in MS-DOS version and not in UNIX (except ... see above) and nobody seems to know if it would run on an MS-DOS emulator overheaded by SCO-XENIX or UNIX-AT&T. If not, it would always be possible to let a share of the hard-disk for MS-DOS who will therefore run completely by itself. This option has however obvious disadvantages ...... 4) Finally, if considering the problems in 2, I try to look beyond SCO-XENIX, SCO-UNIX and AT&T system V, I hear of ESIX, ISC, INTEL, and other names of companies manifacturing UNIX clones. But I have no informations whatsoever about these things and I don't know where to retrieve them from. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE help me sharing with me the wealth of the knowledge on the above topics that you possess and I don't. For the moment I'm just plainly confused on what to do: Aldo.