March 21 is the date Novell Inc has set itself to pick up the Unix baton and start running with it again. On that day the company says it will begin shipping its long-awaited UnixWare 2.0 operating system for Intel Corp iAPX-86 systems. The product is due to be unveiled as part of a ‘big bang’ announcement, but Novell is said to have split the event into 68 separate activities around the world during next week or so. Indeed, some pieces of technology due in UnixWare 2.0 such as a completed implementation of Locus Computing Corp’s Merge are not expected to be handed over to Novell until early in March in any case. Even then Merge will not be able to handle 80386 programs that require paging, we hear. As well as the long-anticipated support for multiprocessing and Posix threads, UnixWare 2.0 will have all that is necessary for Spec 1170 compliance, Novell says, and includes graphical user interface installation and administration, bi-directional printer support for UnixWare and NetWare, single log-on and some other shared application programming interfaces. Further integration, such as an extended UnixWare Management Information Base, clustering, NetWare distributed management services, NetWare Directory Services and NetWare 4.0 file and printer sharing will follow. Pricing looks very competitive with Santa Cruz Operation Inc Unix-on-iAPX-86 and SunSoft Inc’s Solaris 2.4 similarly priced at $1,700 for UnixWare Applications Server 2. Upgrades to version 2.0 from UnixWare 1.1 or any competing products are $400. Unix Personal Edition 2 (including Network File System) is $450, upgrades from UnixWare 1.1 or other products are $200 on CD-ROM, $250 on tape. The UnixWare 2 Software Developent Kit including C and C++ is $145 on CD-ROM, $200 on tape. ICL Plc’s UnixWare 2.0-on-Sparc implementation is due later this year. Details of the UnixWare 2.0-on-PowerPC, which is being done by UniSoft Ltd will follow later in the year.
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