SCO UNIX , opinions wanted
JL Gomez
--
I just thought I would post a small advocate message for Linux after a
nightmarish situation I had. I usually dont post messages like this as they
tend to induce flame wars, but who cares. :) Anyway, this is a rather
lengthy but amuzing story, so sit back and have a laugh at my stupididty.
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About 4 months ago I was deciding on what unix to run for my new
internet business and a friend recommended SCO. I thought, cool, its a
commercial OS and has to be better than the Linux I've been running for
over a year right? <wrong option> Anyway, I ordered the SCO runtime and
development packages and choked my wallet for the 3k cash it cost. But it's
a commercial OS and has great support and has to have more features than
linux does, so its worth the investement I figure.
So I get the OS and install it, rather imporessive looking I must say.
The documentation blows the doors off Linux hands down, and the sysadmsh
shell for system administration is quite impressive! Thats where the smiles
ended and frowns start showing up. I now find out that the development kit
does not include TCP/IP libs, oh! Thats another package! Only $256 dollars
sir. And I find out that TCP/IP is not included in the base unix package.
Oh! Thats another package sir! Only $519! Well shit, why would I expect
unix to come standard with TCP/IP installed? I mean, its not like I would
want to do any networking with my unix machine right?!? *boggle* Ok, I choke
that down and find out, whoa! That great support I heard about only costs
$256 dollar for 30 days of support! Hey, wow, impressive, I already spent
$4,000 on the OS, why would I expect some free support for that investment?
*slap me*.
SO I really start poking around in the OS and literally had a malox moment.
It comes with NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, like 0 applications! Oh, sco is too good
to support those uncessary, useless and silly apps like elm, pine, pico,
emacs, GROFF (of all things to leave out), any roff util, gzip, tcsh, quota,
tin, trn, nn, etc, etc, etc. I could go on all day, but you get the point.
I had to goto ftp sites and find all these for sco. Ok, thats fair I GUESS,
not that I paid 4,000 more than I did for Linux, but whatever I figure.
Cow #2. The keyboard mapping and system colors made me vomit. No support
for process suspension, no support for control-c (had to hit delete for it),
no support for adding color to the dir trees like Linux comes with
pre-configured. No, its not a BIG deal, but its just sloppy. You would think
for that kind of money that could put some snazz into the looks of it eh?
Think again.
Cow #3. SCO has no support for dynamic PPP or SLIP IP addressing. Linux
does, but shit, were talking about a commercial OS here! Why would we support
lowly PPP after all? Ok fine, I can take that as the dedicated line is
installed in a few weeks.
Cow #4. NFS? Yes sir! Step right up and purchase your NFS suppliment for
SCO unix for only $512! Otherwise, your s.o.l. This was a bit much, so I
passed for a more comfortable looking toilet. (Dont even ask how much the
XWindows stuff costs, I dared not scare my wallet so)
Cow #5. 16 bit inodes? What?!? Your kidding me! (Well, we have it planned
for SCO Everest in 95 sir.) Mother of god. Who put this idiotic OS together,
Bill Gates? But what if I want to run a news server? (Use 5 partitions and
spread it across that sir.) But.. but.. I paid, like, 4,000 for an OS with
16 bit inodes.... SO how do other SCO folks usually handle news without
spreading it across 50 million partitoins if you plan to run a larger server?
(MOst use Linux systems for their news servers sir.) *weeze*
Cow #6. I ask, when I wanna upgrade to more than one machine, is there a
more nominal fee for extending the liscence to multiple machines? (No sir,
there is not.) Ok, is there a more nominal fee if I want more copies of the
os/liscence with no documentation? (Yes, its a whole $100 less.) *groan*
Now that I have a whole basement full of cattle, its time for yet another
malox moment. At the rate SCO was giving me heart aches, I would be spending
as much money on intestinal-track relaxers as I would be SCO suppliments and
support. Don't get me wrong, its a great OS and has some nice features, but
it takes 8,000 man hours of installing and mucking with makefiles just to get
it to where the Linux install scripts get you in 30 minutes. Oh its more
secure than Linux security wise (maybe), as it has Governemt C2 level security
and all these nice lockouts and an auditing subsystem that can fill a gig of
space in a day. Its more stable than linux because the kernel cannot be
modified and thus no user-goofs, its a production system after all. But
enuogh is enough, there should be more to it than what you get for THAT
kind of money.
Its so non-impressive next to my *free* Linux OS, that I feel as if I have
contaminated my Pentium. Well, it is certainly time to flush the contaminants
I say. Time to fire up the ol' Barbaque grill and fry up some SCO manuals
with a sadistic grin. Time to etch my initals into the bottom of the install
CD. Yeah, thats it.
Time to go back to what works, to whats good, to Linux.
Yeah it has its bugs, yeah its documentation is not up to snuff yet, yeah
it has a few more security holes. But I'll be damned if I *EVER* spend that
kind of money on an OS again if they are anything like SCO. Talk about greed.
I now know why Linux has such a following, and more than ever want to support
that following after this nightmare. If your thinking about going to a
commercial OS, think again. Make sure you know what your getting into, I
would not wish this hell on anyone.
In all seriousness, after working with both SCO and Linux, I have the
following (probably obvious) suggestions to those that are really making
Linux happen, to improve the product and put SCO out of business:
* Better documentation. The LDP or someone should just pick a stable
version of the os and write docs around it. When done with those, start
with the next stable version. If I had more time, I'd be helping believe
me. The LDP has put out some impressive stuff though I must say. Now if
they would just port those into a few more formats for those of use who
have our printers on DOS boxes it would be perfect. *wink*
* Not to coders, but an idea. Someone could make a fortune of offering
tech support for linux (as long as you dont charge a mint like SCO). Is
that allowable in the liscence? If not, it should be. Just 2 or 3 companies
offering phone/fax support to Linux users would really make a difference
IMHO.
* Someone give diamond systems an enema so they release their drivers.
Thats it! I cant think of anything more that you folks aren't already
doing perfectly. Hats off and a deep bow to all the folks that are working
on Linux everywhere, you just made a major commercial OS look like a dung
heap by comparison. Keep up the good work, it really makes a difference
to some of us. :)
Now if I can just get this damn Adaptec 2940W controller working with
my Pentium, I can get down to business with a real OS back onboard, damn
thing is giving me greif. *pleading look* (I posted a request for help
with the problem earlier today).
Hope you enjoyed the post! Flame me or thank me, I dont care either way,
I needed to vent my frustrations about that _other_ accursed OS.
Sincerely,
Kristopher Kortright
(Note the actual email address below)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kristopher Scott Kortright * Sojourn Systems Administrator
Co-Owner of Sojourn DikuMud as Lloth (Forger) - sojourn.cem.msu.edu 9999
Email Address: mi...@menzo.sojourn.com ro...@menzo.sojourn.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
sy...@kitana.org
Mark Davis
> So I get the OS and install it, rather imporessive looking I must say.
>The documentation blows the doors off Linux hands down, and the sysadmsh
>shell for system administration is quite impressive! Thats where the smiles
>ended and frowns start showing up. I now find out that the development kit
>does not include TCP/IP libs, oh! Thats another package! Only $256 dollars
>sir. And I find out that TCP/IP is not included in the base unix package.
>Oh! Thats another package sir! Only $519! Well shit, why would I expect
>unix to come standard with TCP/IP installed? I mean, its not like I would
>want to do any networking with my unix machine right?!? *boggle* Ok, I choke
>that down and find out, whoa! That great support I heard about only costs
>$256 dollar for 30 days of support! Hey, wow, impressive, I already spent
>$4,000 on the OS, why would I expect some free support for that investment?
>*slap me*.
It appears you bought the wrong package. Had you bought SCO ODT Dev, then
you would have had TCP/IP included, the development system and TCP/IP
libraries included, X windows, X.Desktop, and many other things. Then check
out support costs on other commercial Unixes and compare..... there is not
much difference.
> SO I really start poking around in the OS and literally had a malox moment.
>It comes with NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, like 0 applications!
Like what?
> Oh, sco is too good
>to support those uncessary, useless and silly apps like elm, pine, pico,
>emacs, GROFF (of all things to leave out), any roff util, gzip, tcsh, quota,
>tin, trn, nn, etc, etc, etc. I could go on all day, but you get the point.
>I had to goto ftp sites and find all these for sco.
Which is exactly what you would have had to do with ANY commercial Unix.
Note that all the above you mentioned are available for SCO in many places.
You could just grab a CD-ROM and have everything right there.
> Cow #2. The keyboard mapping and system colors made me vomit.
???
> No support
>for process suspension,
no standard /bin/sh supports that by default.... Use the shell of your
choice. And ksh is included in ODT.
> no support for control-c (had to hit delete for it),
Simple stty mapping.
>no support for adding color to the dir trees like Linux comes with
>pre-configured.
Again, which commercial Unix supports that?
> Cow #3. SCO has no support for dynamic PPP or SLIP IP addressing. Linux
>does, but shit, were talking about a commercial OS here! Why would we support
>lowly PPP after all? Ok fine, I can take that as the dedicated line is
>installed in a few weeks.
Dynamic addressing in PPP is a recent occurance. It is supported in SCO,
if you install a patch which is available at no charge on sosco.sco.com.
> Cow #4. NFS? Yes sir! Step right up and purchase your NFS suppliment for
>SCO unix for only $512! Otherwise, your s.o.l. This was a bit much, so I
>passed for a more comfortable looking toilet. (Dont even ask how much the
>XWindows stuff costs, I dared not scare my wallet so)
Again, had you bought what you needed, which is *ODT*, then NFS and Xwindows
& Merge would have been included. And the total cost would have been MUCH LESS
than starting with one small piece and adding each additional piece. That is
why SCO ODT is made.
> Cow #5. 16 bit inodes? What?!? Your kidding me! (Well, we have it planned
>for SCO Everest in 95 sir.) Mother of god.
You have a point there. But it is true that the next release will include
not only 16 bit inodes, but also a journaling file system.
>16 bit inodes.... SO how do other SCO folks usually handle news without
>spreading it across 50 million partitoins if you plan to run a larger server?
>(MOst use Linux systems for their news servers sir.) *weeze*
Your statement is an overreation.
> Cow #6. I ask, when I wanna upgrade to more than one machine, is there a
>more nominal fee for extending the liscence to multiple machines? (No sir,
>there is not.) Ok, is there a more nominal fee if I want more copies of the
>os/liscence with no documentation? (Yes, its a whole $100 less.) *groan*
Again, compare to other commercial Unixes.
> Its so non-impressive next to my *free* Linux OS, that I feel as if I have
>contaminated my Pentium. Well, it is certainly time to flush the contaminants
>I say. Time to fire up the ol' Barbaque grill and fry up some SCO manuals
>with a sadistic grin. Time to etch my initals into the bottom of the install
>CD. Yeah, thats it.
> Time to go back to what works, to whats good, to Linux.
I think I'm going to barf now myself.
> Yeah it has its bugs, yeah its documentation is not up to snuff yet, yeah
>it has a few more security holes.
Yeah it lacks as much hardware support, only has the tinyest fraction of
supported commercial software, has no multiprocessing, is nowhere near as
stable, has nowhere near the MS-"DOS"/"Windows" support, etc, etc, etc....
> Thats it! I cant think of anything more that you folks aren't already
>doing perfectly. Hats off and a deep bow to all the folks that are working
>on Linux everywhere, you just made a major commercial OS look like a dung
>heap by comparison. Keep up the good work, it really makes a difference
>to some of us. :)
> Hope you enjoyed the post! Flame me or thank me, I dont care either way,
>I needed to vent my frustrations about that _other_ accursed OS.
It would appear that someone has to at least address some of your highly
emotional and sometimes irrational running-on.
Linux is great, I use it and greatly appreciate what it can do. But for
most of us, it simply *CANNOT* replace what SCO ODT can do. I'm sure it
will eat into SCO's market in some small relms, and hopefully enough to
keep SCO on it's toes. Enough said.
--
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Mark A. Davis | Lake Taylor Hospital | Norfolk,VA (804)-461-5001x431 |
| Director/SysAdmin | Information Systems | ma...@taylor.infi.net |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------/
Christopher Davis
MD> == Mark Davis <ma...@taylor.infi.net>
JLG> Oh, sco is too good to support those uncessary, useless and silly
JLG> apps like elm, pine, pico, emacs, GROFF (of all things to leave
JLG> out), any roff util, gzip, tcsh, quota, tin, trn, nn, etc, etc,
JLG> etc. I could go on all day, but you get the point. I had to goto
JLG> ftp sites and find all these for sco.
MD> Which is exactly what you would have had to do with ANY commercial
MD> Unix. Note that all the above you mentioned are available for SCO in
MD> many places. You could just grab a CD-ROM and have everything right
MD> there.
Or he could have bought BSD/OS 2.0, which also has SCO binary
compatibility for those accounting apps you Just Gotta Run...and which
includes elm, pine, pico, emacs, groff, gzip, tcsh (etc) on the
distribution media. (Hey, there's a concept.)
And it's a commercial "Unix".
"Just grab the CD-ROM, you have everything right there." (Okay, except
for the boot floppies and the encryption/Kerberos floppies :-)
--
Christopher Davis * <c...@kei.com> | "It's 106 ms to Chicago, we've got a full
http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ | disk of GIFs, half a meg of hypertext,
* MIME * PGP * WWW * [CKD1] * | it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
Save swap space: gzip /proc/[0-9]* | "Click it." -- <blue...@bluesbros.com>
Mark Davis
>JLG> == sy...@kitana.org (JL Gomez) writes:
>MD> == Mark Davis <ma...@taylor.infi.net>
> JLG> etc. I could go on all day, but you get the point. I had to goto
> JLG> ftp sites and find all these for sco.
> MD> Which is exactly what you would have had to do with ANY commercial
> MD> Unix. Note that all the above you mentioned are available for SCO in
> MD> many places. You could just grab a CD-ROM and have everything right
> MD> there.
>Or he could have bought BSD/OS 2.0, which also has SCO binary
>compatibility for those accounting apps you Just Gotta Run...and which
>includes elm, pine, pico, emacs, groff, gzip, tcsh (etc) on the
>distribution media. (Hey, there's a concept.)
>And it's a commercial "Unix".
That is a valid point. Linux also includes compatibility with many SCO
binaries. But please do be careful- just because Linux or BSD can run many
SCO binaries, this does not mean the vendor of that software will support
that configuration (talk to your software vendor first, if you expect
support; and ask them). For example- ClockWise runs under Linux OK, but Linux
is not a supported platform by PhaseII Software, and they will not support
Linux users, and compatibility might break at any future release of the
software.
For those of you unaware, SCO also provides a CD-ROM of third party PD and
shareware and demos for SCO. Included are things like mentioned above.
SCO provides the CD-ROM to requesting users at no charge. It is called
"SkunkWare".
Hamad Rashid
connecting 100 users simultaneously, with a min. of .25 sec lag?
Also, has SCO been programmed to take advantage of SMP's.
Is SCO capable of keeping up with a T1 or T3 line?
Stuart Lynne
Mark Davis <ma...@taylor.infi.net> wrote:
>sy...@kitana.org (JL Gomez) writes:
>
>>that down and find out, whoa! That great support I heard about only costs
>>$256 dollar for 30 days of support! Hey, wow, impressive, I already spent
>>$4,000 on the OS, why would I expect some free support for that investment?
>>*slap me*.
>
>It appears you bought the wrong package. Had you bought SCO ODT Dev, then
>you would have had TCP/IP included, the development system and TCP/IP
>libraries included, X windows, X.Desktop, and many other things. Then check
>out support costs on other commercial Unixes and compare..... there is not
>much difference.
To put it succinctly, he ordered an 18 wheeler from Kenwood and was suprised
when it a sports utility van didn't show up.
SCO is not LINUX. It's different than BSDI. They all have their uses. You
can (I do) run an Internet site very successfully on SCO UNIX. Despite the
fact that it has some warts (16 bit inodes being the big one). You can also
do a creditable job of certain aspects of that job on BSDI and Linux. But
they also have warts.
We currently have moved news off SCO onto BSDI precisely because of the
16bit inode problem. But we may move back when the new release of SCO is
available (it's journaling file system is *fast* and the RAID support is
nice). It scales very nicely into a much larger system. Of course you could
just run a couple of BSDI or Linux boxes. But that gets boring too when you
have too many users to fit on one. Wouldn't give up our SCO MPX on the Dual
90's for our users. We also like the better hardware support under SCO, BSDI
doesn't have drivers for high end Adaptec SCSI cards.
And we are currently looking at possibly using Linux for some XWindow
stations at the office. Mainly because BSDI doesn't support Diamond Viper or
we would just use them.
SCO, BSDI, and Linux are all really nice systems. None of them are perfect.
They don't have a really large overlap in intended audience. SCO is the
platform for enterprise computing, lot's of users, big boxes, lot's of
peripherals and app's. BSDI is a nice networking platform but has a very
limited set of hardware it supports. Linux is a nice little system. Fast and
zippy. Lot's of fun stuff in it.
--
Stuart Lynne <s...@wimsey.com> 604-933-1000 <http://www.wimsey.com>
Matthew N. Dodd
: We currently have moved news off SCO onto BSDI precisely because of the
: 16bit inode problem. But we may move back when the new release of SCO is
: available (it's journaling file system is *fast* and the RAID support is
: nice). It scales very nicely into a much larger system. Of course you could
: just run a couple of BSDI or Linux boxes. But that gets boring too when you
: have too many users to fit on one. Wouldn't give up our SCO MPX on the Dual
: 90's for our users. We also like the better hardware support under SCO, BSDI
: doesn't have drivers for high end Adaptec SCSI cards.
try FreeBSD (its what BSDI is based on...)
: And we are currently looking at possibly using Linux for some XWindow
: stations at the office. Mainly because BSDI doesn't support Diamond Viper or
: we would just use them.
Try FreeBSD. The Diamond support isn't a shortcoming of the OS. I think
they all use the XFree86 X server (which is available for SCO)
: SCO, BSDI, and Linux are all really nice systems. None of them are perfect.
: They don't have a really large overlap in intended audience. SCO is the
: platform for enterprise computing, lot's of users, big boxes, lot's of
: peripherals and app's. BSDI is a nice networking platform but has a very
: limited set of hardware it supports. Linux is a nice little system. Fast and
: zippy. Lot's of fun stuff in it.
Apart from strong security, SCO (and Xenix) are pretty nasty. The ONLY
real thing they have going for them is 3rd party application support.
I know that FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux are all working to run SCO applications
in compatibility mode so even that advantage will be short lived.
Have a good one.
--
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Matthew N. Dodd Department of Computer Science
md...@tiger.lsu.edu Louisiana State University
Anto Veldre
: Apart from strong security, SCO (and Xenix) are pretty nasty. The ONLY
: real thing they have going for them is 3rd party application support.
Not considering the cost of these OS, I have to say the following.
I have some sysadmin experience with SCO, Linux and Solaris. I think
SCO is the best choice for UUCP connections. I think SCO is the only UNIX
that can normally support dialin/dialout on the same modem line.
The shortcomings of SCO are mainly related to the level of its
administrator. Linux can be a plug-and-work system, not SCO.
You must know some weirdnesses of the SCO UNIX (difficulties with
BSD-style sources, e.g.). You must know about some 386 bugs (every user
can make a kernel panic for You). Indeed...
But when You have got SCO working, I don't know another system so
reliable as SCO. I have seen a school system with 33Mhz 386, with 8 MByte
memory, with 200 users and (sometimes!) with 23 users logged in.
Let's try it on Linux or Sun and You'll see the difference.
Anto.
an...@peak.edu.ee