williams@cs.umass.edu (10/23/89)
I just came across a review comparing ISC and SCO UNIX (not Xenix) in the August '89 issue of UNIX Review magazine. Maybe you can find it in a technical library. It's a freebie to qualified subscribers and says in the masthead that article and issue photocopies are available from University Microfilms International, 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106, Tel.: 313-761-4700. Below are some excerpts. THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE ARTICLE. Leo Pinard c/o williams@cs.umass.edu OFF THE SHELF page 83 UNIX REVIEW August 1989 The 80386 UNIX Wars by Tom Yager PROFILE ISC 386/ix 2.0 List Price $1995 - $2995 Reviewer's Comments: A mature, fast implementation which is easily maintained and extended; manuals are few and poorly done, but attractive to experienced UNIX users; X11 is solid and with dozens of user-contributed programs and support for most interesting graphics devices. PROFILE SCO UNIX System V/386 3.2 List Price $3470 Reviewer's Comments: Delivers the most robust base system, with Posix, C2 security and on-line manuals standard; C development system is among the best available; administrative interface is fancy but incomplete, hampering enhancement and maintenance. Report Card 80386 UNIX ISC SCO Installation B- B- Documentation C- A+ System Administration A C Performance A B+ Development System B A X Window System B+ B- Support B B+ Feature Set B A ---------------------------------------------------- FINAL GRADE B+ B Hardware Considerations Several types of tape-backup drives are supported, but while SCO ships a variety of drivers with its product, ISC provides support for Wangtek drives only. Other 386/ix-compatible drivers must be obtained from drive manufactures. This can mean frustrating delays, and not all vendors can be counted on to keep their drivers current with ISC's latest release. SCO includes support for SCSI tape, while ISC's release notes mention that SCSI tape support will be provided in the future. Documentation If quality of documentation were the deciding factor for potential buyers, SCO could walk away with the market... Only SCO includes on-line documentation in the form of man pages. Berkeley users have long bemoaned the absence of this useful facility in System V, so SCO is sure to win many friends with its decision to include them. Shipped in compressed format, they have surprisingly little impact on storage space. The man pages are very complete and the installation of the development system adds its own programmer's reference volumes. This makes and already excellent manual seem nearly perfect. Like many vendors of AT&T-based UNIX, ISC includes only scan documentation with its release, forcing customers to pay extra for the rest.... Some ISC-specific portions of the manual set are incomplete. ... Network Mail Network and uucp mail are implemented differently in the ISC and SCO operating systems. Under AT&T's System V, shipping mail across network connections, unless they support the uucp protocols, is either not done or, at least, not gracefully done. SCO take a stab at solving this problem by providing a network mailer called MMDF, the Multi-channel Memorandum Distribution Facility. This set of programs works from an array of configuration files. After hours of following along in the manual and playing with MMDF, I was unable to get it to deliver any mail to my network host. ISC, however, has chosen a more popular approach by porting in the familiar Berkeley sendmail program enhance with smail, a utility that helps the System V mail and mailx programs send and receive network mail. Both sendmail and MMDF would be difficult to configure from scratch, but the single configuration file required for sendmail is included, and it has the ability to handle most mail-delivery requirements with only simple modifications. I've been working with multiuser PC operating systems since the first ones became available, and I have always hoped that, one day, a real UNIX would rescue me from the pit of unportability and mediocrity. I've now sampled two such packages, and I can honestly say I've never been more pleased with the state of PC operating systems. While doing the research for this review, I was able to shape a comfortable environment for myself (with the exception of electronic mail) using both packages. They didn't crash unless I did something stupid in juggling devices between systems. Response time was excellent in most cases, and stayed quite respectable even under a heavy load. ISC is a quicker, leaner company and has become tremendously aggressive since its acquisition by Kodak. It has managed to be first in many important ways, and is largely responsible for creating the market into which all these new players are crowding. I expect this trend will continue, and the ISC will always be a few technological steps ahead of SCO and the others. This is meaningful for software developers looking to get a jump on their competitors and design leading-edge products. Volume purchases and system integrators will enjoy ISC's quickness as well - it will give them room to have fully configured system put together when most other UNIX vendors are still in the beta-test stage. Despite this evident drive to be first, the quality of ISC's software has not suffered. ISC's documentation, as dISCussed earlier, is quite a different story. With software offerings this complex, manuals should not be optional. Making them so does little to dispel the popular notion that UNIX is unwieldly. The haphazard construction of ISC's manuals contrasts sharply with the overall tightness and attention to detail found in the rest of the product. Documentation gives users their first impression of every operating system, and as ISC gains momentum the company may put the proper degree of importance on it. SCO has introduced thousand of users to UNIX, and it adopts a calmer, more considered approach to new products. Every SCO customer is familiar with missed release deadlines, and even inside the company there are people who joke about it: "They say it will be out in May, but from experience I'd interpret that to mean July." This make it touch on those who need to make time-critical decisions. On the other hand, the extra time-to-market gives SCO a chance to build in more added value, and those who tough it out will continue to find SCO's products more feature-laden than those if its competitors. This first foray into true UNIX find SCO adding C2 security, Posix compliance (as much as has been defined, anyway), a menu-driven visual shell, and support for a broad range of tape and serial devices. Retailers will have an easier time selling the SCO product because of its completeness and because it is better tuned for new UNIX users. While it is not as easily extensible as ISC's 386/ix, applications-oriented users have little need for simple ways to modify the kernel. Much of SCO System V/386's unique appeal derives from efforts to maintain compatibility with Xenix. More BSD commands are included than in 386/ix, on-line manual pages are standard-issue, and the compiler's ability to generate Xenix (also DOS and OS/2) binaries is a plus. DOS developers familiar with the Microsoft C compiler will feel right at home. Sometimes the drive to make things easy for newcomers pushes SCO too far, though. The system administrator's shell is just too fancy, particularly since no alternate simpler interface is offered. I see sysadm as an integral, invaluable part of System V, and SCO's decisions no to include it impedes portability. Many users have been holding back for years now, fearing UNIX as some awesome, puzzling curiosity but vowing to pick it up "when the time comes". Others figure that a small machine couldn't possible deliver the stability and performance their big boxes do. These two high-quality, robust implementations, however, show that the time has come. The intense competitiveness of the fledgling UNIX market will drive its players to continue to enhance and tune their products. There's no longer any need to wait. -------------------------------------------- Tom Yager, this month's reviewer, is a UNIX software engineer and freelance technical writer. He maintains a UNIX test lab in Westboro, MA. His e-mail address is tyager%maxx@m2c.m2c.org. Richard Morin, column editor, operates Canta Forda Computer Laboratory, a consulting firm in San Bruno, CA. His e-mail address is {hoptoad,pacbell}!cfc!rdm.
tanner@ki4pv.uucp (Dr. T. Andrews) (10/26/89)
In article <5866@dime.cs.umass.edu>, williams@cs.umass.edu writes:
) Only SCO includes on-line documentation in the form of man pages.
Warning: at least with xenix, SCO ship man pages as nroff OUTPUT.
Besides looking ugly, this can introduce some inaccuracies as the
nroff driver used doesn't cope with superscripts.
When I mentioned the problem to them, they indicated no plans to
correct the situation.
As always, "complain to your vendor". Don't hold your breath waiting
for results.
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madd@world.std.com (jim frost) (10/27/89)
In article <7125@ki4pv.uucp> tanner@ki4pv.uucp (Dr. T. Andrews) writes: |In article <5866@dime.cs.umass.edu>, williams@cs.umass.edu writes: |) Only SCO includes on-line documentation in the form of man pages. |Warning: at least with xenix, SCO ship man pages as nroff OUTPUT. Better than nothing. I seriously thought about killing someone when I found that 386/ix didn't have them. If it wasn't for the SunOS SysV compatibility and its man pages that were just an ethernet away, I would have. Vendors listen up: many of us humble (and not so humble) programmers loose much productivity while trying to figure out which manual and which page has the description of [insert seldom-used function here]. You make no friends by stripping this stuff out. The inclusion of man pages is one of the very few things that I actually liked about Xenix, and their loss was number one on my list of things I didn't like about 386/ix. jim frost software tool & die "The World" Public Access Unix for the '90s madd@std.com +1 617-739-WRLD 24hrs {3,12,24}00bps
pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) (11/11/89)
In article <927@fiver.UUCP> palowoda@fiver.UUCP (Bob Palowoda) writes:
What's interesting here is they must have the man pages on disk. I'll
bet it's cheaper to sell the floppies than buy the books. Most
developers have large systems to install man pages anyways. Sun's got
man pages so why dosn't ISC, ESIX, ATT and/or Intel? Come on guys
hows about moveing out of the dark ages.
The difference between Sun and the others is that the Sun/BSD man pages are
still based on a license where they were bundled with UNIX. The current
System V situation is such that the man pages are an extra product, to be
licensed separately, so, tough on the customer.
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