Forgive me if I'm incohernet - I ended up hacking all night on 
a VAX and doing micro arch and other home work 8^( 

(Hey, it runs Unix, not VMS so it's a real computer)

In article <kvn3k1INN6mv@almaak.usc.edu> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
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>For the first time, I walked around tsx-11.mit.edu today.
>Some questions:
>
>1) I'm surprised the binaries are not ``stocked'' with the GNU goodies.
>   E.g. what is bawk?  I have much devotion to gawk.
>   (Or is it the case that when we say `make' we really mean `gnu make'?)

The binaries are almost ALL gnu utilities.  File utils, shell utils,
binutils, the C compiler, debugger, standard make, last I checked 
awk, sed, tar, etc.


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>2) How slick is the gcc for a pure-ansi development task?  Does it work
>   correctly?  Last time I looked glibc did not have a stdargs.h, for
>   example.  What about debugger?  Does one use (say) dbx in textmode?
>   (Unrelated question: has someone done a curses interface to dbx?).
>

We don't have dbx, we do have gdb.  And you use gdb in text mode.
And if you are extremely sick, there is also an EMACS interface to 
gdb.  Try it - you'll like it .  GDB has more feeping creatures 
than DBX....


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>   What kind of Unix is Linux?  Is it BSD or SysV?

POSIX, leaning towards SYSV, but with BSD features like
the setre{g,u}id syscalls.

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>   Will it use all free RAM for disk buffering?  Is the file system

No. The separation of buffercache / usermemory is 
done by the "classical" method.

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>   as good as the Berkeley FFS (on speed)?

No.  But VFS is implimented, and you can add something like FFS or 
even beter LFS. Also, more important than the file system speed is 
a defficiency in the buffercache / disk driver code.  Basically,
if your disk is not track buffered, you will get no 
performance at all. 

Write calls are passed to the device driver in 1 block  chunks - ie 1K.
If subsequent blocks are requested, you get to wait another revolution
until the next one comes along.


People are working on this.

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>3) How well does Emacs work?  How much space does the full installation
>   (incl. a zoo of elisp and info files) take?
>

Fine, if you set the km option in the termcap.  Full emacs is several 
megs.

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>4) I am a longtime Unix user (does the most-recent three years with Unix
>   out of 9 years with computers count?) but have never faced
>   `admin/installation' tasks.  Is Linux going to burn me on this front?


Definately not.  Life without sendmail is a breeze.... =8^)

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>   I know the typical multiuser networked Unix takes quite some work for
>   admin.  But this is just a home box; no networking and (?) Linux does
>   not have users.
>

Linux has users, and you're likely to get yourself in trouble
if you don't have a separate "you" and root account.

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>5) Does Linux know/care about motherboards?  Or will it work with just
>   about any 386?  What about Eisa and Vga?  What is the programming 
>   interface to the graphics card?  How fast is it (graphics, i.e.)?
>

Linux doesn't do anything about specific vendors motherboards.
Basically, it definately won't run on microchannel, and some 
flakey motherboards do not work.  

You can mmap(2) the frame buffer into user space, and program 
it like you would in real mode.  X is being ported, and there has 
been some talk (I don't know how serious) about getting MGR / 
a textronic / other graphics terminal emulation in the 
kernel. 

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>6) Is there a TeX and a TeX previewer?  How much space does TeX+fonts
>   take?
>

TeX yes, previewer no. 

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>7) What is the programming interface to the serial port?  Esp.: do the
>   serial comm programs work at 38400 baud (I have a 16450 UART and a
>   external 9600 baud modem)?
>

/dev/ttys - you talk to it like any other character device,
and can do non-blocking IO if you fcntl it or use select(2).

Linux DOES NOT support hard flow control, and in my experience
drops characters at 19.2K (386-33).  People are rectifing the hard 
flow problem, and adding 16550 support.

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>Thanks guys.. Linux is the best thing which happened to these
>Intel processors.  Time to go short on feelthy Microsoft!
>

The company that brings you win3.1, a $50 bug fix to win 3.0.

Go figure.