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An Objective Review of UnixWare 7.1.4
Roblimo writes "Yes, SCO is evil and all that, but in between lawsuits it still puts out a product called UnixWare. NewsForge decided to review the latest version -- 7.1.4 -- just like we would any other Unix-based operating system. To ensure impartiality, we hired respected freelancer Logan G. Harbaugh, who wrote: 'On the server side, UnixWare Enterprise edition is more expensive for 150 users than either Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition, any of the Enterprise Linux distributions, or Solaris, with fewer available applications, fewer drivers for recent HBAs and other new hardware, and no currently available 64-bit version for either Opteron or Itanium processors.'"
I was in a unixware shop many years ago, and the best thing I like about it was a piece of software called Merge. But a couple years ago, Win4lin, came out for Linux. This was back in the multi-cpu 486 days, made a great call center server with a hundred operators on it. Other than than the printer queue's fscking up, it was stable. But I was already running BSD for any server I was tasked to engineer.
Today, I dont really see a reason to use unixware. The software is all GPL'ed software you can download on most platforms, and Solaris and Linux have better support.
Just my 2cents.
Well, the actual introduction to the review reads:
UnixWare 7.1.4 is the latest in a long line of Unix releases from The SCO Group. It is a stable and mature Unix, with a variety of basic servers included, such as the Apache Web server and Squid, and is available in both single-user desktop-oriented versions and server versions. It has reasonable support for hardware, good documentation, and a nice integrated management utility that offers unified administration of the OS, hardware, and servers. Performance as a server platform is good, supporting a number of TCP sessions and Web server users, and file transfer performance is competitive with Linux and Windows platforms. However, as a desktop OS or file/print server, UnixWare is hard to recommend over competitors.
And the actual conclusion:
UnixWare 7.1.4 offers some high quality Unix features including OS stability and security, disk replication, a decent GUI management package, Windows emulation, good documentation, and a reasonable suite of server applications. However, the relatively high prices for adding multiple users and CPUs, high cost of the support package, and relative dearth of available software since the LKP package was removed make UnixWare hard to justify as a file/print or mail server, or desktop OS. It would make a good Web server or application server.
Doesn't sound quite as bad as the slasdot summary, does it?
SCO produces software? This whole time I thought SCO was a law firm comprised of ludites.
I know I shouldn't be feeding the trolls, but...
SCO, aka Caldera, used to produce one of the best Linux distro out there, called Caldera OpenLinux. And also one of the very first Linux distro. Not to mention, a neat Windows 3.11 emulator for Linux called Wabi, that actually sort of worked. Ironic eh?
The bunch of lawyers you're talking about is their investment firm, the Canopy Group, and Ray Noorda. And they're not ludites, they're very savvy lawyers who successfully sued Microsoft and won (well, settled for a ton of $$$). It's just that this time, they bit too hard a morcel with this Linux bullshit...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Did you READ the article?
... of course, I admit to being biased. That he still decides it's a bad choice merely echos what most of the market has already decided, so it's hard to call that biased.
It's written by an "independant reviewer" because Newsforge didn't trust anyone on staff to qualify as unbiased.
He says nicer things about the product than I would
My main quibble with him is that he didn't factor in their history of suing their clients, but that's actually reasonably fair, as SCOX has so far only gone after deep pockets. (Still, I would consider it sufficient reason in and of itself to avoid the company.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They're targetting the corporate PHBs who for whatever reason hate linux, they then tell their admins what to use. Also sometimes a Windows admin will need a *nix system on their network for something... 8/10 Microsoft users prefer SCO for a health admin and a shiny coat
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Out of all of them, SCO has always been the biggest nightmare to setup and sysadmin out of all of them.
- The SCO documentation is rubbish. It was spread over a huge number of volumes that took you hours to try and find the answer to any problem
- Bearing in mind that SCO's an x86 UNIX, the driver support is minimal
- No publishers have ever taken much interest in writing specific books for it. Aside from generic UNIX books, there's not a lot else compared to the very good books on all the UNIXes
- Even Evi Nemeth's "UNIX System Administration Handbook" (the UNIX bible for those who don't know) has never even mentioned it (at least in the 2nd & 3rd editions I have) whereas even IRIX and DEC OSF/1 get their own sections!
- I don't even remember it coming with a C compiler by default
IMHO SCO is UNIX from the Dark Ages.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
There are a lot of interesting observations in the review, including:
Well...if anything infringes on the GPL (basically SCO included anything GPL Licensed and didn't include source code) wouldn't the remedy be that SCO has to open source their software??? ooooh the delicious irony....
No. See the actual license This is far from what would happen.
As I understand it(IANAL), any GPL software that they include must have the source available (but only to the people THEY distributed the binaries to) by any reasonable means (mail for cost of media+handling, ftp, http, etc) or they have no authority to distribute it. It would not effect their proprietary software.
If they refused to make source to the same people they made binaries available to, they would be in violation of the GPL, and would have to stop distributing those GPL packages. A judge would have to decide if their actions constitute infringement on the owners copyright in a case brought to the court by the actual copyright holder. At that point, a judge would issue an injuction, disallowing SCO from distributing the one (or more) packages named in that specific suit. Other damages may be awarded, theoretically, but rarely.
At any time (and possibly at the last minute) they could agree to allow access to their modified GPL source, and the case would be more or less moot. They would instantly be in compliance with the license. Still, it has no bearing on their own closed source applications.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The graphical installer worked if you had the right video card. Mine worked (with tweaking) once linux was up but did not work for the graphical installer.
The text install I had to fall back to failed to properly install the "atd" daemon and the "innd" daemon. Days of tweaking would not get innd to to work.
The Redhat and Suse installers of the same era (versions that came out within weeks of OpenLinux 2.2) while not graphical, did every bit as good a job of detecting my hardware and a better job of installing services.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
We use Unixware 7 at work. It was the system recommended by a specific software vendor at the time (and that is the only application we run on the box).
/etc configure what services, this entire area of development is missing. Again, refer to points 1 and 2 and see what a nightmare this could potentially be.
We have been trying to identify the best migration plan for the following reasons:
- SCO's lack of hardware makes upgrading a nightmare of its own. With Windows and Linux, I can buy virtually anything (server hardware, that is) and expect it to "just work".
- The fact that SCO is at least at serious risk of collapse in the foreseeable future means that we now need to keep a copy of the hardware compatibility list and Unixware installation media in case of catastrophe (see point 1 and now imagine no tech support). This is a non-concern with any other reasonable alternative.
- Documentation sucks. From man pages either being non-existent or missing critical information such as what files in
- Related to the last point, Unixware expects you to use the scoadmin tool to do everything, including configure network cards. The location of even a basic ifconfig file is well hidden. To make this matter worse, scoadmin is non-intuitive to maneuver and also does not support termcap/terminfo -- you must use an ANSI terminal or the display will be garbled. Our vendor provides a custom telnet application to ensure you are always in ANSI.
- No support of PAM. We would like to simply integrate our logins with our Windows domain controller. Not possible with Unixware.
The very recent adoption of open source tools is actually the best thing they've done. In the version we have installed, SCO included VisionFS which provides SMB shares but is just not the same quality as Samba. More recent versions have dropped VisionFS and added more open source tools.
That's a quick review off the top of my head from somebody who uses it every day and looks forward to the day that we can be done with it.
"Host Bus Adapter, a kind of interface for SCSI systems."
A HBA can be SCSI, IDE or SATA.
But I doubt the SATA support is included in the base settlement; I mean user contract.
For add on packages or upgrades, just call the law offices of
Dewey, Screwam and Howe
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
"Hmm, never heard of NeTraverse Merge... who develops it?"
Netraverse, of course. The Win4Lin people. Actually, Win4Lin and Merge are basically the same product.
"How does it compare with WINE?"
From a technical standpoint, we're talking apples and oranges. Wine is a project to independently implement a runtime environment that will be binary-compatible with Microsoft Windows. Win4Lin is an i386 virtualization tool tailored to run Microsoft Windows in a VM (virtual machine) on i386-based *nix.
From a practical standpoint, both are useful. Wine is, of course, free, while Win4Lin is a commercial product. Wine does not require any Microsoft software; Win4Lin requires you to provide MS Windows (to install and run in the VM). Wine is trying to chase Microsoft's moving target; Win4Lin lets you run the real thing. Wine uses less resources. Win4Lin is far more compatible -- it works with most any non-multimedia application flawlessly.
I use both. Win4Lin is extremely useful; it lets me run "the real thing" in a VM ("Windows in a window"), but with significantly better performance then VMware (doubtless because Win4Lin is tuned to just run Windows, while VMware is a full-blown, general-purpose VM). Wine yields better performance for applications which work with Wine. Win4Lin means no Wine compatability headaches; just install and run like a "real" 'doze box.
FWIW, IMO, YMMV, HTH, HAND, etc.
Here's the history behind Win4Lin/Netraverse, from my files:
It appears the company which originally developed the Merge software was "Locus Computing Corporation". They marketed a product called "DOS/Merge", which is the ancestor to the Win4Lin that we all know and love. DOS/Merge was later called "386/Merge" when 386 protected mode support was added.
At some point, a company called "Platinum" bought Locus. They apparently integrated Merge with other components into product lines called "PC-Enterprise" and "PC-Interface".
The Merge product was licensed to several other companies, including SCO, Sun, and HP. Sun and SCO both have commercial Unix products that run on Intel hardware; they offer "SCO Merge" and "Sun Merge" as layered products for their Unixes. (SCO, of course, later sold major assets (including their name) to Caldera, and Caldera then changed their name to SCO.)
At some point, a company called "DASCOM" bought the rights to Merge from Platinum. (Shortly thereafter, Platinum was bought by Computer Associates (CA), and fell off the Earth.) DASCOM was later bought by IBM. IBM was not interested in Merge, and spun the Merge group off as "TreLOS". TreLOS later merged with Lastfoot.com, and became "NeTraverse".
So:
Locus -> Platinum -> DASCOM -> IBM -> TreLOS + Lastfoot -> NeTraverse
DOS/Merge -> 386/Merge -> PC-Enterprise & PC-Interface -> Win4Lin
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There is sort of something like this out there. The Apache License 2.0, section 3:
3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Yeah, I know, this only covers patent litigation and not copyright litigation, but it's a start.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.