'386 Unix Wars

[Tom Neff]

In article <350 at metran.UUCP> jay at metran.UUCP (Jay Ts) writes:
>I am *scared* of SVR4!!  When/if my clients have to upgrade, they will have
>to add at least 4 Mb of memory and probably suffer a performance degradation
>as well.  (Someone please tell me this isn't really true!)  And it won't
>markedly improve the functioning of their existing software, either.

I'll tell you it's not true if you'll tell us why you thought it WAS true.

For equivalent functionality -- note that phrase please -- SVR4 looks
about 20% bigger than the comparable SVR3v2.2 system.  But remember that
SVR4 adds a lot of functionality!  Yes, if you blindly take the install
tape and say 'give me everything', you're looking at a lot more disk and
memory consumption.  But that's up to you.  Not everyone needs three
networks, all of Open Look, six different file systems and so forth.

Anyway, memory is so damn cheap these days.  My only beef is that, for a
UNIX release packing so many additional files, SVR4/386 doesn't have better
support for huge ESDI disks.  It chafes to have to throw away 100MB of
my Maxtor just to keep upder 1024 cylinders.  I would like to see this
addressed in a future rev.

-- 
"Just when we finally got good at this, we    \_i_/   Tom Neff
run out of planets." - a Voyager scientist   --[o]--  tneff at bfmny0.BFM.COM