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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.'"
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.
If you thought
ONE BILLION DOLLARS MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH?
Disclaimer: Prices may vary. Check your local retailer. Senseless litigation available in most locations. All rights reserved or acquired in court against your will.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I thought the author did fairly well at remaining objective and testing the product without allowing company ethics cloud his review
I predict that somebody'll get modded up for explaining why SCO's distro sucks.
"Derp de derp."
Why would anyone choose it over Linux of FreeBSD is over me.
I think their UNIX business will get spun off after the lawsuit business clears up and the company goes bust. The Unixware product will no longer be marketable under the "SCO" name, since the brand will be indelibly tarnished in the IT world as part of a hostile, litigious organization that tried to extort money from companies, big and small, for work that they had no rights to, and for what essentially amounts to a massive pump-n-dump scheme.
Daryl,
.... tick tock ..
scorch the earth and your tree may not grow
30 days till you show us what kind of proof you really have
I heard SCO were going to find out who the makers of unixware are, and sue them for copyright and patent infrindgements. Then refuse to release documents to themselves, quote incorrect code segments and send bills to themselves.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
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?
There is no god
Attn: Tony Bourke
Read your review. Hope you enjoy court and jailtime, because I'm about to sue you into oblivion. Next time you'll know whose side you should be on. Best of luck to you and your lawyers (or lack thereof)!
Your friend,
Darl
Of all the bad PR that they've generated for themselves, a bad product may hurt them the most. Now, they open themselves up to the counter-attack that they're an untalented software company looking for a quick buck, with the product being proof of their lack of talent. It's an oversimplification, sure, but one they pretty richly deserve.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
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Wait, this might be the first "$X is dying" troll that's actually true.
I know quite a few hospitals and clinics use it. And other businesses for their accounting software.
75% of all statistics are made up!
Unixware proves that sometimes, (an increasingly small number of) people buy things based on price alone. There is no reason to use such an expensive, restrictive OS when the makers of that OS have to use ideas from their biggest competitor to improve it, when that competitor is a free (in all meanings) OS.
Let's not get into the specific advantages, because nobody has that large an attention span.
Esoteric reference.
McDonalds, last I knew, had thousands of terminals running SCO in their locations. Retail is their biggest presence. I also used to work somewhere (a non-profit) that had an old Informix database running on an even older SCO box.
Not that I support it or anything... =]
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
A bleep? What the fuck is that?
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=sco.com
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
No, you're think of Ray Bourke.
We do at work. Does it suck god yes, support for it is pretty much unavailble if it's not between 8am and 5pm. There is total lack of good development software for it. I've been bitching about it for years. Why do we still use it, simple 3rd party software that was bought to run on a SCO system, makes it very pricy to move to another platform.
First off, why is such a worthless OS front page news on /.? SCO Unix is mediocre, and nobody would even think of using it. The only reason a SCO Unix review is on /. is because of the lawsuit hubbub.
I was poking through the SCO web site some time ago, to find good stuff for my SCO Report website and I discover SCObiz. Check it out. For $5,000, they'll basically give you a template site, with mediocre ecommerce ability. The datasheet is here (pdf), while the quick facts (pdf) is here. A Flash tour is here.
The Flash tour is pretty snappy, but you can tell, it's nothing more than a glorified template driven website builder for newbies, similar to what Tripod and Geocities provide with their drag and drop stuff. It's probably even worse.
Remember to visit SCO Report, where I do my part to annoy SCO with the truth, and SCO Countdown, where there are clocks counting down to SCO's demise...
UnixWare isn't a Linux distro.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
They should change the name to UnixWhere.
It didn't tarnish the MS name, now did it? (I know, it's just a joke, mod me down though. They spend way more time getting sued that suing anyways).
What in the hell are you talking about? "Linux barely supports most of that stuff" Linux fully supports *ALL* of that stuff. Has for a long time now. Keep your mouth shut if you don't know what you're talking about.
75% of all statistics are made up!
It's now down to less than 21 days, actually.
Noticed someone's comment yesterday pointing to this site: scocountdown.com. Note that the deadline you're referring to is not the one at the top of the page.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There's no market for this thing. If you've got technical issues that keep you from using Linux or BSD, you're probably also looking for a fancy processor, such as SPARC, not a "commodity processor". And running on x86 is the only serious advantage Unixware has over other "real" Unixes. So Unixware is semi-abandonware, like WordPerfect or 1-2-3. There will always be people who insist on such products, but not enough to sustain a serious busines. UnixWare's only remaining commercial value is as a basis for litigation.
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.
I bought a copy of SCO UnixWare in the pre Darl days. Back in that day, you could get free 'educational' licenses for nonprofit uses. Too bad they don't offer free 'linux' licenses for schools & colleges. Yeah I guess, they 'changed there minds'. UnixWare 7 wasn't a bad OS, but I believe the review was on target when he said the technology it's based on is past its prime. And you gotta love how you need a license for everything from SMP to critical security updates.
~UltraSkuzzi
This comment is liscensed by SCO.
He is untarring the tcsh distribution so he could compile it. tcsh includes support for Windows.
I hear a rather large woman singing an aria...
From what I've read, many Pizza Huts and other brands owned by Tricon Global Restaurants use SCO-based servers for keeping track of sales and transferring sales data to headquarters. This can result in some rather ancient-looking machines being used for point-of-sale terminals, since it's likely difficult to find similar systems that would work with the chain's existing infrastructure. If you're in Toronto and you want to see what I mean, walk by the KFC in the Eaton Centre and get a look at the fossilized POS systems being used. I've seen them at multiple KFCs in the area, and it's a wonder they still run.
It could be worse... but not by much.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
You can't spell fiasco without SCO
SCO is claiming they have fullfilled their legal obligations ahead of the 30 day deadline by delivering 1 million sheets of paper to IBM. http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5114689.html
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Does anyone know of any organizations that actually use SCO Unix?
Which SCO Unix? There are basically two, UnixWare being the subject of the post. The other is left as an exercise for the reader.
I know of a injection molding facility that monitors about 50 multi-million dollar presses 24x7 with UnixWare. It runs a vertical app that does alerting (voice announcement, paging, calls) and gathers stats.
UnixWare was an early (first?) commercial implementation of UNIX on i386 hardware. A lot of geeks were pretty excited by it long ago. This mattered because it meant that you could deploy UNIX apps cheaply. So, a lot of vertical apps were ported and UnixWare became pretty widespread. It was a fairly plain-jane port of UNIX with credible-enough vendor support to make it possible to sell products based on it without having customers retch on your shoes. It was an easy port from other UNIX platforms, and this was probably it's main claim to fame. The other being almost-workable integration with Netware fileservers (after Novell acquired it.) I am amused when I remember how it seemed pretty obvious to me that whoever was responsible for that Novell integration piece was learning UNIX in the process.
Just because SCO owns UnixWare doesn't make UnixWare bad. It's largely obsolete now, but 10 years ago if you wanted to run UNIX on i386 hardware, UnixWare (or whatever it might have been called in late 1993) was a good choice. There are products running happily on UnixWare today, their users utterly unaware of the legal hoopla.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Installed UnixWare.
Common shells not installed automatically.
Tar has issues.
CDE barebones.
Software selection bad.
Has non GCC C compiler.
Does not have C++ compiler.
Cannot port many applications.
LKP pretty.
Did not really test security.
Don't bother asking for community help.
UnixWare fricken' expensive.
No plans for 64-bit.
In conclusion, UnixWare is dying.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The article was well-written and, I felt, fairly objective. My thanks to Mr. Bourke for keeping a level head when many are screaming bloody blue murder. For those who just want the meat, here it is:
These factors precluded the reviewer from really thinking of a single situation in which he could recommend UnixWare 7.1.3 as an installable option.
It's interesting how the prices compare:
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!
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Judge orders SCO to show Linux infringement - CNET news.com
In other legal action, IBM on Wednesday subpoenaed Sun Microsystems; which recently expanded its Unix license with SCO Group and has a warrant to purchase shares in the company; Schwartz Communications; a public relations firm that represents SCO; and defense contractor Northrop Grumman. IBM spokeswoman Guarino couldn't immediately describe the purpose of the subpoenas.
I wonder why IBM subpoenaed Northrop Grumman? SCO says Grumman didn't buy any shares (although I don't believe that farther than I can kick it)...
... and in the DRM, bind them.
LKP is basicly system call emulation like that which is available in FreeBSD. This has NOTHING to do with pure user-space number crunching required of crypto computations! This kind of test would only show the most eggregrarious scheduling or interrupt handler errors in providing the LKP functionality. This wouldn't (shouldn't?) even show up any compiler differences between UnixWare's cc and GCC since OpenSSL is heavily assembly optimzed on x86.
These numbers arn't even compared to running under a real Linux kernel, which would be the most logical course of action given the reviewer's incomplete understanding.
But regardless, with comments like the following, it becomes painfully obvious the reviewer knows little about this:
If anything, benchmarking system calls should have been done. Something along the lines of these tests.
The reviewer makes his bias very plain with passages such as:
This combined with the lack of objective and useful benchmarks makes this article little more than a piece of cheerleading propoganda.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
But Siemens needs the client machines to run IE 6.1...
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
When I was a boy, back during the days of Linux Kernel 1.0, we emulated SCO to run commercial applications. Now, SCO emulates *us* to run commercial apps. Total world domination, anyone?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Whoops! The pages were stuck.
Ummmm, well......ok
Finkployd
Ever stop to think that maybe that's why you were non-profit? :P
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
So yes, lots of people still use SCO... in fact, odds are your family doctor does.
Hmmm, if the LKP works so well, couldn't it be possible they ripped off code from the Linux kernel at some point?? Is anyone verifying this?
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A large clothing retail chain (now out of business) used SCO for POS as well. (the whole time I worked there I lobbyied for Linux!)
I've used sco unixware before.
and I can back this guy, it does suck. not out of bias.. it just lacks a lot of things, and has a very slow boot.
I installed slack on one of the computer repair machines at school (which had unixware on it) and ran another machine with unixware on it and had them boot side by side...
slackware won. and it was on the slower machine.
it's old, and maybe this is what all the crap is about. sco wants linux since they know they cant create anything better than 30 year old code that they never created. (in other words...)
so, they figure they can buy linux out, but what's this? linux cant be bought out. but wait, it looks like unix, they can try to pull an infringement case! but wait, no evidence! ok, so maybe court trials wont work that way, but litigation will scare people into submitting into their whims, but no, it makes people angry... and so on..
truly, I fear to see what's going on in darl's head. I wonder if he was that special needs child that got 4-square balls thrown at him by other children.
that or life in utah (or wherever he's from) warped him.
who knows.. I'm rambling now because I'm half awake.
Last time I served in it, the Armed Forces of Sweden were still running SCO Unix for a lot of communications control computers. The systems were very buggy and would often crash. When I left they were just starting to migrate over to (customized) FreeBSD boxes and Windows NT. Now, knowing the Swedish army, I know they are NOT an organization that changes it ways unless it desperately has to (despite what their PR keeps saying). So if they're dropping SCO .. well .. I used their old systems myself, so I know pretty well how much they suck. It's all over for SCO. When all the legal bullshit is done and over with, there'll be nothing but bones left, and maybe the world will be rid of the horror that is UnixWare.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
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.
-- grmbl woz heer
On the lawsuit front, SCO has sued Saddam Hussein for copyright infringement.
"UNIX beard is clearly part of UNIX methods and concepts", claims SCO lawyer David Boies. UNIX beard has long tradition among UNIX kernel developers. It demonstrates authority in enterprise software development. We therefore claim that Saddam has violated our copyrights on UNIX methods and concepts, and demand that SCO UnixWare will be the sole operating system in rebuilt Iraq."
I'm not saying that it represents necessarily good decision making on the part of those companies... But I'm just pointing out that it's all too common to have some random server running some random application (that's probably itself very old) that's crutial to the business. Nobody in the company has ever tried it with any other platform, nobody knows if it would work, no one knows how long it would take to switch formats or port the app, nobody knows how long it would be down while all this is going on, etc. When you have a situation like this that's crutial to the business functions of the company and it's working and supported, it's going to be an uphill battle to convince anyone to change, ESPECIALLY to commodity and/or "community supported" stuff.
Please, don't take this as me trying to justify SCO's crapware in any respect. I'm just trying to point out that if you spend a lot of time in open source circles it's very easy to get this skewed version of things in which it's inexplicable why any company wouldn't have burned every last piece of SCO media and torn up every support contract after months of this lawsuit garbage and years of crappy software that's going nowhere. You'll find that businesses often have tons of random legacy junk sitting around that's still useful, and to keep it running it makes more sense from a business standpoint to keep paying SCO for support contracts or upgrades, regardless of the merits of SCO's software. SCO knows this, and they have to play into it if they want to survive... (Or at least, a semi-sane SCO before all this lawsuit crap. Now they've pretty much made it impossible to survive post-lawsuit.)
It's kind of like the tale ('Signs'?) where the car runs over the man and pins him against a tree or wall or something, holding his innards in place. You know that his game is up sooner or later but you also know that moving the car is going to make a huge mess with his guts oozing out everywhere...so it's best to just keep things as they are for as long as possible until at least the EMT arrives and he has a slight chance of surviving.
a horrible place
Exactly. I know quite a few restaurant chains that use SCO UnixWare machines that are already bought, paid for, and applications developed for, and for the most part, they work. Just up and scrapping SCO would mean serious downtime measured in the tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue because their computerized ordering/order-fulfillment systems are down and manual entry (which has to be entered later) is just slower than normal. These are also companies who probably PAID SCO to come up with their custom solutions, so they're reluctant to have to fork that money out yet again to someone else willing to port/reimplement the system for Linux or what not. (Much of the software is not owned by the company running it).
A previous company I worked for had 2 SCO servers for only 1 reason: the courier dispatch/order entry/database software they needed only ran on SCO. They looked for other prebuilt solutions, none of which were suitable (each package lacked one or two critical features that the current package provided). So, while they would have loved to move to an all MS shop (or even move to Linux), they were limited by their choice in software. Sure, they *could* probably spend a couple hundred thousand dollars for a few programmers to come up with a custom solution, but what they have works now and they have exactly *zero* programmers on the dole. Small companies don't have the resources to fill the gaps, so to speak..
Hrm, speaking of which, that gives me an idea...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai