wyle@inf.ethz.ch (Mitchell Wyle) (04/03/91)
Coming from Unix and still somewhat new to the DOS universe, I am trying to catalog PD and shareware Unix-like utilities on DOS. Background: I bought my wife a DOS system and find myself using it instead of my cp/m machine. The system is a 33 MHz 386 with 4 Mb ram, 40 Mb disk, 14" Hercules monochrome, deskjet500. My wife bought and runs windows 3.0; her lab is in the process of buying her win-word, win-excel, win-designer, and some statistical plotting / graphics software. Microsoft is being a jerk about multi-cpu licenses. How can she run the same software on the machine in her locked office and on our machine at home? Her lab is trying to get our machine on their multi-cpu license, but Microsoft won't let them. Now I know why other people steal software; I still refuse to do so. Microsoft is not the only game in town and there are probably some hungry companies willing to cut a better deal... I don't like Microsoft; I hate windows. I use MS-kermit 3.1 to telecomm with; that's one rock solid-piece of code. I run elvis-1.3 (vi) and use emtex latex. My machine and emtex latex, dviscr is faster than a Sun-3 at work running Ctex and xdvi! Ha! I may buy Turbo-C, or I may run gcc. I am not yet to the point where I develop C code at home. A PD MKS Toolkit? Before you type "R" and tell me about the gnuish project, I know about it and subscribed to their mailing list for a while. Most of those people are not cataloging DOS software that does not strictly conform to the true blue gnu manifestu. Additionally, there is software on dos that blows Unix stuff away. E.g., 4dos is better than any Unix shell. Those guys should write a Unix version. (I have to register before my 21-day trial period ticks down...) I used to use PD versions of less(1), rm(1) and some other unix-like stuff but the 4dos built-ins are better. (I would throw ls(1) out, but I don't feel like writing lots of aliases mapping the ls flags I use all the time to 4dos dir commands.) There are gadzillions of other PD or shareware Unix-like utilities for DOS. I have found and use great versions of ls(1), df(1), sh(1), sed(1), tar(1), compress(1), grep(1), wc(1) and awk(1). I ported fmt(1) to dos using a work DOS machine and the turbo C on that machine's hard disk. I wonder who owns the license for *that* compiler? My questions, the reasons I am posting this article, are: 1. Which are the most important /usr/bin Unix programs one needs to write and run portable sh scripts? Has someone cataloged them, their authors, the internet source machines for their latest versions, etc.? Since there are so many versions of certain utilities (e.g. sh) is there a list of features, alternatives, tradeoffs for the different programs? 2. Which newsgroup(s) have discussion threads listing the faqs, mentors, and internet resources for Unix utils on dos? Is anyone willing to help me organize and maintain my guide? -Mitch