Very Computer

I've been reading that the majority of the big vendors (IBM, HP, SCO,
etc.) are all using System V as opposed to BSD.  What exactly is the
difference?  Besides for vendor support, is the difference worth
considering when choosing an OS?

HI
BSD is now firmly in the 'free' arena (although you can get the official
BSD is you really want to pay for it). The differences are mainly to do
with the fact that BSD is/was thought of as more academic Unix and sysV
more of a commercial version. However the differences are not slim as
there was a 'feature' merge in sysVr4 that saw all the good stuff from
BSD enter the sysV code.

Now IBM's AIX is a Unix compatitable (if you actually work with you'll
see why) and only purports to be SysVr2 compatible, but it does have
some good points - journaled filsystem and volume management built in.

HPUX and Solaris are both based on sysVr4 but have progressed quite far
from the raw distribution.

SCO is prob the more pure sysVr4, but only works on intel hardware - not
very scaleable.

alot of the 'choice' depends on the complete solution hardware/software/
3rd party app (eg Oracle) costs etc.

Also do you currently have any sort of unix, as getting used to another
flavour (esp AIX) can take some time.

my 2 pence worth

martin

Yes; if the application(s) you want to run are available for it.

Quote:> Now IBM's AIX is a Unix compatitable (if you actually work with you'll
> see why) and only purports to be SysVr2 compatible, but it does have
> some good points - journaled filsystem and volume management built in.

From a programmer's perspective, I regard AIX as having started off
rather BSD-like, but having gradually migrated over the years to be
quite SVR4 compatible too.

Quote:> HPUX and Solaris are both based on sysVr4 but have progressed quite far
> from the raw distribution.

Really? I would have said there was pretty much no resemblence to SVR4.
However, I haven't seen HPUX 11, only 9 and 10, which have rather more
similarity to some combination of early SVR3 and BSD.

Quote:> SCO is prob the more pure sysVr4, but only works on intel hardware - not
> very scaleable.

You are referring to SCO Unixware I presume.
SCO Openserver is SVR3.2, with later releases picking up some SVR4 bits.

--
Andrew Gabriel
Consultant Software Engineer

Quote:> Also do you currently have any sort of unix, as getting used to
another
> flavour (esp AIX) can take some time.

It's a rather strange set up.  I've only started getting interested in
UNIX because we have AIX at work.  But because it only runs on a RISC
processor, I chose OpenBSD to start learning UNIX.  I figured when you
know nothing, learning any UNIX will be a tremendous asset.  So in
addition to OpenBSD, I plan on running Solaris 8 at home.

It should be an interesting mix because I also have a NT Server running
as proxy and a iMac (my sister's) as a client to my cable modem.  After
I get more familiar, I plan on transferring my OpenBSD to be the proxy.

Wish me luck.

The version we have at work is for the RISC processor and I was unable
to obtain a copy for my x86 machine.

HP bought the TCP/IP stack from Mentat Inc.... So HPUX-11.x includes ndd ;-)

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URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling    ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix

AIX is moving towards UNIX ....

Some years ago it has been called Alien unIX ;-)

.... Because many functions are not implemented the right way.
This happens when one alien tries to use the phone to tell
another alien what UNIX is and this poor alien then has to impement it.

Remember that uname -r and uname -s are exchanged on AIX because the
AT&T manpage for uname is hard to read .....

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URL:  http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling    ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix