ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) (10/26/90)
I bought MKS toolkit recently. In case you didn't know, The
Programmer's Shop gives you a educational discount, I paid
something like $125. The toolkit == MKS Shell + MKS Awk + a huge
bunch of /bin programs.
You can install it in several different configurations, each
implies a different extent to which it "takes over" your machine.
The minimal configuration involves leaving your setup essentially
untouched, and filling /bin with 250ish programs which you can
use at will. The maximal configuration is for the MKS shell to
come up through config.sys.
Personally, I hate MS-DOS so I've given over my machine
completely to MKS. The only catches derived from the fact that
I'm a 386 and the installation manual doesn't really talk much
about how to do a good job of installing on the 386. My "best"
solution is pretty weird:
config.sys starts with 386-max as memory manager, and uses
it to put all device drivers into high memory. Last, it
starts up MKS shell as shell=
profile.ksh (the autoexec of the MKS shell) fires a strange
batch file called msdosstart.bat. This chap uses the
386-max programs maxhi and maxlo to load a large sidekick
into high memory. The reason this is done using a MS-DOS
batch file is that it leaves me more memory for the SK
notepad (i can explain further over email).
Goods:
- Awk is fantastic. It's better than the GNU awk.
- I don't like the kornshell (or the bourne shell) but it's a
huge gain over command.com. I say things like q `which td`
all the time and it works!
- The /bin utilities are largely welldone and faithfully
replicate a Unix environment, with some limitations.
- if you have a ramdisk, he makes pipes work through the
ramdisk, which is great for pipes faster than command.com.
- In all, I can't live without it.
Bads:
- the shell commandline editing mechanism is terrible,
- Kornshell is inferior to cshell, IMHO, in many ways,
- it takes a while to move mindsets. Also, running DOS
programs from MKS Shell is sometimes downright irritating.
I sometimes fire a command.com for the purpose :-(
- there are more bugs than I'd have expected from a
commercial package.
- the documentation is good but not great.
Bugs I found:
- If you exceed the size of the commandline he can deal
with (max = 8192 instead of microsoft's 128), he hangs. In
my /bin which has a huge number of progams, ls *.exe hangs
him.
- I tried on tar-compress-uncompress on a large file system
and the uncompressed version was different from the
original. It worked correctly on a few other files, but I
can't use it with peace of mind anymore..
- A few other minor shell+/bin bugs.
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ajay Shah, (213)734-3930, ajayshah@usc.edu
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
_______________________________________________________________________________psfales@cbnewsc.att.com (Peter Fales) (10/27/90)
In article <27731@usc>, ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes: ... > - if you have a ramdisk, he makes pipes work through the > ramdisk, which is great for pipes faster than command.com. I am a big fan of the tookit myself, but I am not sure what you mean here. How do I make pipes work through the ramdisk? ... > Also, running DOS > programs from MKS Shell is sometimes downright irritating. I have a few aliases I find useful. For example, alias dir="command -c dir" -- Peter Fales AT&T, Room 5B-420 N9IYJ 2000 N. Naperville Rd. UUCP: ...att!ihlpb!psfales Naperville, IL 60566 Domain: psfales@ihlpb.att.com work: (708) 979-8031