Should I buy A/UX? Opinons, advice appreciated

[Brian Bechtel]

fsjpc at acad3.fai.alaska.edu (CLEMENS JONATHAN P) writes:
>- How much space does it *really* take up on a hard drive?
You really want to devote 80Mb to it, at least.  If you're doing serious
programming, I think you'd prefer 100Mb.

>- Can Mac Applications *really* be run from within A/UX? How much trouble
>is it to run a typical application?
Yes, most Mac applications run just fine.  You can run several
different user interfaces: a command shell that look like any other
Unix (sh, csh, ksh) or Multifinder, or X Windows.  Under Multifinder,
you double click on the application, just like under the MacOS.  Under
Multifinder, you can run X Windows and a command-shell window, so
Multifinder is the preferred way of running A/UX by almost everyone.

>- How easy is it to set up and maintain?
Setting it up is as straightforward as on any Unix machine.  (Maybe
better :-))  I'd recommend the CD-ROM version as the easiest to
install, if you aren't buying a pre-installed hard disk.  You can get
A/UX on hard disk, CD-ROM, tape, or floppies.  Floppies are a *royal*
pain.

>Is A/UX for me?
Only if you need the features, or if, as you've said, you want to learn
more about Unix.  I happen to think that A/UX 2.0 is an outstanding Unix
machine.  It's much easier to work with than any other Unix flavor I've
seen (and I've used many, from a Cray to a PDP-11/45 running version 6.)

Disclaimers: I'm not on the A/UX team.  I use A/UX in my work.  Even
though I'm inside Apple, I'm a customer of A/UX.

--Brian Bechtel		blob at apple.com		"My opinion, not Apple's"