Cameron Laird's personal index to binary libraries for Unix
When I'm a
system administrator,
I sometimes want a publicly-available
binary for a particular operating system. After years of
desultory searches, I concluded there was no useful page of pointers
to such resources. Now there is.
[Don't see archives for a particular OS? Write me; I'm still
sorting through my notes, and it's possible I simply haven't yet
written up what you're looking for.]
Is it safe to use freeware? I'll write more about this
theme later; for now, enjoy Jon Udell's
column
on the subject.
- AIX: "SMIT-installable precompiled (lpp?) packages
of popular freeware
for AIX 4.x" are available at
Also of interest: the
AIX Public Domain Software Library.
The
AIX
FAQ lists dozens of other sites that Archie claims offer
AIX (or RS/6000) software. I have yet to review them.
- BSD/386
- DC/OSx--I know of no archives. I have a soft spot
for Pyramid, though, and would be happy to work with
someone who needs binaries.
- DG/UX
- Digital Unix (once called "OSF/1",
and now in 1999 "Tru64 Unix")
As tempting as it is to offer an installable gcc (C++) installable
package from my own FTP space, I've decided against it. What I
can report, though, is that installation of egcs-1.1.2.tar.gz,
resulting in egcs-2.91.66, is uneventful. As one
correspondent recommended it to me, it's "a superb tool."
- FreeBSD:
- HP-UX:
HP sponsors its Software Depot
- Interix: ?
- Linux: linux.org
- NetBSD: cdrom.com
- Santa Cruz Operation:
As Mike Hopkirk helpfully pointed out to me,
SCO itself has,
among "the usual cascading links, links to links, etc", prebuilt
binaries for ODT3, OpenServer and UnixWare. He also finds
the FreeBird project
noteworthy for its UnixWare archive.
- Silicon Graphics Incorporated: A
University of Florida department maintains depots of
Binary Software Packages for several Unix flavors, including
this
one for IRIX. IBD also collects
IRIX binaries.
Finally, SGI itself maintains a fine
page
of freeware (also available
here)
ready for installation by the SoftwareManager. A few
service
daemons are available for very recent OS releases.
- SINIX: I've
found a few miscellaneous binaries publicly
available, including those for tin, gunzip, Samba and PVCS.
Also, thanks to Andreas Bunten for telling me about this
Nixdorf archive.
Perhaps what's most important is that
From
SINIX V5.42 on, all MIPS ABI-compatible applications can run directly
on RM400/RM600 systems
in the words of Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG.
- Solaris:
We described the "freeware" situation for Solaris in our
"Works
Great, Costs Less" article for SunWorld Online.
Celeste Stokely does her usual thorough job of
annotating
the archives of binaries.
Steven M. Christensen maintains several more-or-less mirrors of
his ported-software archives, including
Sunfreeware
is another valuable repository for Sun binaries.
A University of Florida department maintains a
depot
of Recently Installed Software Packages.
The Canadian Customer Support office for Sun
mirrors
GNU and other packages. Still other archives, with which I
have less experience, are at
Searchable index.
I've found that a particular convenience in working with Unix
binaries is a handy copy of gzip.
These are generally reliable [give version refs]:
[Mention VMS, ...]
Thanks to John Andrea, who forwarded me many of the references
that now appear here.
Cameron
Laird's index to publicly-available collections of Unix
binaries/claird@phaseit.net