RE: Unix -- MIDRANGE-L

James,

I've read this thread, and I'm still not seeing how Unix is easier to admin
than iSeries.

I wonder if this is a case of you knowing Unix better, and are more
comfortable with it.  In another post, you mentioned "tcsh, bash, top,
ncurses, worm (whee!), etc." (that they wouldn't run on a 400).  Ignoring
the issue of whether these would run, or whether there are 400
equivalents...  I find these things to be completely counter-intuitive.  And
unless things have improved a lot, the idea of memorizing command switches
doesn't fly, with me anyway.

I gather there are a lot of wonderful applications on *nix, and I hope to
learn more about this stuff.  But I'm afraid I'm probably gonna have to wait
until there is some consistency to naming commands, and CL-like help to the
command switches, before I do.  I just don't have THAT kind of time on my
hands...

I obviously know more about a 400, so maybe some flavors of *nix offer
something similar to the consistency of CL commands and the command
prompter...  If there are, I'd like to hear about 'em..

jt



| -----Original Message-----
| From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
| [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of James Rich
| Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 2:37 PM
| To: midrange-l@midrange.com
| Subject: Re: Unix
| Importance: High
|
|
| On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 steven.donnellan@simonjersey.com wrote:
|
| > (sound of a fuse leading to a huge bang in background...)
| > I have a friend on another AS/400 site, but the 'powers that
| be' want him
| > to ditch the AS/400 box and go Unix (at least they didn't suggest XP!!!)
| > What arguments can he give so that he keeps the little black
| box we know,
| > love and trust?
| > A V5R1 + Linux installation isn't an option, he needs to be able to
| > deliver an argument based on what he's got now in V4R5.
|
| First let me get into my nuclear bomb shelter...
|
| Maybe moving to unix wouldn't be bad?  Of course the business needs to
| look at the considerable costs of changing platforms and retraining, etc.
| But I work on both unix and iSeries every day and I have to say I like
| unix better.  It can do more.  And it seems to me it does more better.  I
| would far rather admin a unix machine than an as/400.  But I'm not going
| to put our as/400 software on unix just for the sake of running unix.
|
| Far better is to use the advantages of each platform to get what you want.
| Most of our customers now have one as/400 and one unix machine.  Each box
| does its tasks well, and each is suited to different tasks.  Together they
| make for a reliable, simple, and fairly low cost system.  It would be
| stupid to try to convert all the OCL36, CLP, DDS, RPG36, RPGIII, RPGIV,
| etc. to run on unix.  It would be equally stupid to not take advantage of
| sendmail, procmail, apache, ssh, IMAP, NAT, proxy arp, RIP, GNOME, KDE,
| NFS, remote booting, secure email clients, mozilla, Nautilus, Star Office,
| MySQL, perl, python, C, C++, java, X11, etc.  Of course some of these
| things can be done on either platform and one platform may work better for
| you.
|
| Now I'm closing the hatch on my shelter...
|
| James Rich
| james@eaerich.com
|
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