personal opinion on Unix flavors (was: HP-UX: Looking...)

[Alex Martelli]

lairdb at crash.cts.com (Laird P. Broadfield) writes:
	...
:  What do you think of HP-UX?
:  Why?
:  Is that an insulated opinion, or is that versus one of the others?
:  Having gotten that off your chest, have you actually used it, or are
:   you speaking from the rumor-mill?

We develop CAD software on umpteen different platforms; the Unix ones
include Ultrix, HP/UX, SunOS, Sony's NewsOS, AIX, SCO (also VMS,
Domain, OS/2, etc).  CAD.LAB does NOT have any "corporate opinion"
about these, and if you did an opinion poll amongst CAD.LAB people
you'd find all sort of rankings, but I'll give you MY very own,
totally personal opinion: the order I've listed them above is more or
less my own personal preference, taking into account feature-richness,
least amount of trouble, and price/performance of the underlying
platform.  HP-UX shines in the "least trouble" area (on Motorola
68K-like HW, at least); if the rumored-to-be-forthcoming 9000/700
("Snake") series is all the rumors mill says in price/performance, and
it's as little troublesome as the /300 and /400, it'd take top spot.
(Incidentally, I do my daily work on Ultrix, but for UUCP mail and
news I've picked an HP/UX platform, reliability being paramount!).

At home (i.e., right here and now), I run Interactive 2.2; that's OK
too, although 14-character filenames and no symbolic links is a
bother - but V.4 would remove these limits.
I believe HP/UX, Ultrix and AIX are all migrating, faster or slower,
to OSF/1, while SunOS, NewsOS, and Interactive are migrating to V.4;
either should be a big gain in features, if/when stable enough (I
guess V.4 *should* be just about OK by now, it's been around for
quite a while).  SCO, I believe, has announced no plan to move from
its current V.3 base.
-- 
Alex Martelli - (home snailmail:) v. Barontini 27, 40138 Bologna, ITALIA
Email: (work:) staff at cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex at am.sublink.org
Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; 
Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only), Fidonet: 332/401.3 (home only).