[ale] SCO UNIX

[Jeff Barber]

MHood writes:
> 
> Hi. I enjoy reading all of the posts here. I was wondering, what's all the
> fuss about LINUX, when you can get the real McCoy for free from SCO? Has
> anyone tried the SCO free unix? Just wondering:)

Here're 3 reasons from one who used to run SCO but switched to Linux:

Last time I checked, you don't get the source code with the SCO unix.
So what happens if you run into a problem?  Who you gonna call?  With
Linux, you can look for yourself, or post here or to one of the newsgroups
where people familiar with the source can provide answer.

Also, device support is MUCH better for Linux.  Here's just one example:
Linux provides support for my ProAudio Spectrum sound card.  And not
just the sound part of it either; it also supports running a CD-ROM
drive through the Spectrum's SCSI port.  (Last time I checked, the best
I could do with SCO Unix was an unsupported SoundBlaster driver that
only worked if I let ProAudio's DOS driver run first to initialize the
hardware -- and don't even think about running a SCSI device through it.)

Finally, if you need to pick up some public-domain software on the net
without compiling it yourself, you'll have a much easier time finding
a Linux version than a SCO version.  A compelling example: for XAnim,
the Intel and Cinepak codec support comes only in object file format
(for licensing reasons).  Surprise!  There's no SCO object, but there
are Linux objects for both a.out and ELF formats.


-- Jeff