Experience with SCO UNIX 5.3

[John David Miller]

We've had a nightmare and a half getting SCO UNIX installed and working.  to
be fair, INTERACTIVE is not much better (about half a nightmare ;-) but 
they seem to be improving.  ISC uses sysadm (leftover from AT&T 3B2's) but
SCO uses that funky sysadmsh, which is even more "black box," but it doesn't
work: we had installation scripts crash with no explanation leaving no known
state or forwarding address.  I don't mind having administrative details
hiden - I actually use sysadm now on ISC boxes - but goddamit they better
work or their cure is worse than the disease.  We had to install SCO 4 times
before we had a semi-working system.

On the positive side, our code developed on INTERACTIVE and AT&T UNIX 386
compiled and ran just swell, after specifying the AT&T compiler.  Even some
of the binaries worked.  

My beef then with the "big three" (AT&T, ISC, SCO) is that the system 
administration and kernel configuration is all different.  As a software 
house trying to support all three platforms with an X Server, this
sucks.  At that level they are all incompatable, not even considering the
differences in networking software, keyboard/mouse interfaces, and local
Xlib connections.  The 386 will never be a viable UNIX workstation platform
as long as everyone is getting their jollies with this kind of (re-inventing 
the wheel) "value-adding."  Oh sure, you can run the UNIX of your choice and
hack to your heart's content, but you won't have the abundance of commercial
software available that you will on other UNIX platforms or, sadly, OS/2.

-- jdm
-- 
...!{tektronix!verdix}!sequent!gssc!jdm                John David Miller
(503) 641-2200                                         Graphic Software Systems
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