Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 23:36:42 -0800 (PST) From: Dan Busarow <dan@dpcsys.com> To: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com Subject: Re: Help, I've been SCOed! Message-ID: <Pine.UW2.3.95.961207231556.20152C-100000@cedb> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95.961207195642.184D-100000@hamby1>
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On Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Jake Hamby wrote: > 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? Xenix binaries even have problems on SCO Unix (3.2) systems. When SCO Unix first came out we switched development to it from Xenix and I was very happy. Hey, I'd been working with Xenix and some other mini computer OSes. Then we started getting complaints. Most Xenix programs worked, those that ran as daemons and used IPC didn't. Bummer I did test cases and sent them in, got it escalated to kernel support in London (where all the _real_ kernel work was done, at least back then) and basically was told that we'd have to ship Unix binaries, not Xenix ones and get everyone to upgrade. > Some final comments about SCO: > > Their package system is VERY VERY slow. It also requires a huge amount of > time just to read the package information from the CD-ROM before it even > starts (every time you use it!). Packages (including most of the OS > itself) are all installed in /opt/K/SCO/blah/foo/whatever and symlinked > all over the place (this has been mentioned before on this list) >From folks within SCO, this system is hated internally too. And it's not in Gemini/UnixWare. > UnixWare (SVR4). The article I read was very flattering of all the > wonderful features of SVR4 (better performance, standard package tools, no > need to relink the kernel), but I couldn't help but notice all of these > features are available now in Solaris or UnixWare, so I guess these people > that are still running SCO must all be using XENIX binaries or something. Gemini really is UnixWare repackaged with the VisualTCL admin tools. Plus Java and a few other bits. We've been using UnixWare since the developers pre-release beta and are very happy with it. The reason we are now using FreeBSD for our commercial produsct is that while Novell thought there was a place for cheap single user licenses, SCO doesn't. FreeSCO is fine, but not if you want to use it in a commercial environment and they don't have a low cost single user license. BTW, I'm quite happy that SCO made me look at FreeBSD. Most of our internal servers our now running FreeBSD and our product will be native FreBSD too. Too bad I have to buy Motif :) > So, what can FreeBSD do to court SCO users? We could: Doesn't matter to me but for normal users FreBSD/XFree86 needs a decent desktop. I'd use the UnixWare desktop as a model. It's not that fat, behaves a lot like I expect a desktop to behave (add files when I create them ...) and is pretty easy for users to customize. dtksh (nee wksh) which came up here a bit ago is also way cool (to me). If you know ksh and you know Motif/X you know wksh. It is soooo easy to knock out little utility scripts. Doesn't do character mode though no matter what some people say. > Free UnixWare comes out, that I might think about buying. Comments? For personal use, have at it. It really is a good SVR4 and the compiler and X server are great. If you want to sell it though, or use it in a commercial environment you have to [ay the piper. Dan -- Dan Busarow 714 443 4172 DPC Systems dan@dpcsys.com Dana Point, California 83 09 EF 59 E0 11 89 B4 8D 09 DB FD E1 DD 0C 82
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