On 12 Aug 2005 16:05:33 -0700
ka_stevens@hotmail.com wrote:

> The company I work for will be switching to another OS (HPUX) in
> another year.

HP-UX is an odd choice. It's a capable if plain Unix variant, but
suffers from HPQ's lack of commitment to both the server market and
non-Windows OSes. In addition, it's no longer a real workstation OS;
HP stopped selling Itanium workstations, so you will have to do all
your development work (if any) on the server(s), and in addition
switching all users from Windows to HP-UX is not an option.

Replacing Windows servers with HP-UX is not without issues. You'll have
to use Samba, and even though the Samba team tries to support as many
Unixen as possible, HP-UX on Itanium is not very common, and hence it
does suffer from more compatibility issues than mainstream Unix
variants such as Solaris and Linux. You will want to have at least one
Linux (or Solaris, or *BSD) box to avoid having to manage your HP-UX
server(s) through Windows. There are X clients for Windows, and you can
install Cygwin, but using a real Unix box is far easier; all users
should remain on Windows, for sure.

> We don't currently use Unix although I am very familiar
> with the Solaris side since I spent 7 years administering it. Are there
> any major differences I should be aware of? I'm going to be the main
> guy to answer any questions since I'm the only one with a Unix back
> ground.

How long ago did you work with Solaris?

HP-UX always uses a volume manager, unlike Solaris which can still be
installed directly onto disk slices. It's not a major issue, and the
HP-UX approach is far better. HP-UX comes with SAM, which is HP's
attempt at copying AIX's SMIT. Unfortunately, where SMIT is indeed
sufficient to manage AIX, SAM often needs to be supplemented by
commmand line work. Solaris never had any usable GUI-based
administration tool, so you won't feel too far from home :-)

The Unix Rosetta Stone (http://bhami.com/rosetta.html) is an excellent
reference for differences between HP-UX and Solaris.

> Everyone else is windows. Are the commands the same or at least
> very similar? What shell should we use? I have a fondness for the Korn
> shell but that's just me. I want to do what's best for the company and
> new users of Unix. Any suggestions on where I can go to get myself up
> to speed on HP-UX?

You seem to indicate that your company wants to switch users to HP-UX,
and that is a Very Dumb Idea (TM). HP-UX makes an excellent server OS,
but on the desktop, it's dead. You need GNOME or KDE to avoid having
your Windows XP users run away screaming (CDE is Windows 3.x vintage
technology). OpenOffice.org support on HP-UX is minimal (again, Itanium
HP-UX boxes are not easy to get), and HP itself isn't really interested
in promoting HP-UX as a desktop OS. You will have to do much of the
compiling of the standard applications your users will need (such as
OpenOffice, Firefox and an email client) yourself.

If your company wants to abandon Windows because of the security
issues, they should be looking at an OS that has good desktop support.
That means either Linux (when you're more of the do-it-yourself
variety), Apple or Solaris.

There are quite a few very nice Linux distributions, but the rather
frenetic update cycles make it difficult to stabilise your platform.
The enterprise-class distributions are less volatile, but aren't cheap.
The advantage of Linux is that you should be able to keep using your
existing PCs. Support for OpenOffice.org is excellent on Linux, and the
desktops look enough like XP to ease the transition for Joe Average
User.

Apple makes very nice hardware, and the Mac mini makes a very
serviceable desktop machine. OS X isn't the best server OS, though. The
advantage is that users can continue to use Word (even though the
compatibility between Word/Mac and Word/Windows isn't 100%). Using Mac
desktops with HP-UX servers would be a nice compromise if your company
is bent on getting HP-UX and Itanium.

You can get Solaris 10 on PC-class hardware, quite possibly your
current Windows PCs. You can get humongeous SPARC servers running the
same OS, and SPARC based workstations (such as the Blade 1500) to
compile for them. Or you could decide to get rid of PCs and equip all
your users with SunRays. Sun has a subscription model for their desktop
software (based around JDS and StarOffice), which might be the right
cross between price, stability and MS-Office compatibility.

But *switching* all users to HP-UX seems rather ill-conceived (if not
downright foolish).

Take care,

--
Stefaan
--
As complexity rises, precise statements lose meaning,
and meaningful statements lose precision. -- Lotfi Zadeh