[TUHS] SVR4 vs. Solaris 2

[Arno Griffioen via TUHS]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2025 at 05:25:43PM +0100, Alexander Schreiber via TUHS wrote:
> Finding myself on HP-UX 11 with the bundled cc just being a K&R one (because
> of course a proper compiler (called the ANSI C++ compiler by HP) did cost
> a pretty penny) I very quickly grabbed gcc as well. But that was in the
> early 2000s, so gcc was already _very_ firmly in the mainstream.

I remember carrying a stack of floppies in various sizes and some QIC
tapes in the early 90's with GCC and tools on it in various binary
formats when doing lots of work on customer SCO machines and other less
well-known UNIX machines aimed more at business users.

Getting GCC working on a bare machine like that from source on-site was a
pain as they had usually un-bundled the 'real' C compiler(s) for years,
so a stack of floppies with binary images made earlier in our office
was a lot more convenient.

Most of my work back then was getting a lot of sites on that thing called
the internet (probably never going to amount to anything anyway ;) )
at least on UUCP/dialup and such, so having GCC and then being able
to compile all the other bits like a decent UUCP, sendmail, etc. was
a godsend.

The UNIX landscape at the time was a factured mess of vendor
implementations and platforms on both the HW and SW side, but I do miss it
sometimes as it did have it's very interesting brain teasers as a result.

Not to mention a lot of these 'business' oriented UNIX system vendors
liked to also play silly games on I/O by messing with standards to hope
to lock customers in, so getting an off-the-shelf US-Robotics or Telebit
Trailblazer working right with proper HW handshaking usually involved
soldering irons and sometimes diode magic.. (looking at you ICL...)

							Bye, Arno.