[Simh] Off topic: ULTRIX question

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-07-12 13:52, Gary Lee Phillips wrote:
> Thanks Clem and Johnny for at least confirming what I suspected. I
> worked with VMS on Vaxen in the 80s, At the time I wished for an
> opportunity to compare VMS with UNIX on the same hardware. In the 90s
> I worked with UNIX, mostly AIX on RS/6000. Today I mostly use Linux,
> though I have a couple of Alphas in working order. I run OpenVMS and
> Linux on those.

What do you want to compare? Performance? Features? Something else?

> I keep looking for a way to get a "real" UNIX going, hence the ULTRIX
> experiment. As far as I can tell, neither Tru64 nor HP-UX have any
> kind of hobbyist licensing program available and I am just "playing"
> with stuff at this point, I was looking for another way to get at UNIX
> here at home. ULTRIX appears feasible, but even the documentation is
> less complete than what we have for OpenVMS. Finding installable
> versions of tools like EMACS is a real snipe hunt.

What is your definition of "real" Unix? Ultrix is sortof a 
BSD-derivative. I hope you understand that.

The problem with Ultrix is not documentation, but the fact that it is 
somewhat different than other Unix clones you might hit upon. Back in 
the 80s this was a more common phenomenon. Every Unix system was 
slightly different.

This is why tools like autoconf got created - because it is a pain in 
the butt to make software that runs on all different styles of Unix. In 
todays world, Ultrix is very different in many ways compared to Linux or 
modern BSD. And most people have even stopped trying to keep things 
working properly on other flavors of Unix.

So you will probably have to do some hacking and fixing of your own in 
order to get any software to run.
Welcome back to the 90. This is what everybody did back then.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol