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Date:      Sun, 8 Dec 1996 10:40:11 +0500 (ESK)
From:      "Serge A. Babkin" <babkin@hq.icb.chel.su>
To:        jehamby@lightside.com
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com
Subject:   Re: Help, I've been SCOed!
Message-ID:  <199612080540.KAA25708@hq.icb.chel.su>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.961207195642.184D-100000@hamby1> from "Jake Hamby" at Dec 7, 96 08:37:17 pm

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> before, so had been using console mode all this time).  We also tried to
> install the developer environment on the off chance that we could use ld
> or some other tool to somehow "wrap" the a.out binaries with a COFF or ELF
> header.  There was a tool called "coff2elf"  but NOTHING related to XENIX
> binaries.  Does anyone have background info on these old XENIX binaries? 
> Will FreeBSD or Linux run them?

SCO had an utility obj2coff or something_else2coff that converted
XENIX object (not executable) files to COFF format. I can say that
it was in versions 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 of SCO. The C compiler
in these versions produced XENIX object files and then invoked this
utility. This utility was designed to work with C compiler and
coredumped if you tried to convert an object file you got
from assembly language source.

> 
> On the plus side, the X11R5/Motif desktop is decent.  It looks a bit like
> both Windows and CDE.  Their help system is done in HTML (oddly, most of
> the HTML pages were compress(1)ed), with a modified version of NCSA Mosaic
> called "scohelp" (the regular Mosaic was also bundled).  All the pages are
> fed through a local http server (running on port 432), so that a cgi
> script can also link you to man pages (e.g.  /cgi-bin/man/cp+1).  Also,
> scoadmin is a decent program, and the Visual Tcl concept (the same program
> works in console or X) is interesting.

I think that the SCO desktop is VERY uncomfortable. I tried to use it
but in a short time I understood that it is not what I wanted. One
of the worsest things in it is that when you browse directories
and go to the subdirectory it gives you a new window and remains
the parent window open. Shortly you get LOTS of directory windows
on your screen. In my opinion HP VUE has much better appearance.
Especially I like their idea of dashboard. Really fvwm already
does many things in a VUE like way.

> 2) Start on a decent admin type program.  Personally, I think a good
> approach is something combining the ideas of SCO (works on GUI and
> command-line), Sun (supports files and NIS), and AIX (shows you exactly
> what commands it's running to do the job, so you can put them in a script
> or run them manually if you desire).  The disadvantages of these three
> tools we should avoid:  SCO almost everything involves relinking the
> kernel, Solaris doesn't use UNIX tools to do its job so you have no idea
> how to do things yourself manually (the exact opposite of AIX), and I
> don't know about AIX enough to say what its weak points are.

I don't know about AIX but HP-UX has really nice SAM program. After
all it allows you to see the log and learn the ways in that the
same things are done in shell.

-SB



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