songer@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu (Christopher M Songer) (09/27/90)
Hi,
I am looking into a new computer for software development. Until
a couple of days ago, a Sun SLC was the primary contender for my
dollars. After reading about the new Next releases, I must say that
the low end box looks alot better than the SLC in terms of computer
for the money. I've scanned through the entries available on the forum
and I've got some questions which hopefully someone will be kind enough
to answer. Since they are beginner questions, email responses would be
appreciated and I'll post a summary later.
First, I have heard that the operating system is MACH, a version of
UNIX with most of the internals significantly hacked on. How much of the
104 meg harddisk is taken with MACH? Are the sources included with the
OS? If 104meg isn't enough for a real version, how much more disk space
is required? When it comes to internals, how different is different?
Are we talking small differences (like having to use the kvm lib on
Suns to read the running kernal) or big ones?
In terms of using the OS, how similiar, at a command line level,
are MACH and UNIX? What sort of software development tools are included?
Is there a C compiler, is there a debugger, is there a make, is there a
library? What do people think of same? Can normal public domain UNIX
stuff be compiled for it?
Finally, what are the strengths and weaknesses, overall, of the
Next boxes? Thanks alot!
Chris Songer I work at ECN, I certainly don't speak for it.
songer@ecn.purdue.edu