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Four speakers discussed their personal
experience with getting a Cheap/Free UNIX running a on low cost PC platform. The operating systems
that were discussed are Linux, FreeBSD, SCO and Solaris x86.
Each speaker gave a short presentation on Installation, Drivers, Stability,
Compatibility, Cost/Licensing, and Web client/server software.
Following that we had a lively round-table discussion.
The speakers and their notes (where available) were:
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SCO UNIX
Karl Hudnut (Logicdata)
SCO has the largest installed base of commercial UNIX system, but installation
and configuration is not the most intuitive.
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FreeBSD
Warner Losh (Member of Technical Staff at Ignite Technologies, LLC)
FreeBSD is one of the more popular UNIX versions. There is a large
community of developers that support it on the net.
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Linux
Ken Mitton (independent consultant and Boulder High School student)
Linux is widely supported with numerous repackaged versions available.
Driver support is very good even given the necessity of reverse engineering
board designs due to the vendors not wanting to release technical details.
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Solaris X86
Leonard Sitongia (UCAR)
The nice thing about Solaris X86 is that you can have the same operating system
at home as you have at work and the two work seemlessly. Be careful to equip
your home PC with only those devices that have drivers however, since support
for a broad range of hardware is lacking.
Leonard's talk is available in
PostScript (60K) format.
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