HPUX Unix #1

[Shivkumar]

Dear Sirs,

On the web site it has been mentioned that HPUX is Unix#1.

I am curious to know whether HPUX is leading other flavour of Unix ?

What are the main features which are available only on HPUX and not available on other reputed flavour of unix.

Thanks,
Shiv

[Arunvijai_4]

Shiv, Is this what you are talking about
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2002/021021a.html

-Arun

[Bharat Katkar · Accepted solution]

Hi Shiv,
For me HPUX is No.1, was No. 1 and will remain No.1. :)

Actually which works for you is no.1. Its all dependent on your own interest and then availabilty of the setup and how indepth you study.

I would rate the UNIXes ( i may be biaseed ) as follows:

1. HPUX
2. AIX
3. Solaris
4. Linux


Finding HPUX/AIX specialist is difficult as compared to Solaris and linux. Then you know how it will affect the career. :)

All the best and keep studing HPUX.

Regards,

[Arunvijai_4]

Shiv, I would say HP Wins in Support and services area among all other Unix vendors. My ratings is as follows,

1) HP-UX
2) Linux
3) Solaris
4) AIX

-Arun

[Shivkumar]

Sirs, I wanted to know the ratings given by reputed agencies and not by individuals.

Regards,
Shiv

[RAC_1]

This is what I had come accross last year. (This was reported by some agency) Google search would tell you that.

1. hp-ux
2. aix
3 solaris

My personal ratings would be
hp-ux +7 yrs
solaris +3yrs
linux +3yrs
aix +1yrs

[Shivkumar]

Hi RAC,

What is the meaning of:-

hp-ux +7 yrs
solaris +3yrs
linux +3yrs
aix +1yrs

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Shiv,

I certainly think that HP-UX is the best, superior to Linuxes in many ways.

Linux is gaining market share and is probably has more installed systems worldwide.

Solaris is still very big but growth has been limited due to questions concerning Sun's viability as an ongoing concern.

Solaris and Linux match most HP-UX features, though npar/vpar at the high end is very well done in HP-UX.

Sometimes its not what it can do for you but how it is done and how easy it is to replicate.

SEP

[MarkSyder]

As requested, I'll refrain from giving you my ratings for different unixes and instead give you one feature of HP-UX that isn't available in others: SAM.

The only thing I've seen that comes close is SMIT in AIX. I've used both and find SAM more user-friendly, but there are people on this forum who disagree with me.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Chan 007]

Shiv,

I would say the same like others, as long as HP and LVM linked together, HP-UX will remain the TOP.

Look Sun, since 99 changed OS versions like any thing? While compare HP Only 10.20 and 11.xx as majot versions, where 11.x is very good and stable. While Sun 7, 8, 9...whatz going on...!!! Also what you worked in Sun Cluster? Bit hard to understand the output scstat as it gives more information, where a cmviewcl will be very good with important information.

Cheers ...007

[RAC_1]

I have experience of those many years into those flavors. But these daysm what employers want is person with multiple skills, rather than expertise in one particular unix flavor.

[Arunvijai_4]

A good website where you can get OS related news/articles/alerts

http://www.osnews.com/index.php

-Arun

[Geoff Wild]

From personal preference - I prefer HP-UX - but it was the first Unix OS I learned - way back in 1993.

I have worked with:

HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Irix, Linux, BSDI, and SCO.

Info on Unix History:

http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html

According to this page:

http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/operating/hpux11iroi.html

"For enterprise UNIX installations, HP-UX 11i delivers the highest business value and lowest cost of ownership available today."

According to this article:

http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3530326

Sun has 33%, HP 29% and IBM 28% of the Unix Market..

Rgds...Geoff

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

My pref is:

00. HP-UX 11.00/32
01. HP-UX 11.00/64
02. SuSE 10.0 Linux
03. HP-UX 11i11/64 (11i)
04. SuSE 9.3 Linux
05. SuSE 9.2 Linux
06. HP-UX 10.20
07. HP-UX 11i11/32 (11i)
:
:
91. AIX 5.2
92. AIX 4.3
:
96. Tru64 (DEC OSF/1)

The reason that AIX is so low on the list is the complete lack of support on a human acceptable level. IBM sucks in general.

HP-UX experience from back when HP-UX 7.04 was actual
AIX experience from back when AIX 3.1 was still common
We've given up on DEC OSF/1 about 5 years ago, and I didn't cry about that
I've also workes on HCX and MCX (Harris), and propriatry System III unixes on a VME bus hardware
We have ordered an Itanium 2 (rx1620), so I wonder where it will end in my list of prefered OS's. I've not been impressed by the architecture when I was using it on HP's testdrive system pool.

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Jeff Schussele]

Hmmmmm......
Not a single vote for SGI's IRIX or even Apple's AUX or even the new 10x.....interesting %~))

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Nor is there for any windows version or Cygwin :)

The original questing I oversaw in first was what HP-UX added where others lacked

Good vs Bad
HP-UX vs Windows: Stability and Reliability
HP-UX vs AIX: Support (including this forum)
HP-UX vs Linux: Scalability
Linux vs HP-UX: available (free) software
Cygwin vs Windows: Usability
Unix vs Windows: FUN!
Unix vs Windows: security
Mac-OS/X vs *nix: Native X support
Linux vs Cygwin: OpenSource development
AIX vs HP-UX: smit (vs SAM)

(I cannot think of any positive point for DEC OSF/1 :/ )

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Geoff Wild]

Jeff - actually - I did mention Irix - and I must admit - it was very stable (6.3). The interface was slick and I liked some of the tools they had. I only worked for about 2 years on it - and the end of that was to migrate the app (Pro Engineer) from Irix to - shudder - NT...

Rgds...Geoff

[Giri Sekar.]

Hi:

Ours is a heterogeneous environment almost using all versions of Unices. I would imagine HP-UX would take the lead in the following areas.

1. Better Hardware (For example in N-Class Servers, each PCI
Slot has its own PCI bus, as opposed to 3-4 slots sharing a bus on a similar Sun Server.Itanium Servers are much faster than their Solaris equivalents).

2. Better Service/Support

3. HP-UX SD-UX Tool is the Best single tool for managing/packaging/Bundling (Using Ignite)/Installing/removing/copying (for depot)

4. HP-UX has the depot concept thru which from a single server, using the depot you can install patches on different servers.

5. HP-UX's SAM is a great tool.

6. HP-UX Ignite tool is great and once understood well, can be used to manage a whole release (for applications) and revert back.

Solaris may score in proc tools and more freeware support.

Thanks

Giri Sekar.

[Raj D.]

Hi Shiv ,

Few things about AIX also ,

1. Few commands runs much faster than hp-ux.
Ex: find .. , I found it works very fast.

2. I was trying to modify a user's comment field in hp-ux , but unable to do , as the user was logged in. But the same task I have done online with AIX, when the user was logged in.!

3. SMIT is very much well organized. And much more options and flexible.

4. One can create a file system directly after creating a vg. No need to create a LV in between.

crfs command works great.

ex: # crfs -v -g oravg -a size=4G -m /oracle
(It will create a LV + Filesystem of 4GB altogether, instantly.)

5. in AIX , filesystems can be increased online easily with JFS2 Filesystem, no OnlineJFS required.

5. LVM can be well managed with smit. If one not good with command line.
Ex: # smit mkvg ( to create a new vg)


Hence I also like aix .

hth,
Raj.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

I have to give IAX the credits for the JFS as Raj describes. Except for Linux' ReiserFS it is the best and fastest journalled file system that is shipped standard on any commercial OS I've seen this far.

And you get on-line (runtime! no unmounting needed) defragmentation with it for free. OnlineJFS is VERY pricy with HP. (ReiserFS does not have/need defragmentation, as that is build in it's design, hence it's speed)

creating filesystems with smit is indeed better/easier than with sam (as most things are easier with smit than with sam, except software installation), but how often do you create/change file systems? It should not be the reason to choose for an OS. File systems are created once, and then used. HP's vxfs is not much worse in performance than AIX jfs is. It's noticable, but not reason enough imho.

And AIX is very vulnarable for crashes. Just *try* to replace libc.a while the system is running, not using the update tools. (Yes, I dare you to do so). *EVERY single command on AIX depends on it, so the moment you move or remove it, not a single command will work, and AIX does noet have standalone versions of the basic commands as HP has them. Imagine a simple disk error, and imagine that error in the block where libc.a resides ... (yes, that happened to an AIX box of one of our customers). There is absolutely no way to restore your system. You will need a bootable backup.
That is why I do NOT like AIX. Oh, and because there is no support from IBM, but I think I already said so.

Enjoy, Have FUN! (on HP-UX) H.Merijn

[Kiran Kumar M]

I've never really worked on anything but HP-UX, So I don't have any opinion of my own. Here's something that an avid Solaris admin has to say [ I'm really curious to see what other think about the -ve's that he's listed for HP-UX ]
http://www.loudermilk.org/software/solaris-hpux.html

-Kiran

[Steven E. Protter]

Hi again,

Most of his complaints are easily addressed with minor configuration changes or third part add in software. There is nothing wrong with that. HP-UX leaves it up to the admin.

SEP

[Mohan_24]

HI Shiv,
check the following links.

http://outsource.gsfc.nasa.gov/Alterion/Q21/unix.html
http://outsource.gsfc.nasa.gov/Alterion/Q20/unix.html

[Deoncia Grayson_1]

I've been around the Unix industry for a while now, and I've found a lot of major companies have a Solaris shop with HPUX mixed in but most financial industries have an IBM shop mixed with Sun, the site i'm currently in is 60% HP and 40% AIX with some sun and ncr... if you can believe that. I too thought NCR had died away but how unlucky for me it isn't ...

My personal preference is HP but I'm slowly enjoying the differences and simalarities of AIX

[dirk dierickx]

i remember reading a study, by DH Brown 3 years ago(!!), you can find it here;

http://www.hp.ru/data/offline/category/0086/2002unix_report.pdf

in this study, hpux compared with other unix version comes out on top. linux isn't in the study (not big enough at the time? not considered a real unix? whatever the reason).

my prefference is linux, solaris, hpux, aix.
hpux for my is just old hat, nothing exciting about it. can't really seem to find advantages compared to others (linux/solaris).
out of the box, linux has more features then hpux and solaris and linux can both scale plenty.

the study is from 3 years ago, it is useless now.