SCO UNIX <REPLACES> VMS and ULTRIX on new DEC product line

[A J Annala]

In article <2777E87B.6392 at tct.uucp> chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>According to annala at neuro.usc.edu (A J Annala):
>>According to DEC's advertisement in Computer Reseller News, the new
>>DEC 433MP System (1 to 6 coupled i486 CPU's, 64 MB global shared memory
>>64 MB/s system bus, 1.2 GB internal hard disk) will not run any variety
>>of VMS (or even ULTRIX) -- INSTEAD IT WILL RUN SCO UNIX!!!
>Well, of course it won't run VMS.  VMS is coded in VAX assembler.

My friends tell me most of VMS is coded in a DEC proprietary language
called BLISS.  BLISS exists for PDP-11's, PDP-10's, and VAXen -- DEC
could have chosen to write a new BLISS compiler for the 80386 -- but
that is not what happened -- instead, DEC adopted SCO UNIX for their
new machine.  Moreover, in the process, DEC abandoned it's own ULTRIX 
(DEC proprietary version of UNIX) in order to adopt SCO UNIX.

>>As far as SCO UNIX being difficult to deal with, you might consider my 
>>experience with this system. I am a biologist - not a system programmer.
>A user who doesn't do anything complicated with system administration,
>or who has no history of system administration with other UNIX
>systems, will not fully appreciate SCO's "C2" for the botch it is.  It
>makes things hard that used to be easy, and it makes impossible things
>that used to be possible.  

I have installed the base operating system, development system, and tcp/ip
on a completely uninitialized machine with only guidance from a reference
manual.  I created user accounts - downloaded, compiled, and installed gcc
and emacs in the appropriate directories - wrote a device driver for the
Data Translation QuickCapture frame grabber - downloaded and am now making
appropriate changes to install a SUN UNIX based image processing system.
I make periodic backup tapes.  I am happy with the system.  My users are
happy with the system.  Living within C2 guidelines is causing us no real
grief.  What more do you want from SCO UNIX?

The fact you have to change some of your habits to fit within the current
security framework should not drive so many complaints.  Computer systems
change -- we have to change with them -- if people didn't accept the need
for change we would all still be writing machine code for monolithic IBM
7090's with no operating system, no compilers, and no interactive access.

Take a hint from the biological sciences:  we must evolve or die.