Setting up a Sparcstation lab.

[Charles Hedrick]

There is an implication in this article that SunOS 4.0.3 requires more
memory than 4.0.1.  I know of no evidence for this.  We are in the process
of moving from 4.0.1 to 4.0.3c.  I have not seen any decrease in
performance.  Since my desktop machine is 4MB 3/50, I'm pretty sensitive
to memory usage.  In fact there is some reason to think that 4.0.3
Suntools is better than 4.0 Suntools, though it's hard for me to be sure
about that since our staff are all using X.  You refer to a German Sun
Users' group discussion of XNeWS, but list the conclusion as if referred
to SunOS rather than XNeWS.  Everyone agrees that XNeWS requires more
memory than current window systems.  But this is not a problem with SunOS.
It's not even sloppy coding in XNeWS.  It is an obvious implication of
running software that implements two window systems at the same time.
XNeWS is by no means compulsory.  I plan to use vanilla MIT X on our
smaller machines.  The X-based applications from XNeWS work fine with the
MIT X server, as long as you have the extra fonts.  (Those fonts are now
available from MIT.)  Fortunately, the XNeWS versions of the standard
Suntools software are all X-based.  Thus I don't think people will lose
much if they have access only to X.