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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!metro!metro!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!nsw.news.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news.mathworks.com!enews.sgi.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.uoregon.edu!Symiserver2.symantec.com!news From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FBSD Future... Date: 12 Oct 1996 06:40:40 GMT Organization: Symantec Corp. Lines: 49 Message-ID: <53neh8$kaa@Symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <Dz37x9.7vC@news2.new-york.net> <53kr8l$pkt@newsbr.eunet.fr> Reply-To: tedm@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva2.central.com X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2.5 In <53kr8l$pkt@newsbr.eunet.fr>, fgm@osinet.fr (Frederic MARAND) writes: >Remember SCO now offers a free license of its Open Server for >personal, study, research. > >I think this will probably diminish the needs of many FreeBSD/Linux >users to get these OSes: only people really wishing to tinker with >kernel code will stick to the really free OSes. Most people run them >to get unix apps running, not for the sake of debugging kernels. Your forgetting that the SCO deal is a one-user version. While this may allow multiple processes in the system, I doubt that it will allow multiple logins to the system. For me, I access my freeBSD machines using Windoze machines as front ends, since I don't use X-Windows, I can open up multiple telnet windows and have at it. I'd rather have the FreeBSD machine yaking out the network port instead of the keyboard and display, it consumes less system resources and the machine runs faster. Also, from what I've seen the SCO deal is warmed-over Unixware. I really don't know what Novell did to it, but I bought both Unixware 1.1 and Unixware 2.0 editions when they shipped out and was extremely disappointed with them. The systems were so slow as to be unusable, and all the system administration was focused around the X-windows GUI applications, which were very buggy. I called Novell's tech support several times on the system with problems only to be told that I had to drop to the command line to fix something "because the GUI destroys the links" or some other such stuff. I also had hardware that worked on Unixware 1.1 that stopped working on 2.0. The speed was the worst though, it literally took 5 minutes to boot the machine, this was a 16MB 486/66 with a 500MB disk. Once the machine booted you got a GUI login prompt, and even if you set your shell up as /bin/sh or whatever, the system still had X-windows running in the background. Alt-tabbing to a different login screen literally took 2 minutes, as the system would start up with the GUI login prompt bullshit all over again. I don't like to excrete all over SCO, but in my mind they are a Unix vendor that has survived because they allow the database vendors to push them around. The vendors are too lazy to recompile their code when a new version of SCO comes out, that is why SCO is still at the 3.2 SYSV kernel unbelievably. SCO's Unix does one thing great, it runs all the yucky ancient SYSV database/accounting Unix packages out there. However, I don't see SCO as a Unix team player, I see them more as a proprietary-Microsoft-of-the-Unix world wannabe. As someone who has run production Unix apps, I regard FreeBSD as every bit as stable as a commercial Unix. A few years back I ran a Usenet news server on FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 for over a year straight without unscheduled downtime. I calculated that the thing had processed over 75 million articles. In fact, after I left the company the server kept running all by itself without any maintenance for over 6 months, this was in a IS shop where no one knew anything about Unix. It would probably still be going except that I heard that a SIMM failed in the machine.