Return to BSD News archive
Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:9074 comp.sys.dec:18763 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!sunic!EU.net!ieunet!news.ieunet.ie!jkh From: jkh@whisker.hubbard.ie (Jordan K. Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.sys.dec Subject: Decstations and Ultrix bashing.. Date: 06 Mar 1994 00:03:28 GMT Organization: Jordan Hubbard Lines: 48 Distribution: world Message-ID: <JKH.94Mar6000328@whisker.hubbard.ie> References: <1994Mar2.103006.1@gracie> <2l2p17$c17@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <michaelv.762657945@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: whisker.hubbard.ie In-reply-to: michaelv@iastate.edu's message of 3 Mar 94 01:25:45 GMT In article <michaelv.762657945@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu> michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon) writes: Sure, Ultrix has some shortcomings (what commercial Unix doesn't?), but it's much better than I've ever heard any Ultrix-bashers describe. And, it's really one of the last true BSD Unices produced on a large scale by any of the big workstation vendors. Hear hear! I could never understand all this with the Ultrix (Uglix, Buglix, ...) bashers. For a very rough benchmark of "usability", take a Sun (SunOS), an HP (HPUX 9.0) an IBM RS6000 (AIX 3.2) and a DECStation (Ultrix 4.3), stick them side by side, and hand 4 programmers each a copy of the Prime Time Freeware collection. Using a stopwatch, time them and see which one manages to port the most software (starting with the GNU collection, and in the same sequence, just to make it fair) in a fixed amount of time. Ready? GO! [click]. 30 minutes have gone by and the AIX person is cursing, the HPUX guy is still trying to figure out what combination of compiler flags will give him reasonable ANSI and POSIX behaviour without also cutting off his nuts, the Sun guy is doing fine, but waiting for a compile, and the DEC guy is going along pretty much the same way. 1 hour has gone by and the AIX person has finally gotten his first compile of emacs to get about halfway through before falling over. The HPUX guy has figured out his flags and is partway through his 3rd port. The Sun guy has breezed through 6 ports but has gone off to get another pot of coffee while gcc compiles. The DEC guy is about 10 ports in and gloating shamelessly. 2 hours have gone by and the AIX guy has committed messy suicide in front of his screen; the cleaning staff have been called. The HPUX guy is looking at an assembly pass of some PA RISC code and trying to figure out if -g really doesn't work with gdb and the native compiler, or gdb and gcc, or both, and scratching his head. The Sun guy is doing fine, albeit so full of caffine that he's vibrating like a tuning fork. He's waiting for a compile with great impatience, tapping his feet and bouncing around in his chair. The DEC guy is bored - this is too easy. And so on.. Also, don't forget that Ultrix isn't just a MIPS product, you can get it for your VAX too (I have a CVAX on my desk, and it's pretty cute!). Jordan -- Jordan K. Hubbard FreeBSD core team Electric Bivalves Anonymous On the net, no one can hear you scream.