Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Unix for a 386-PC? Summary (627 lines)
Message-ID: <655@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 29 Sep 89 23:09:03 GMT
References: <8909290807.AA17277@euler.Berkeley.EDU> <629@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <39233@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 44

In article <39233@bu-cs.BU.EDU>, madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) writes:
|  |I suspect the poster just doesn't know
|  |what s/he's doing.
|  
|  It's possible that we're not talking about the same version of the
|  software.  In any case, I gave honest, experienced opinions about two
|  of the UNIX's in question.  As both a user and a developer, I'm not
|  entirely sure I'd like to use Xenix anyway; it's environment is
|  sufficiently strange as to make development somewhat difficult.  Take
|  my advice or leave it, but don't question my abilities.
|  
|  jim frost
|  madd@std.com

  I guess I didn't say that as clearly as I might have... I did not mean
your incompetent, just unfamiliar with the system. In addition, I
believe that you were using an older version of Xenix, although the 386
version hasn't been around that long.

  I may never have installed xenix in a tiny root partition, and it may
indeed complain if you do so. If that's what you meant I think you may
have described it somewhat strongly and I believed you meant some
non-functional failure mode.

  As far as I can tell you can set the swap to any value, but if you
want a value outside the suggested range you answer 'yes' when asked
about block-by-block control over allocation. Then you can set the
starting and ending blocks of each partition including swap, and diddle
with the order of the partitions if you have a reason to do so. It's in
the manual, but I doubt that I found it the first time, either.

  I won't get into non-standard. If BSD and naked ATT are standard,
xenix isn't. Someone might say that there are more copies of xenix than
any other flavor of unix (but since I can't find the source for that
belief I can't press the claim).

  The ix/386 custom scripts are (or were) not totally bulletproof, and I
managed to have an adventure using them. I have no doubt that I didn't
know what I was doing ;-) 
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called
'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see
that the world is flat!" - anon