gEDA-dev: Re: Gschem and Cairo graphics library

[Dan Andersson]

Hehe, a bit further then...

On Monday 31 July 2006 23:38, Evan Lavelle wrote:
> I hesitate to get even further involved, but:
> > One cannot compare a controlled corporate OS environment with
> > Linux/FreeBSD or anything similar because of a couple of - maybe not so
> > obvious reasons ( or maybe very obvious ).
>
> At my last 'controlled corporate' gig we ran Linux/RH7.2 (this was maybe
> 6 years ago), SunOS, and HP-UX. This was a $0.5B company, with maybe 300
> licences of everything from DC to 'e'. This is what all the big
> companies who use EDA tools do. There's no disconnect between
> 'controlled corporate' and Linux. There were a lot more Linux/x86 boxes
> than HP or Sun boxes. The only difference now is that they're running
> RHEL instead of RH7.2.
>

With "Controlled corporate" I meant, if it's a bug or a feature, sit tight 
because you cannot change it. Only the OS vendor can.

It doesn't matter how many licenses you have if you have spread your graces on 
different physical entities. You need to roll out patches on each of the 
boxes that way.

To use your proprietary boxes with ditto OS's, you had to roll out the patches 
as you otherwise lost the support. In many cases, the vendors like DEC, IBM 
and HP ( etc etc ) had their own support. That kind of support you barely 
find anywhere nowadays. 

Only 6 years ago? Well, 6 years ago, the UNIX world had became reasonably 
stable and we didn't have all the problems with patch rollouts as we had 
during the eighties and nineties. My first Unix box ( 1982/1983 ), a Z8000 
based system from SGS ATES, ( Probably a Zilog System ) had a steady stream 
of patches sent to us on DC300 tapes. Later, we had similar problems running 
the PDP11's and the early VAX'es with BSD on. I think I still have paper 
reels somewhere as old memorabilia...  DEC was bad on supporting the early 
Unix as Ken Olsen hated the total idea of Unix... In which he was probably 
right.... as AT/T tried to ban me from working with 386BSD and FreeBSD Unix 
clones during the mid nineties - sigh ( I can't find the letter from the 
Death Star's lawyers anymore - pity ).

> > First - the proprietary and commercial OS.
> >
> > You simply don't have the sourceode for the OS so you can change it.
>
> If you've got real work to do, tinkering with your OS is not on your
> list of priorities. If the OS doesn't work, you get another one.
>
> > No dependencies? My arse!
>
> No dependencies; that's the vendor's problem. They specified RH7.2, end
> of story. Imagine being a sysadmin running a large farm with 100
> engineers constantly using everything, and a couple of chips to get out
> of the door. The last thing you're going to do is dick about with
> dependencies; you'd probably lose your job.

Nope!  The dependencies are always the customers problem! We didn't call 
them "dependencies" we called it "patch levels". You patched the binaries, 
which is always a bit hairy...

So when you called Zilog's maintenance and complained on the difficulty to 
roll in the new F77 compiler, "which patchlevel do you have?". Do you have 
patchlevel 34A3?  Oh! Sorry Sir, but you MUST have that patch installed, I'll 
talk with support for a scheduled patch installation. I remember one of my 
first VAX/VMS installations as a sysadmin. First the bootstrap on TU58 to get 
the console up and running,  then updating the darned microcode of the CPU, 
then rolling in the OS - and whereafter 15 odd patches had to be installed as 
well. It was always a delight at every main OS upgrade as the patches was so 
few... but it was rather bad just before the next major upgrade...

...And as the flora of alien peripheral devices increased... shudder! 

We used a CAD package on the VAX'es called "Palette". It ran on most VAX'es 
and PDP's and we used Tektronix 4109C graphic terminals as workstations.
This was just before we saw Apollo Domain starting to sell Unix based 
workstations. It was a pain to keep all the patches updated as that was a 
prerequisite for all support.  A vendor problem?????????????

Dependencies - a vendor problem? My Arse! You had to wait for tape to be 
shipped with courier from US to Europe...

You are living in a modern Linux world - judged on your "ancient" experience ( 
6 years )...


//Dan

-- 
Dan Andersson, M0DFI
dan at andersson.co.uk                         dan.andersson at ieee.org