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.'"

Comments

Re:objective?

[jerw134]

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

Where would UnixWare be without OpenSource?

[GGardner]

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.

Re:objective?

[GeorgeMcBay]

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

Another objective review

[tootlemonde]

See Unix Review for July, 2004. The conclusion:

UnixWare 7.1.4, along with Red Hat, and Microsoft Windows Server, is undoubtedly one of the most stable operating systems available for the Pentium platform. It is a true version of Unix that allows you to use lower-priced hardware and get the results you would expect out of more expensive implementations.

As such, it is a great choice if you are looking for an economic solution to a migration or new installation.

There are a lot of interesting observations in the review, including:

I tried my best to find ways to bring the operating system down and run it out of resources. For all of my attempts, I was unable to do so. It ran every legacy application that I could find from my earlier work with the operating system, and no errors cropped up. I purposely misconfigured some networking parameters in an attempt to hinder traffic, but these were immediately recognized and any administrator would have to agree that this is a solid operating system.

Unixware review from an actual user

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

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 /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.
- 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.