Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!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: <629@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 29 Sep 89 13:42:16 GMT
References: <8909290807.AA17277@euler.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center
Lines: 43

In article <8909290807.AA17277@euler.Berkeley.EDU>, ndeng@EULER.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
	[ summary of "which UNIX" replies ]

  I would not question any of the opinions in the replies, but there
were two statements which described problems with Xenix which don't
exist, and which might appear to exist if someone exceeded their
understanding of the system.


|  This is a big question.  As for resource sharing (general
|  performance), each has their ups and downs.  Xenix wins hands down on
|  minimum required RAM and fixed disk, although I found its treatment of
|  larger disks to be very naive, not even handling separate root and
|  /usr partitions well.  

  I haven't seen any problems in about two years of Xenix/386. ie. it
is not better or worse at handling partitions than Ultrix, SunOS, or
any other SysV port. Any SysV without symbolic links has limitations
about where to put things, but Xenix has no special limitiations of
which I'm aware.

  SCO UNIX has a fast filesystem, I don't know if s-links have been added.

|  
|  Neither Xenix nor 386/ix is particularly difficult to install if you
|  have UNIX adminstration experience.  If you don't, they're still
|  pretty easy to install if you don't try to customize anything.  Xenix
|  breaks down immediately if you customize, 386/ix is far better but
|  still not as good as it might be.

  There are many things which are actual shortcomings of Xenix, but
costomization isn't one of them. There are many people, including me,
who customize Xenix frequently. So far this year I have setup for MFM,
two brands of RLL, and ESDI controllers, including running two
controllers. I have tried two brands of multiline serial card. No
problems with customize at all, I suspect the poster just doesn't know
what s/he's 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