Recommendations for workstations and CASE tools

[Darryl Bergstrom]

[YA Moderators Note:- In the interests of fair representation, I'm posting
 this article.  Please direct followups to comp.something-else.  - Der]


In article <1369 at zorba.Tynan.COM> shultz at mmm.3m.com (John C Schultz) writes:
>
>Sun vs Apollo vs HP vs DEC
>>I personally would chose a "standard" operating system - which leaves
>>Apollo out.
This is the most irresponsible statement I have heard on the net in
several months.  Not only is it irresponsible because John 
does not know what he is talking about, but also because he no 
interest in finding out what he is talking about.

I'm sure most people know the work Apollo has been doing on standards.
Apollo is one of the founding members of OSF, belongs to most all
major standards committees, and works hard to adhere to those standards.
Apollo's work with standards shows in their current product.  This
product can use BSD4.3, SYS5, or Aegis individually or in any
combination (I shouldn't even have to say this, but: One need not have
Aegis loaded on any machine anywhere).  Apollo adheres to more
communications standards than I care to list here.  In short, I believe
Apollo is more standard than Sun as Apollo has to work harder to
overcome the nagative press that Sun's brilliant marketing people have
made (though Apollo did feel they were so ahead of standards
that they did not need them years ago, today Apollo realizes that
they must have standards in addition to being ahead of the standards).

Why would anyone say Apollo did not have a "standard" operating system?
Surely straight SYS5 and straight BSD4.3 is more standard than a mix
of the two.  With the Apollo, you can do the mixing yourself if you like.

I think one would say Apollo did not have a "standard" operating system
because they did not know better.  It is no wonder John did not know
better, though.  I talked to some people from Apollo and they said that
Apollo called John after seeing his message.  John did not even give
Apollo a chance to explain what Apollo actually had.  As soon as Apollo
called John, he said he had heard it before and hung up.  Since he had no
interest in know how Apollos worked, how could he know that the Apollos
had a "standard" operating system.

>>My bottom line
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>I will continue to buy SUNs since the price performance (after April)
>>is reasonable and they are very popular so most public domain software
>>(GNU in paticular) easily compiles on SUNs.  I also like the BSD
>>interprocess communications better than the SYS V whatever it is
>>called.
Hmmm, on the Apollo you would have your choice between SYS5 and BSD4.3 so
you would have your choic between BSD interprocess communication and 
"SYS V whatever it is called".  I think one will find Apollo will beat
Sun's prices and give a better configuration in most sales.  And,
Apollo also runs GNU.  Apollo even runs gcc even though Apollo uses 
the COFF object format (though some modifications to gcc were necessary).

-- 
-Darryl Bergstrom
-Honeywell Corporate Systems Development Division, Golden Valley, Mn
-UUCP: {uunet || rutgers!umn-cs}!hi-csc!bergstr
-ARPA: bergstr at hi-csc.honeywell.com -=OR=- darryl at ux.acss.umn.edu