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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in3.uu.net!news.eden.com!interval.net!arlut.utexas.edu!khan!jerry From: jerry@arlut.utexas.edu (Jerry Heyman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Re: which Unix to choose? Followup-To: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Date: 7 Nov 1996 16:00:09 GMT Organization: UT Applied Research Laboratories Lines: 68 Message-ID: <55t129$eg4@ns1.arlut.utexas.edu> References: <327F5727.179F@citynet.net> <327FC59A.6E48@gcsnet.com> <55phr2$5ln@newsbr.eunet.fr> <3280DA06.383@gcsnet.com> <3281BB13.4E29@unige.it> NNTP-Posting-Host: khan.arlut.utexas.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.sco.misc:28749 comp.unix.misc:26148 comp.unix.questions:90752 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:30765 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:4829 Claudio Di Martino (claudio@unige.it) wrote: : Ismaeel Abdur-Rasheed, et. al. wrote: : > IBM, on the other hand, turns it's nose up at the entire unix industry, : > who after great effort finally consolidated their versioning around : > AT&T SVr4. Slightly revisionist history here. When System Vr4 first came out in 1988, there was concern amoungst the other Unix players because AT&T had a 20% stake in Sun. That concern was that Sun would have early peek at the code, and/or that the code would be structured for the SPARC processor. Hence the formation of OSF. HP, Apollo, Semiens, Nixdorf, DEC, and IBM all seemed to think that Unix was too important for one (and only one) company to own/control. IBM licensed AIX v3 to OSF, and for the most part thats is how HP and DEC wound up with Logical Volume Management in their current implentations. Is it identical to what IBM licensed to OSF? No, but its based on the OSF modifications. : > AIX, however, uses it's own proprietary methods of system : > administration (smitty). SO when you move from one unix box to another : > - if they are SVr4 you have a good chance of being able to administrate : > the system using the command line syntax; but if you move to a AIX : > machine - your sunk! System Administration on Unix has always been a mixed bag. There are people who don't want the BSD method changed (edit the various config files) or the SysV method is the 'true' way. There has never been a consensus. : Hmmm, not really. Using smit isn't mandatory, it's only an interface : to system commands. If you want you can still use the command line : syntax. Correct, in fact you can have SMIT generate all the commands for you (by default it does in smit.log) and create a shell script from there. Having been part of the folks that helped implement SMIT, I admit it has its warts, but IBM's goal was to make administration easier - especially for people who were new to Unix. Using this common interface, all the necessary config information was updated without the user needing to know which files were updated/edited. Many a time I had forgotten one (or more) of the different edits needed to configure TCP on other systems. : Not that I'm happy with AIX or IBM though... There were enough decisions within the System Administration stuff that didn't make a lot of us happy either. Way back in 1989 when I was working there, we had many discussions about being able to administer the machine either using the ascii files or the NEW system adminstration tools via ODM. : > IBM is like Microsoft in that way. Insisting on doing things with : > their : > own flavor and to hell with the rest of the industry. Well, ever since : I'd say Microsoft is like IBM... ;) Both have their flaws, but at least when it comes to doing things via the 'industry' standard, IBM is Unix95 certified. Microsoft won't even publish ALL the interfaces it supports... : Claudio Di Martino claudio@unige.it : --------------------------------------------------------------- : Unsolicited and/or junk e-mail to this address isn't accepted. jerry -- Jerry Heyman | jerry@arlut.utexas.edu O- Combat System Simulation | http://www.arlut.utexas.edu/~jerry Applied Research Laboratories of UT Austin | "Software is the difference P.O. Box 8029, Austin, TX 78713-8029 | between hardware and reality"