*BSD News Article 59748


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From: Casper.Dik@Holland.Sun.COM (Casper H.S. Dik - Network Security Engineer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison)
Date: 16 Jan 1996 12:16:26 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Netherlands
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Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> writes:

>It is generally inferior in almost all respects (save MP).

I feel it is superior in all aspects, except a few which I would
classify as "undecided".

>I could argue thread scheduling, NFS, and VM with you until
>I am blue in the face.  8-).

The Solaris 2.x VM system is pretty much identical to the
SunOS 4.x VM system (one of the main outcomes of the SVR3 + SunOS4
mergers was the induction of SunOS VM & Vnodes into the new kernel)
Solaris 2.x NFS is an outgrowth of SunOS 4 NFS, it's just a bit
faster.

>Almost everyone (except SunSoft) pretty much feels the same way,
>it seems.

I don't think that that is true.  (At least when it comes
to people who have actually used Solaris 2.x and SunOS 4.x).
How a sofwtare developer can even thinkof preferring SunOS 4
is beyond me, a system administrator with a SunOS 4 background
may like being on familiar ground more.

Solaris 2.x gives you decent X, ANSI/POSIX/XPG4 libraries and
utilities.  Debugger and tools are just that better little
extra supported through /proc instead of the broken ptrace(2).

>Sun had to back-port 4.1.3 to the new hardware because some
>of the Japanese OEM's (Hitachi, Tatung, from memory) threatened
>to do their own BSD port because they hated Solaris so much.

One actually did their own SunOS ports (don't keep confusing SunOS 4
with BSD), Sun later came with SunOS 4.1.3c.  SunOS 4.1.3c was easy to
do and was beneficial to hardware sales.

>Sun tries to hide the fact that there's a difference using
>labelling, but we all know the difference between BSD and SVR4,
>and we prefer BSD.

I used to prefer BSD.  But I now think that part of the mess Unix is in
(BSD signal() vs SV signal(), sigvec vs sigaction) is because the BSD
people all seemed to have flunked "API design 101"
POSIX was needed to adapt the good ideas from BSD but iron the
API wrinkles out of them.

BSD people never cared about backward/forward compatibility.
They'd just say "your programs won't work anymore, please edit &
recompile".
(so moving from SunOS back to some of the pre-split standard interfaces
now causes "Solaris migration" headaches)

Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions.  They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.