Dual Universes

[Brian Fitzgerald]

Root Boy Jim writes:
>Some vendors have "dual universe" machines, where you can
>pretend that you're on a machine running Berkeley Unix or
>one running System V. Other vendors start with one as a base
>and add features of the other. Of course it is easy to just
>add missing pieces; the hard part is resolving conflicts.
...
>Which model do you think serves customers better?

Well, I'm not a wizard, I'm a customer.  Since there's no
comp.unix.customers, here's my two cents worth:

I like the way Sun has done it up to the present.

The principal utilities are in /bin or /usr/ucb.  System V programs are
distributed as an installation option.  If you don't install them,
nothing is broken.

The default behavior of a program is usually BSD, and in any event is
specified in the man page.  The default behavior of shell builtins such
as echo depend on whether /bin or /usr/5bin is earlier in the path.

If you want to run sysV programs, just add /usr/5bin to your path,
ahead or after the other directories, to suit, otherwise leave it out.
If you prefer to routinely use the sysV version of one particular
program over the BSD variant, use an alias.  (I do this with pr.)

If, instead of this arrangement, I had to select a "Universe" in which
to operate, I'd probably choose BSD the first time I logged in and then
change it seldom or never.

If I could avoid installing two universes on my machine, I probably
would.

Brian
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