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- From: cm@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (Charles Meo)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
- Subject: Re: avoiding Solaris
- Date: 16 Nov 1992 11:01:59 +1100
- Organization: Solbourne Computer Australia
- Lines: 43
- Message-ID: <1e6odnINNcqr@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
- References: <1dtssaINN59p@life.ai.mit.edu> <9232017.23518@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au
-
- >In article <1dtssaINN59p@life.ai.mit.edu> cracraft@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu (Stuart Cracraft) writes:
-
- >>There will always remain a large group of SUN users who feel Berkeley
- >>Unix were the last "good" days.
-
- I have to admit a preference for BSD-derived systems myself but I'm afraid
- the dead hand of government is pushing SVR4 along and not much will stop it.
-
- Had Berkely given more thought to a sensible system administration interface
- (and I'm not saying SVR4 has one, mind you!) this situation need never have
- happened, since the the substance of all the criticisms of old-style UNIX
- is that the machines are too damned hard to run.
-
- Unfortunately, IMHO the way SVR4 is being marketed you'd think that people
- no longer need anyone in their datacentre who knows what they are doing--
- anyone who thinks running a 600-user supermini will be as easy as running a PC
- in the brave new world is in for a nasty shock.
-
- There are too many black boxes in SVR4--people who do know what they are
- doing cannot enforce intelligent configuration decisions even if they know what
- they are. This seems stupid to me. Lots of the config parameters are
- undocumented, many more are 'Oh, you don't mess with that, ... will break'
- It boils down to about six things you can usefully mess around with.
- Nobody is going to tell me that an OS designed to run from PCs to mainframes
- is always going to use the right strategies, and can do a better job than
- an experienced admin who knows his/her hardware and workload. And yet it's
- pretty much a case of, if it doesn't do what you want out of the shrinkwrap,
- tough.
-
- Also, I would have to say that I have found ATT to be somewhat unresponsive,
- shall we say, to bug reports and fixes emanating from organisations who have
- had to deal with (sometimes very imaginatively broken) earlier releases
- of System V. There is no indication that this will change.
-
- Anyone from Bell Labs care to respond? In fact, I am willing to be persuaded
- on this issue. Anyone at all been able to do anything outstanding with SVR4?
-
- Chuck
- --
- Chuck Meo
- Solbourne Computer Australia
- cm@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au
- 'SYS5R4: One Size Fits Nobody'
-