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An Objective Review of UnixWare 7.1.4

Posted by timothy on from the newsforge-and-slashdot-are-both-ostg dept.

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.'"

3 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Re:objective? by jerw134 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why? Just because someone casts Windows in a favorable light, they automatically lose their objectivity?

  2. Where would UnixWare be without OpenSource? by GGardner · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The new 7.1.4 version adds a number of new capabilities to UnixWare, including the common Unix printing system (CUPS), GIMP-print printer drivers, ESP Ghostscript PostScript and PDF interpreter and renderer, URW++ fonts, Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) 1.4.2, J2SE runtime environment, the Java Communications API 2.0, PostgreSQL 7.4.2, MySQL 3, Samba 3.0, Cdrtools, OpenLDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), and Compaq and Intel PCI hot-plug drivers.

    The funny thing is, for as much as our friends at SCO are threatened by OpenSource, OS is the only way that they can compete with larger entities like Sun and HP. Look at how many of the above list of new "features" are simply OSS ports. Think of how much work it would have been for SCO, and their handful of engineers to recreate these ports from scratch.

  3. Re:objective? by GeorgeMcBay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds pretty objective to me. The author's point is simply that the price seems out of whack with reality, and objectively that is absolutely correct. SCO needs to make a strong case as to what you're getting for the extra money when compared to Windows, Solaris, Linux (Enterprise Linux, with paid support), or any other OS you might choose. Nothing I've heard from SCO or seen for myself leads me to believe the price is justified compared to the competition. The support isn't significantly better. The reliability isn't significantly better. The number of available applications is much worse. Etc. And then you have the whole "will this company be around in a couple years" problem with SCO. Even ignoring the lawsuit fiascos, they've had a number of other business-related problems as of late (with Baystar, etc) that would pretty much ensure I'd never choose an SCO solution for a new project, even if it were cheaper instead of more