SCO UnixWare 7.1.3 Review

JigSaw writes "Despite news about SCO being all about the lawsuit, they still sell OS products and they have a presence in the server market. UnixWare is one of these OS products. Tony Bourke reviewed its latest version, 7.1.3, and even includes benchmarks among other tests. Tony concludes that 'the lack of commercial applications and user community, the difficulty with open source applications, the SCO litigation, and the high price are all marks against UnixWare. There are just very few reasons to adopt UnixWare as your platform, and plenty of reasons to adopt (or migrate to) other platforms.'"

Comments

Unfortunate that the test system wasn't newer

[pointym5]

It would be interesting to see the degree to which UnixWare copes with recent hardware: HyperThreading P4's, nForce2 chipsets, IEEE 1394, SATA RAID, etc etc etc.

SVR4 based unix.

[rkz]

SCO OS is based on the same code as SUN OS.

As slashdot has reported a few days ago, Sun is giving x86 versions of Solaris away for free. Why bother with SCO when you can get Solaris with a much bigger set of applcations for free?

Re:SVR4 based unix.

[molnarcs]

Well, not quite. Solaris incorporated a large chunk of BSD in their codebase. So Solaris is a mix of SystemV and BSD code. (That's why so many solaris admins are also BSD fans).

As a UNIX developer...

[bigberk]

I have had issues with SCO UnixWare over the years. Particularly, autoconf and automake scripts that worked for every other platform ranging from Linux, *BSD, Solaris to even Windows just failed to work under SCO's UNIX. And I used to want to try and fix these problems, but now SCO has fscked themselves so they can go to hell for all I care.

Interesting how much cheaper Solaris is

[Quantum Jim]

It's interesting how the prices compare:

CPUs UnixWare Ent-Linux Solaris-9-x86
1 $799-$1,399 $349-$449 $99-$250
2 $2,299.00 $349-$449 $250.00
4 $4,999.00 $749-$1499 $1,500.00
8 $9,999.00 $749-$1499 na

Enterprise Linux doesn't seem to offer an advantage unless you're using four or more processors. Solaris (and, Java Desktop, I assume) seems to be a better deal for regular workstations or servers... I imagine that only high-end servers and "mainframes" seem to benefit from the price. No wonder Red Hat doesn't see a future for desktop Linux... they're prices are too expensive!

Re:A prediction...

[thales]

Then maybe we should help Linux-POS

http://www.linux-pos.org/

And kill what's left of SCO's market.

WebMD

[Kraegar]

WebMD aquired a company called "Medical Manager" a while back. Medical Manager is an application that a lot of Physician Practices use to do scheduling and billing. When I say a lot, I mean like 75% of them, last I checked. Anyway, Medical Manager is usually sold on SCO boxes, as that's what it was originally developed on. The other choices are AIX, HPUX, and NT (though I've never heard of someone running it on NT) but most physician practices don't go that route based on cost alone.

So yes, lots of people still use SCO... in fact, odds are your family doctor does.

Re:SCO ? who uses it?

[grmb1]

Several years ago I was setting up IP routing and servers for some 'academy'. Network gear and software was bought (not by me!) on grant from Soros Fund.

Backbone was on fiberoptics. High-end Dell servers, expensive Cisco routers, rackmount cabinets, intellectual switches, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of very, very expensive and really, really useless (for them) stuff stuff.
And there was also SCO's "OS", for something about 20000$ - big and heavy box full of manuals and a couple of CDs. I can remember only their "tree" logo and a bunch of crappy GUI tools for "easy system configuration".

After spending about two days trying to get things to be at least looking good on SCO, I ended up nuking it and installing Linux (Redhat 6 or 7, dont' remember). And got it up and running in several hours. Also there were Cisco's, but it was really easy to set them up compared to SCO. :)

That network was between four buildings and contained around 50 workstations (classes only, no student quarters). It was more than enough to build backbone on thick coax and install simple hubs to endpoints. Ah, the Net connection there was 'uber-fast' for Belorussia - noisy 64K link to another town, which equals about 20K of 'real' speed.

The irony is that it all happened in Belorussia - small contry between Russia and Poland. And Belorussia was never technically advanced country, and probably never be. Well, 32K links are considered to be 'uber-fast' even now in Belorussia. (Usual salary in Belorussia is now below 100$ per month)

So, we have example of Soros Fund's money-washing using SCO OS. :)

Re:I am NOSTRADAMUS

[NanoGator]

"Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass. "

Pretty lame if you ask me. The FAQ suggests being funny if ya can. Everybody appreciates it when you succeed. Truth be told, we're not all experts in every topic that comes around on Slashdot, so why not reward us for the effort?

Yep, this is off-topic, and I won't whine if it's modded that way. But I do hope that the upper staff at Slashdot will reconsider this rule. I do put effort into my +5 Funny comments.