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1    Introduction

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1.1    Overview of Digital UNIX Version 4.0

Digital UNIX Version 4.0 is Digital Equipment Corporation's implementation of the Open Software Foundation Version 1.0 and Version 1.2 technology, and the Motif Version 1.2.3 graphical user interface and programming environment. Digital UNIX Version 4.0 also ships with Motif Version 1.1.3 to ensure backward compatibility with applications that link to those libraries. In addition, Digital UNIX Version 4.0 supports the full features of the X Window System, Version 11, Release 6 (X11R6) from MIT.

The Digital UNIX Version 4.0 operating system is a multiuser/multitasking, 64-bit, advanced kernel architecture based on Carnegie Mellon University's Mach Version 2.5 kernel design with components from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Versions 4.3 and 4.4, UNIX System Laboratories System V Release 4.0, other software sources, the public domain, and from Digital Equipment Corporation.

Digital UNIX Version 4.0 incorporates several performance enhancements either developed or extended by Digital, including the Virtual Memory Unified Buffer Cache and eager swap policy; UFS file block clustering and cached writes over NFS; IP Multicasting, path MTU discovery, and optimized TCP/IP; and quickstarted shared libraries.

Digital UNIX Version 4.0 is also supported on selected workstations with 24 MB of memory and 535 MB of disk space.

In addition, Digital UNIX Version 4.0 provides a clear and concise system administration environment (both graphics and character-cell) to greatly simplify system administration tasks; supports an update installation that does not overwrite system files and a new and improved full installation that allows you to get up and running almost immediately while files are being copied from the CD-ROM onto your system disk; supports loadable drivers and other kernel subsystems, including loadable boot-path support for third-party disks and graphics cards; and provides support for dynamic system configuration and dynamic system recognition of disks and tapes.

Digital UNIX Version 4.0 also supports the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) as the default user interface. CDE provides a uniformed graphical user interface -- portable across multiple platforms -- to greatly facilitate common end-user and system administration tasks. The CDE uniformed graphical interface makes Digital UNIX appear more like a PC or Macintosh environment, a feature that makes Digital UNIX more accessible to the many end-users familiar with those systems.

Digital UNIX Version 4.0 also provides realtime support and symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP), dataless servers and clients, and numerous features intended to assist application programmers in developing applications that use shared libraries, threads, and memory mapped files. It is fully compliant to the Single UNIX Specification, to the X/Open UNIX brand, to POSIX 1003.1B (Realtime) and to POSIX 1003.1C (with DECthreads).

To ensure a high level of compatibility with Digital's ULTRIX operating system, the Digital UNIX Version 4.0 operating system is compatible with the Berkeley 4.3 and System V programming interfaces and, by complying with the System V Interface Definition (SVID3 Base and Kernel Extensions), Digital UNIX Version 4.0 supports System V applications as well.

Since part of the charter of the Open Software Foundation is to provide an interface for developing portable applications that will run on a variety of hardware platforms, Digital UNIX Version 4.0 is compliant with the OSF Application Environment Specification (AES) that specifies the interface to support these portable applications. In addition, the Digital UNIX Version 4.0 operating system complies with standards and industry specifications, including FIPS, POSIX, X/Open, XTI, and AT&T System V Interface Definition (SVID).

For a complete list of the standards that Digital UNIX Version 4.0 supports, see the Software Product Description (SPD).

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1.2    Packaging

Digital UNIX Version 4.0 is available as a base system kit, containing the operating system, windowing environment, and documentation all integrated on CD-ROM, as well as the following three extensions, also included on the CD-ROM, that provide additional functionality and that require separate licenses and Product Authorization Keys (PAK) to access:

Note

All Digital UNIX Version 4.0 documentation produced by Digital ships as Bookreader files on the Digital UNIX Version 4.0 CD-ROM and as ASCII reference pages accessible from the man command.

The following hardcopy documentation ships with the Digital UNIX Version 4.0 CD-ROM:

Complete hardcopy documentation and several third-party books are also available. For more information on the makeup of the documentation set, including optionally available documentation, see the Documentation Overview, Glossary, and Master Index.


The remaining chapters and appendices discuss the following components of Digital UNIX Version 4.0: