OT: Question re: SCO Use

[Fairlight]

Four score and seven years--eh, screw that!  At about Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at
06:15:47PM -0400, Bob Stockler blabbed on about:
> Frank7767 at aol.com wrote (on Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 03:52:27PM -0400):
>
> | Just a word regarding SCO Unix..
> |
> |         I am by no means a Unix expert. However I have in my customer
> | base over 30 SCO Unix installations.  These run from single user to
> | many, many users. In the 15 years I have been doing this work I have
> | never had problems with the Operating System of my accounts.
> |
> | I have found SCO to be very stable and productive. It runs with little
> | maintenance. and The more I learn about it the better it seems to
> | be. The marriage with Filepro has worked form me and my clients with
> | little fuss.
> |
> | I will admit to having an advantage.. I depend on the "weapon of mass
> | instruction", J.P. Radley to help install and support my accounts. If
> | you have not had the pleasure, I urge you to spend some quality time
> | with JP as he makes Unix dance.
>
> I'll second, third and fourth that, and make a motion for unamous
> concent.

No doubt, JPR is the SCO man.  He's my first recommendation for SCO, same
as Bill Vermillion is mine for FBSD and -anything- to do with storage.

The thing I wonder about is the OP's assertions regarding SCO.  The
remainder is addressed to the OP:  

If you've got someone like JP in your back pocket, all is well.  He knows
all the tips and tricks and manoevers around the pitfalls.  But if left to
your own devices (ie., only the documentation available), I wonder how your
viewpoint might change, if at all.

I've done both, and there is a distinct difference between helping run a
system and doing minor things with it, and -making- the system...getting
it to and keeping it in a state of near perfection.  If you start off with
someone that knows all the hard bits already, of course it seems
miraculously wonderful to you.  That's true on -any- platform.

As with Nancy, I highly recommend that any *nix shop have an in-house
expert, or someone they bring in.  But basing your opinions of an OS on
your experiences, partially removed from the actual guts of the system when
the figurative crack expert is doing the hard bits--that strips weight from
any endorsement, no matter how glowing.

What you've found doesn't seem to be that SCO in and of itself is
wonderful, but that the combination of SCO and JPR is wonderful.  Which I
don't doubt, and kudos to JPR for being as technically excellent as he is.
I'm just saying, when reading about the Big Picture you're discussing, it
becomes obvious that it's not "all SCO" that you're impressed with.  It's
SCO as performed by JPR, or under JPR's direction, and that can be a vastly
different creature.  It's as if I said I'm impressed with linux based on
systems that Alan Cox has configured.  It's not and entirely unweighted
testimonial because there is biased data present--there was someone
phenomenal at the helm in either case.

mark->
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