A/UX Release 2.0 (long)

[Daniel J. Oberst]

Some early reactions of an A/UX 2.0 beta tester:

A/UX 2.0, the latest version of Apple's UNIX offering, is what 
Apple's UNIX should have been all along. When I first installed the 
software,it appeared that the installation had failed, and I tried 
to re-launch the installer program--surprise!! A/UX *WAS* installed! 
Only the Mac Desktop and icons looked and worked so much like MacOS 
I couldn't superficially tell it was UNIX!

Basically, A/UX lives in one Multifinder layer that lets you set up 
multiple terminal windows from which you can run UNIX (A/UX) 
applications,moniter UNIX processes, and do other UNIX-y sorts of 
things (much like the 'term' program from earlier versions plus a 
console window). In the other layers you run whatever MacOS 
applications you want. Appletalk works (either over Ethernet or 
LocalTalk); you can access AppleShare volumes; print to a networked 
LaserWriter, use Broadcast, or do whatever you would otherwise do in 
a Mac environment. Your MacOS/Multifinder environment gets a chunk 
of memory equivalent to your installed RAM. So a 4 MB Mac with A/UX 
2.0 gets a 4MB Multifinder environment, and A/UX's memory management 
keeps it and the MacOS side of the house happy in that space.

What's best is that MacOS disks and hard disk volumes are 
transparently visible to MultiFinder and the Mac applications 
running under A/UX!! Stick in a floppy and its Mac files can be 
read. Attach a hard drive with your MacOS files and applications and 
they become accessable to the system, right on your desktop. (Note, 
we encountered problems with some non-Apple drives, but we 
understand that new drivers/disk formatting utilities will take care 
of this problem).

Tired of waiting for a good tn3270 for A/UX? Just use Brown 
University's tn3270. Need to do a Tektronix emulation? Just use the 
NCSA Telnet you're used to on the Mac.  Hypercard, MacWrite, MacTCP, 
they all work just like in the Mac OS.

Furthermore, your UNIX files can also be accessed from the desktop 
(or via the standard UNIX command line if you wish), directories 
appear as folders, your NFS-mounted remote files systems just show 
up as folders within your "root" volume (it appears as a hard disk 
with the name '/') on your desktop. If you have AppleSingle or 
AppleDouble files on your local UNIX disk (or on some remote NFS 
mounted system) such as the Gator box creates when it emulates 
AppleShare, they will appear as Mac icons that can be launched by 
double clicking. There's even a Mac-friendly editor to deal with 
UNIX text files if you don't want to fight vi.

If you want or need it, though, you have a command line environment 
available. It also includes a powerful 'Commando" feature.(UNIX die-
hards would call it a crutch.) Based on a utility found in MPW, it 
allows you to start a command, and then call up a window that lets 
you select options and arguments using radio buttons and menus, and 
interactively builds the command line for you. So if you forget how 
to sort a directory listing by date of last access, the Commando 
brings up a dialog box with that option. For those who have spent 
too many hours at a Mac and can't even remember the 'ls' mnemonic 
for directory or 'grep' to search for a string, there is a folder of 
"Useful Commands" with short descriptions of each.

There are some provisos: Only '32-bit clean' Mac applications are 
guaranteed to work in the standard login environment. Apple has been 
pushing vendors to make newer versions of their software 32-bit 
compliant, but there is a 24-bit login environment that will allow 
earlier versions of software to run. In addition,(for the hard-core) 
there is a bare-bones standard command-line-only login environment, 
as well as an X-Windows environment. The login screen offers a pull-
down menu to give the user a choice among these options before 
logging in.

Running the 24-bit environment, some niceties are lost (like the 
'Commando' command completion). If you run the X-Windows 
environment, you lose the Multifinder windows, and get only a 
'standard' X-Windows desktop. However, the announced-but-not-yet-
released MacX will run under the 32-bit MacOS environment, so you 
can have your X-cake and eat it too! In fact, you can have an X-
window 'client' program running under A/UX, but displaying in the 
MacX 'server 'window which runs as one of the Multifinder layers.

Note also that while MacOS applications and the desktop are aware of 
the UNIX files and file system, the A/UX side of the house can only 
deal with its own (and NFS-mounted) files. Now of course if MacOS 
ran an NFS-server...

All this flexibility comes at a price. Running a very early beta 
release of the software on an 8 MB MacII, responsiveness was 
sluggish at times. Handling remote file systems, updating the 
desktop, spooling print files, background processes, all take a 
slice of the CPU's horsepower. If A/UX is the UNIX we have been 
waiting for, the zippy new Mac IIfx maybe the machine *A/UX* was 
waiting for. However, having your whole Mac environment suddenly 
living on top of UNIX is quite a tour-de-force. We will be 
installing A/UX 2.0 on an early test version of the IIfx to see how 
it performs on this machine. A/UX is reported to make good use of 
many of the enhancements that have been incorporated into this 
machine 

X-windows mavins will be pleased to find, however that the latest X-
11 release 4 version of the software is much improved, and performs 
very nicely under A/UX 2.0, even on the MacII we first used to test 
it. We saw none of the 'rubber-banding' with resized or dragged 
windows we saw in earlier versions, and drop-down menus were 
responsive and snappy.

The 'battle for the desktop' now has several contenders, with Mac-
on-UNIX added to NeXTSTeP-on-UNIX, Motif-on-UNIX, OpenLook-on-UNIX, 
and Presentation-Manager-on-OS/2 (not to mention Apple's own System 
7 which debuts this summer) all fighting to win the GUI (Graphic 
User Interface) Wars. In terms of a migration strategy, however, 
A/UX 2.0 seems like a real a break-through that will allow users to 
move to a multi-tasking operating system without losing their 
environment and software investments.