A Praise To Unix 136
MotyaKatz writes: "ZDnet has an article from Evan Leibovitch which he calls The Unix Phoenix. As he states, 'I come not to bury Unix, but to praise it'. He mostly deals with the aspects of Unix surviving during Linux growth."
Unix: The stuff script kiddies are made of (Score:1)
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:2)
A) Linux is not a better development environment. NT can do everything Linux can (GCC, VI, etc) plus more (Delphi, Visual Studio, etc.)
B) User DO matter. If Linux had stayed hard to use, it would never have had the (limited) penetration it does in the business market. If it stays hard to use, it will never have a significant penetration in any market except those where UNIX was already strong.
C) Your theory about my theory is off. According to your theory, developers should be flocking to Linux, and Linux should be succeding in Windows's traditional market (consumers.) They aren't. It isn't. You say that the user's point of view doesn't matter. It does. They only reason that Linux is succeeding in the server market is that it is better for the user (the admin, the management) than NT is. It isn't succeding in the consumer and business market, because for those users it ISN'T better. Smart people are working on making it better than Windows for Windows users. Other people (you) are saying that the user's perspective doesn't matter, the developer's does.
PS> You miss something quite obvious. By you logic, Linux (or BSD) would have succeeded a long time ago. The development environment was more or less the same back then. So obviously that is not the cause of Linux's success. What is the cause is vendors getting together to make the Linux user's experiance more pleasent. Not only a business user or consumer, but a sysadmin's too by making administration more central and offering technical support.
Re:Missing Features? (Score:1)
i think there is a program called 'gv'(ghostview) and it displays postscript.
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:2)
B) Are you kidding? UNIX is only clean if you're doing console stuff. Of course, console stuff is clean on DOS too! X is hard to program, there really isn't a decent sound architecture (ALSA is still too immature) and you have to go through all sorts of hacks to do basic things like change resolution. Of course, all this is encapsulated if you use something like Qt, or GTK, but those are available on Windows too.
Re:Sun is a hardware vender first Unix vender seco (Score:1)
What makes you think that Solaris is inefficient?
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Re:A Praise to Allah (Score:1)
Re:Article was fluff (Score:1)
Amazing that it actually was moderated up, just goes to show the bias. So you're saying that downloading a RELEASED testkernel is more open than a continuing source branch? Pure sophistry. Why do i waste my time on slashdot.....
Re:Article was fluff (Score:3)
On the other other hand, there are fewer license restrictions on what I can do with BSD software, so BSD is more open.
On the other other other hand, Linux's license promotes open-source software, so Linux is more open.
On the other other other other hand, "open" is a word with a lot of meanings and a lot of connotations, and perhaps there are better things to do than worry about which project is "most open".
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The problem with today's users (Score:4)
Case point, I tried installing Linux on my family's home machine. I tried to explain that the system would rarely (if ever) crash, that each person in the family would get their own desktop, and they would get the access to the internet they always had.
You know what? They hated it.
'Why do I need to type a password every time I want to get on a machine I own, in my home?' my mother complained. The kids said they couldn't install any games they liked, and the ones they could rarely ran. They wondered why they needed something called a 'superuser' to install Q3A.
And here's the kicker: 'Why do we have to worry about crashes?' To them a crash was standard behavior, like a car misfiring on startup or a TV channel fizzed out for a few minutes. 'But then you won't have to reboot,' I'd explain. 'But we have to reboot anyway. We shut off the machine every night.'
You see, the practices of the UNIX/Linux world don't seem to jive with the world of "Joe User". They've ascribed to practices that, for better or for worse, they don't want to deliniate from. Case in point: the whole VHS vs. Beta debate a while back. Not looking at which format was "better", once people started using VHS they never looked back.
Same thing with Windoze PCs. Once people started looking at the pretty icons, the ability to run all those games, relatively simply document/folder analogy (even though copied from Mac) and the ability to use all kinds of neat hardware, they were hooked. Password protection, uncrashable system? This was a family computer living in the den. They didn't care what was the pride of sys admins, web servers and academic folk in college. Unix never existed in their mind, and if it did, it was that brief glimmer of "nerdiness" they all wanted to avoid.
My commentary on the state of technology and the world.
Re:It's sorta strange... (Score:2)
the scary thing is that i'd buy this. if IBM's labs put linux on a watch, this isn't too far fetched.
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:1)
You're kidding, right? A lot more projects get made than those programmers would make on their own - the people who pay programmers decide, based upon market perceptions, what will be worked on.
Think of the difference between production-made cars and sports cars - sure, mechanics might prefer to work on hot sports cars, but working on minivans and SUVs is what pays the bills.
Don't get me wrong, I believe Linux has a very bright future - just not for the reason you give.
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:3)
I think the real future of Unix looks something like MacOS X, not Linux. Only if you think Unix becomes a single-vendor prospect. Building a (admittedly very nice, very clever) GUI on top of a Unix core however is not appropriate for all the areas Unix is used in. Desktop/Workstation areas, yes I think the Apple stuff will have an influence, but I dont Apple are about to start competing with the heavy-duty kit SGI, IBM and Sun produce. I dont see Apple's new GUI as being particularly relevant to servers. And thats Unix primt-time.
Gnome and KDE are just the first iteration towards a useful user experience.
Yup, just first iterations. How many iterations of MacOS did Apple do, before they dumped most of it for MacOS X? How many iterations of Windows have there been? I get the impression both KDE and GNOME are progressing far faster than either of these did.
Linux so far is a step sideways at best.
Sideways from what? A GUI is not an OS. You might think that an OS without a fancy GUI isnt useful, but that doesnt make it a fact.
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:2)
Then you're saying that the future is FreeBSD. Because that's what MacOS X is. And FreeBSD ain't that much different from Linux.
The GUI is not the operating system. It's a user shell layered or plunked on top. It adds nothing to the computing power of the computer. It only facilitates the user experience. I had to dump KDE and GNOME off of my laptop due to a small screen and sparse memory. I didn't lose any power at all, only some convenience.
The computing world may be working towards Mac and Win like GUIs, but what they will end up will be far different. They will get generic and swappable operating systems, so that the user can use any OS with any GUI on any platform. To get there you will need some standards, and Unix or its derivative is going to be the standard.
Re:Hello? Sun is thriving. (Score:2)
If you've been paying attention, the BSD world is rapidly catching up to the Linux attention, after a half-decade of being asleep at the wheel. A mere two years ago Linux was unheard of in the enterprise. What will the situation be like in two more years? You just can't predict the future, especially with computing. Leave the crystal ball gazing and 0% prediction successes to the Gartner group.
Re:Sun is a hardware vender first Unix vender seco (Score:2)
Check again. NetBSD, and the newest FreeBSD also run and Sparcs. So does LynxOS, an embedded Unix. I'm sure there's a few more, I just don't know about them.
oops... should... (Score:1)
foo
"The difference being, that MacOS (X)"
should read:
"The difference being, that MacOS (pre OS X)"
bar
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:Beyond the UNIX model (Score:1)
So you want a microkernel. Mach provides much of what you ask for, except the fine-grained security perhaps.
It might be constructive to look at past Mach implementations and other microkernels... there maybe good reasons these architectures didn't dominate the market. They solve some problems all right, but not without introducing others.
Absolute performance is portrayed as vital by the media, and this just might have killed the microkernel. Isolating components in their own address space and passing messages doesn't come cheap. Context switching can be fast but not free. And processor design seems to be evolving in another direction, e.g. VLIW chips will benefit long blocks of straightline execution and a style of code that is becoming extinct as OOP becomes more refined.
Intel segmentation hasn't been utilized much, that's true, but it is probably impractical for **ix systems. How do you write an efficient C compiler that doesn't share one segment for stack and data? Besides, x86 has a limited number of segment registers, and writing to a segment register is not cheap.
Look for the ongoing thread "programming for segmented systems" on comp.arch if you're interested.
Errrr (Score:1)
Linux is a sapling of the Unix tree, Unix is alive, Linux proves that much. Whatever differences remain I think are going to be "converge", whatever differences there really are are historical and commercial.
How long till we lose linux (Score:2)
I suppose that's what competition does. Let's not let this happen to linux. Or is it just going to happen naturally? Is it already happening?
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:2)
still, it's really nothing new. the only new OS out there is the BeOS. that's revolutionary, it's not NextStep part II.
linux isn't there yet, but it can be, people can make it be. it can sidestep, dodge and not run forward into bullets. the progess of this OS is amazing and it can let curious geeks that can not afford the $$ have something they can play with and take apart. it will run on my vaio. =)
linux will get many enhancements when SGI finishes with it. it too can be a multimedia OS like the MacOS. so don't count it out yet. the power of linux is that you can make it whatever you want it to be, we just need to stop fighting windows to do it.
but i ramble.
Re:Moderator rules (Score:1)
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Re:Programmers who enjoy coding so much... (Score:2)
Hrrrrm. I wasn't aware that there had been Lisp systems for Unix before the early or mid-80s, and definitely not before 1975 when the first Cons machine was built. In fact, I thought the first compiler for Unix outside of C and PDP assembly had been the Berkeley Pascal compiler, from (IIRC) 1977. Strange timing, eh?
That's why I quoted "historical"
By "historical" I meant that it made history, being years ahead of its time (and only comparable to the Xerox PARC's inventions such as the Alto). In one way or the other, the Lisp Machines did pretty well (in the US and Europe at least) before the big AI bust of the 80s, but now they've been relegated to museums and dusty office corners - at best - and their design lessons have been forgotten by the industry (who is now busy reinventing it, only twenty years late and in a half-assed manner - see Sun's MAJC and Transmeta's Crusoe).
but in all my days I've never seen any coder quoting "coding", as you did.
Well, to be honest, the term "coding" bugs me a bit. I translate it in my head to the Portuguese "codificar" (I'm Brazilian), which is associated with negative notions: making things arcane and undecypherable. I like to think my code isn't arcane and undecypherable - unless specifically intended otherwise - so I prefer "programming", "hacking" or just "algorithm designing"
It's sorta strange... (Score:2)
It's not only clothing that repeats itself. =^)
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
It's Spring! It's EROS! (Score:1)
Re:But is linux any good? (Score:2)
No wonder you are back to Win98SE : they have exactly one library for one job. And that's why it is unstable as hell. (And the company that produces it is being sued by being anti-COMPETITION.)
Linux is not for everybody. It's for people who are willing to trade off some time to learn some new things, and have fun while doing that. If you are not willing to invest time in figuring things out, fine. But don't write inflammatory rhetoric accusing the people who spend their valuable time writing code for free as egoists.
Now, be a good boy.
Re:JWZ (Score:4)
said it best: "Linux is only free if your time has no value."
Whereas with Windows NT you're stuffed both ways...
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
Re:But is linux any good? (Score:1)
That's a good bet... I just checked on mine... 1159 DLLs on my main NT drive, and 2455 DLLs on the drive with my program files. Doing a "locate *.so | wc" on my development web server (Slackware 7.1) returns 423 separate libraries. And that's with X installed.
Granted, I have a lot more applications installed on my workstation than on my web server. But checking the local NT web server, running Access, Perl, Netscape Server, there are 836 DLLs total. Just shy of twice as many. They're just better documented on Linux :-)
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Dear oh dear (Score:1)
Remember this: Windows 98 is built on technology that is 20 years old.
I guess you'd better tell the deluded motherfucking idiots at Dell, IBM, Compaq, Oracle, HP, and SAP that they need to get the shipping orders of antipsychotics in, pronto.
You're trolling and I fell for it.
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The differences between *nix & Win* (Score:3)
Let's just face it, Unix's death has been predicted for years. Kinda like rock & roll music, it won't go away. Like rock & roll, Unix always evolves and pops up with different flavors and tools to suit the times & needs.
Unix is not for everyone. I agree that it's a bit much for someone who just wants to send mail, play games, use AOL, and do word processing. But for people who really need more control & precision over their systems, Unix is the way to go.
It took until Win 2K server for M$ to realize that file quotas might be a good idea in their OS, whilst Unix has had that for years. That's how Unix always evolves around realistic and current needs more immediately, whilst (IMHO) Win* is either catching up, or putting out vaporware (i.e. J++).
Comments on replies (Score:3)
Yes. Things like this has been tried at the language level. Java is the most visible example. I'm proposing to do it at the OS level, where the protection hardware can make many of the checks. That way you're not locked to a specific language, and can reuse more existing software without trusting it.
So what do you think about the Spring and EROS papers? You have read the Spring and EROS papers, right?
Spring was an interesting idea. Many of the ideas ended up in Java, but once they started thinking cross-platform, they were stuck with running on top of an OS, not writing one. Yes, there was a JavaOS. Haven't heard much about it lately.
As for EROS, I was impressed with that project, even though it never quite got finished. They had several problems, some technical, some political. They never really explained how to get from capabilities to policy. Capabilities are a low-level mechanism, and it's not clear how you get to, say, a web server with secure server-side applets, or its dual, a web-browser with secure client-side plug-ins. That's a classic failing of the capability crowd, all the way back to Norm Hardy and KeyKos. Too much abstraction and not enough explaination. I also tend to think they overemphasized persistence. The opposite of persistence, the pure transaction system, is closer to what people want today. Consider cgi-bin programs, where the transaction program is flushed at the end of each transaction. Hokey schemes like running Perl in the web server's address space are needed to make this efficient. That's a concrete example of where the OS has totally inadequate mechanisms. The persistent part of a server belongs in a database where you have a coherent model of the data. Think about how hard it will be to clean junk out of a persistent object store. It creates the versioning problem from hell.
Congratulations, you've just described the foundations of Windows NT. .BMP files is in the kernel,
and contains a buffer overflow.)
Early NT was closer to this than NT is now. "Event pairs" were getting close to what I'm talking about here. However, rather than fixing NT's IPC performance problem, Microsoft chose to kick Dave Cutler out of the top NT job and dump much of Windows 95 into the NT kernel. Now it's just another big, monolithic OS vulnerable to a bug in any of millions of lines of code. (My favorite discovery was that the decompressor for RLE-compressed
Strange, most of what you describe is MULTICS...
Not quite. Multics security is hierarchical. I'm discussing peer-to-peer, which is more useful. Multics did a good job at security, and was very well regarded in the DoD world. NSA's public access machine was a Multics until just a few years ago.
So you want a microkernel. Mach provides much of what you ask for, except the fine-grained security perhaps.
Mach offers a classic I/O type IPC primitive. Actually, QNX does a better job at that.
You are paranoid. You don't need an operating system; you need a psychiatrist.
What I want is security that actually works, rather than having to be patched every week. A system with tiny amounts of trusted code, in which untrusted code can't break security. Something where we don't have a major nationwide crisis every time some script kiddie tries something.
No, the GUI *is* the OS... (Score:2)
For example, people here are talking about how multiuser timesharing machines are making a comeback thanks to home networking and the like. Bullshit. The average house still doesn't have a home network, but has instead one, maybe two, standalone PCs or Macs. Home Networking is still a geek/tech enthusiast thing. Until computers can be plugged together with a little cable, or with a couple of AirPort type devices, with absolutely no configuration necessary beyond a quick Wizard, home networking will remain a small minority market. The closest thing to that right now is Macs using the AirPort.
And, most home networks probably consist of Windows boxen linked together, not multiuser Linux systems. I know of absolutely no one who actually uses the Windows "Profiles" version of multiuser, much less who uses a real multiuser Linux or NT box at home--NT, sure, but with only a single non-administrator user profile. Most home users view multiuser systems as a burden to be put up with, not as a useful feature. Do you know what home users do instead of using multiuser systems? They use single-user systems with different folders for different users' stuff. If there is a home network, it's usually a network of such single-user machines, not a network of multiuser systems running *nix or NT with different logons for each user.
Please, don't make the mistake of thinking that home users think the same way or want the same things that tech enthusiasts and geeks do. they don't. And unless Linux developers start thinking about what Joe Windoes or Jane Macintosh use and want, Linux will never take over the desktop. My title was "No, the GUI *is* the OS" precisely because that's a true perception of home users--they don't see or care about what's going on underneath the GUI, the GUI is their world, the GUI is their perception of the OS; and if the GUI sucks, as most Linux ones do in the user-friendliness dept. compared to Win/Mac, then the OS sucks as well for the desktop user. It ain't about the server space any more; the desktop market is about look and feel, not multiuser complicated stuff. Just my 2 pence.
Unix dead? Hardly... (Score:1)
Linux's success isn't surprising to me. Until the last few years, unix never really had a decent desktop environment -- and please spare me the "What about openlook? (it's crap)", or the "what about CDE? (it's crap too)". Kudos to the Gnome/KDE people, they're really doing alot for the survival of unix (Not that I think it's in any immediate danger. NT wasn't quite the unix-killer that Gates' marketing staff hyped it up to be (big surprise). IT people are slowing learning that NT is crap with a nice GUI).
I've never cared which flavor of *nix survived and I never listen to the distro war garbage or FreeBSD/Linux wars. My only concern was that some form of *nix survive so that lots of companies look for Unix expertise and I can keep avoiding the windows platform like the plague.
Re:Use for multitaasking, multiuser, networked box (Score:1)
You need the multi-user ability to keep the normal user from roaching the system because they were click-happy!
Re:Beyond the UNIX model (Score:5)
In any case, it will do you no good to use CORBA as it is today. Instead, use a dynamic, high-level language for user-level functionality, and just let applications people deal with objects in the language's natural idiom, making no syntactic distinction between "local" and "remote" objects.
In any case, have fun, and don't let those Unix weenies tell you that systems research is dead - if it were for the conformists and the naysayers, we'd be rendering polygons with abaci!
Re:Use for multitaasking, multiuser, networked box (Score:2)
The machines in the _living_room_ must be multi-user, because I don't want to trek down to my room downstairs to access my files if I'm in the living room.
Even if you assume that only one person will ever need a machine, they still have to understand the concept of multiple users - otherwise they won't be able to talk to the file server. Do I want to have to use floppy disks if I want to share files with my other family members?
Why must each person be _bound_ to one machine? If anything, _that's_ a waste of hardware, as it requires one machine per person (you will note that I said my parents share a machine). If I have an extra $1k to spare, I'll add a mail server or upgrade the RAID or replace our aging laser printer, not add a new user terminal.
I have a feeling I've been trolled here, but what the heck.
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:3)
Maybe so, if you compare Linux to Unix as a contextless technology.
However, if you look at the role Linux plays on the desktops of those of us who use it there, Linux is a huge step forward over what most of us would be using otherwise.
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Counting Libraries (Score:1)
something like "find / -iname \*.so -type f -print | wc -l" should do it.
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Re:But is linux any good? (Score:1)
They just don't get it. (Score:3)
People who poo-poo the potential that linux has need to remember two things:
Re:Programmers who enjoy coding so much... (Score:2)
I feel confident that I can speak for at least a few of my ilk when I say that the wonder of Linux is that it has given us something we can tinker with -- for free -- and learn down to the most minute detail if you feel so inclined. It's possible to play with Linux in ways that are terrifically difficult with Windows and which have always been impossible with Mac OS. When Apple deep-sixed their CLI-driven Apple II series in favor of the Macintosh, a lot of us swore never to get vendor-locked again if we could help it. After nearly more than a decade of waiting for an opportunity to play and explore again, Linus Torvalds and company gave us that chance.
I know the dot-com-wannabe crowd will probably sneer at that, but hell, money isn't much good if you aren't having fun. I'm having fun again. Thanks, free-software-programmers!
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Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:1)
OS X is a combination of some good things. it's seems usuable and configurable. they're working on it to be easy to use and will have really good hareware support.
linux is small, light and growing to be better and better. right now, it's a good server OS and i use it often on my VAIO when i want to do something than browse the web and play my games.
it's still not a NextStep on a Mac. it may be one day, but right now it's not. while it's not, i don't see why i wouldn't want to use the MacOS X.
if i can use one OS and play my games and still use all my favorite Open Source products and learn then i'll be one happy man. Xfree86 4 isn't ready, KDE and GNOME are just one more layer ontop of an OS.
i don't see anything wrong with OS X. so why shouldn't i use it? not that i will stop using linux, it has lots of good things about it too.
Re:The problem with today's users (Score:2)
You just said the same thing I've been saying a long, long, time. You probably said it more eloquently than I ever have. Thank-you.
I might add, it's frustrating when I say I like Windows, and people automaticly assume I like NT. Not so. I think NT is a lame server, just like so many others do. But on a consumer desktop, which is where I do most of my computing, Win9x rules.
You might say that my ideal experience is surfing to websites that run *NIX, using my Win9x PC.
Re:Use for multitaasking, multiuser, networked box (Score:1)
Two users. Two Boxes. Share nothing, except by sneaker network.
With more than one user and/or box, you get into the business of controlled access to shared resources. The timeshareing systems are not obsolete, we're just seeing more of the flip side.
Article was fluff (Score:2)
Hmmm.....he claims Linux is the most open project out there. FreeBSD is even more open. I don't have to wait to grab a kernel that Linus/Alan deem worthy of public comsumption. Instead I can cvsup myself a snapshot whenever I want. The author was just saying what people want to hear. Deal with it.
Re:How long till we lose linux (Score:1)
It don't think it will ever happen. As I see it, the reason for the forking of Unix into different and incompatible flavors was that most vendors could not share their code. So everyone implemented its own version of the same software, which was, of course, not entirely compatible with their neighbor's implementation. And on top of that, each vendor did their best to get ahead of the competition by including cool features that only their flavor of Unix had.
Since Linux is free software, "vendors" don't need to rewrite anything to have a product. They can focus in fixing bugs and adding features. And every "vendor" can incorporate to its flavor of the OS the best features of the other flavors. I think this tends to keep most Linux flavors compatible with each other, if only because they share most of their code.
Re:Missing Features? (Score:1)
Re:3.1/3.11/95a/95b/98/98se/2000/ME/CE/NT3.5/NT3.5 (Score:1)
Yeah. Windows 2000 is really MS DOS 2000.
Does Windows 2000 have a real mode or is it strictly unreal?
Re:CDE is the most mature desktop available. (Score:1)
Re:Sun is a hardware vender first Unix vender seco (Score:1)
Might be true if you are comparing Intel's latest generation with Sun's current generation, but not the next. Sun has published their CPU roadmap -- they're getting close again. Besides, when are you going to find an Intel based OS that'll properly scale up to 32 processors and still be halfway efficient?
how embarrasing :O( (Score:1)
Re:Dear oh dear (Score:1)
You are damn right they do. Big names don't mean shit other than a bunch of sort of ricvh companies trying to become really rich companies by jumping on something that they don't think will cost them much money.
Re:Missing Features? (Score:1)
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Re:Missing Features? (Score:3)
Solaris: Massive SMP scaling.
IRIX: Mature 3D framework.
IRIX: Stable journeling file system.
Solaris: Dynamic patching of most kernel code.
QNX: Real time sheduling.
Solaris, NeXT, etc. Display Postscript.
NeXT, Solaris: Flexible, ObjectiveC object model.
And of course, most commercial UNIX's offer management tools that are much more integrated and functional that Linux ones.
Re:But is linux any good? (Score:2)
Back when Rock & Roll was king, they said the basic epiphany that got all the great bands started was when some geek^w musician went into a club, heard the band, and said to himself, "I could do that."
And then, after listening a while longer, "I could do that better!"
This phenomenon seems to be the driving force behind OSS as well. Call it ego if you will; IMO it is a fine thing. In a few more years people will wonder how we ever got by with proprietary software.
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Re:But is linux any good? (Score:2)
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
Re:Missing Features? (Score:2)
Re:It's sorta strange... (Score:2)
Hrm... maybe they're already here: Palm, Cellphones, DoCoMo iMode thingies, dreamcasts...
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There's nothing wrong with 70's OSen (Score:2)
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Beyond the UNIX model (Score:5)
Why? Because when one object calls another, what you want is a subroutine call. Most OSs make you marshall the parameters into a buffer, make an IPC call that works like an I/O operation with one or more process switches, and then unmarshall on the receiving side. On return, these steps are repeated. All this is time-consuming. This is the main reason software isn't usually constructed out of little objects in different address spaces - it's too slow. Fix that problem, and clean design becomes efficient.
How? The MMU and protection hardware in x86 machines has lots of stuff that's almost never used, like call gates and variable-length segments. If used properly, cross-address-space calls can be quite efficient. You don't have to copy everything, and you don't have to give up security to get performance. (Or so the data books indicate. I'm assuming all that stuff, like call gates and rings of protection, actually works.)
This is an idea I've been kicking around for a while. With the GNOME crowd going CORBA, this is starting to look more practical. An OS like this will have something to run on it.
Comments?
Who actually reads shakespeare? (Score:1)
As I am sure you know, it was Brutus, Julius' murderer, that said the original words.
Ironic how the press is actually being blatant in this reference.
Re:ahhh yes.. (Score:1)
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Programmers who enjoy coding so much... (Score:2)
*ahem* Excuse me, but I think someone forgot to send me the invitation to your crowning ceremony. FYI, I am a programmer, and I enjoy "coding" so much that I do it for free (I design programming languages on my spare time). However, I do not like Unix. In fact, it's fair to say that I hate it. (Just to keep you from accusing me of being a mindless Microsoft drone in a while: I also hate Windows.) I also hate C, vi and a bunch of other things that Unix zealots seem to believe to be the be-all, end-all of software. (When Rob Pike's article bemoaned the current state of systems research, and a bunch of people claimed that systems research should be stopped, being useless given that the ultimate system already existed in the shape of Unix... that was when I truly realised the sad state of our little community.) I've seen better things - I've seen truly open systems, built without preconceptions and making all the power of the machine available to the user, such as Symbolics' historical Lisp Machine OS, Genera. Compared to it and others, Unix's continued prevailance can only be explained by the influence and domination of the "worse-is-better" mentality in the IT industry. I hope that goes away in due time.
Besides from all that, there's a big error in your argument. You see, Free Software is "free" as in speech; it doesn't mean that people don't get paid for programming. I myself work on Free Software for a living, as do many fellows at Red Hat, Conectiva, IBM, Apple and many other companies. These people write Free Software, but they do unto it as management tells them to. If or when their numbers and power in the GNU/Linux community exceed those of "lone hackers", it won't be the programmers' choice any more, but that of the consumers - the people who pay for the software to be written, one way or the other.
What am I missing? (Score:1)
Re:Unix, Linux and MS (Score:1)
The support for Linux by the commercial Unix companies is just raising the bar. Eventually they will sell you the binary, supported and/or give you the source, unsupported.
Symbiosis is mutual parasitism.Linux makes an excellent testbed for the advancement of Unix.
Re:Its nice to reminisce (Score:1)
1,2,3 - *Sigh*
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:1)
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:1)
That said, the most promising avenues for Linux are in the server and embedded markets -- the second one isn't even really a promise but a fact. As for the server market, one disadvantage is the more freewheeling development and configuration model, as compared to a commercial Unix or the BSDs. On the other hand, vendors like IBM and SGI are putting significant resources and code behind Linux, and that's nothing to sneeze at.
Premise of article is utterly false (Score:4)
What a total waste of electrons, both in the alleged view of the "Linux crowd" and consequently also in the article.
Repeat after me, 10 billion times: "Linux is a Unix".
Who cares a damn about the legal niceties (more like idiocies) that prevent one from using the label "Unix" where it's obviously appropriate. Ask any person with more than a little experience of Unix and you'll always get the same answer: Linux and the BSDs are all Unixes, through and through, every bit as much as the licensed proprietary versions. It's not just by accident either, it's by design. And in many ways (but not all, yet) they're the best Unixes around, with the older "legal" Unixes fighting hard to keep up. Anyone that thinks that the important thing about a "Unix" is its license is just so uninformed that it's sad.
OK, I know it's summer and good news is hard to come by, but that article was about as empty of point and content as they come.
Re:No, the GUI *is* the OS... (Score:1)
Now you know someone! The family computer at home runs Windoze NT4 (with 5 different users) and I have it NTFS formatted, I use the user Profiles and rights to a certain extent. None of my family is allowed to install anything and if they try the I'll scream their heads off. (A strategy that works quite well)
Yes, I'm paranoid, I know...but it's the only way to keep the system relatively clean and stable.
As soon as you've got more than 2 users on the same machine you need some kind of management or it goes right to catastrophy. I once reinstalled the PC of a family with 6 (!) Their box kept crashing and new installs of W9x kept going wrong after 2 months of operation. As soon as I installed NT4 with appropriate user-management it worked like a dream for them.
And don't start that I should have installed Linux, because I already tried it for myself and I'm just not convinced. My P120 with 1.2Gig harddisk (my own computer which I use on daily basis != the family computer) works fine with W95-OSR2 and I tried different Linux distro's (RedHat, Corel and SuSE) and I didn't manage to install something working with X under 900Meg. Without X it's probably crammable on some 100Meg distro (Yup ZipSlack runs pretty fine), but then it's just not useable for my brother/sister/mother. Compare it to 300Meg for a W95 with all the rimram installed. The day Linux will be easily installable (without httpd, sendmail etc by default)and relatively lightweight, then it will be ready for desktop...not a second before.
I'm way Oftopic by now...sorry....gonna post it anyway ^_^
Re:What am I missing? (Score:1)
What are you talking about? Linux is a piece of crap compared to other commercial UNIX. For instance Solaris has the ability to tie threads to particular CPUs. Linux barely runs on multiple cpus and has no real concurrency facilities(at least not any that I hear people using, but I may be wrong about this last part).
KidSock
Re:Sun is a hardware vender first Unix vender seco (Score:1)
--
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:2)
No, much free software is unusable for the same reason much comercial software is unusable. It just that most software is unusable. If you disagree go use a peice of comercial software at random. Don't forget all the in-house apps that need a ton of instruction to use, stupid instructions like "don't hit 'all packages', that just crashes, select them all by letter".
Lots of comercial crap is worthless. Lots of free crap is worthless. It is probbably easier to find the worthless free crap, but only because it is free, not because there is more of it.
Don't forget lots of free stuff is pretty damm nice. Apache. OpenBSD. GCC. The Smithsonian. Love. And some claim Linux even.
Re:Missing Features? (Score:1)
>
>
Yes... you can.
--
Re:Article was fluff (Score:2)
Re:ReiserFS (Score:2)
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:4)
That's true if the developers are selling what they're developing. If they're giving it away for free... well it kind of turns that model on its head, doesn't it?
-
Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special. (Score:5)
The communinity development model so far has been unable to do anything other than kludge together something as important of the GUI. Gnome and KDE are just the first iteration towards a useful user experience.
Apple, on the other hand, has taken the core of a Unix system and used a single vision/goal/thingy to synthesize something new and exciting from two fairly stagnant OSs. Borrowing from the low level functionality of Unix and the elegant UI of MacOS they have made a real step forward.
Linux so far is a step sideways at best.
ahhh yes.. (Score:4)
curtain. we see a developer somewhere in california
Developer: Boy, i sure like this AT&T Unix. Good thing it's open. I think i'll use some of the source for something
AT&T: Do that and we'll sue your bitch ass!
curtain
The original unix was free as in 'not free'
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:It's sorta strange... (Score:3)
What everyone fails to realize, is that those systems continued to exist throughout the era of the PC. It's amazing how many people don't know that the PC has "not" been the be-all/end-all of computing in the past 10-15 years. Heck, until 4-5 years ago, the PC was an utter piece of crap compared to your average UNIX machines.
Look at some of what I've been using lately and the dates of manufacture:
Sun SparcStation IPX '92
IBM RS/6000 POWERstation 350 '92
SGI Indigo2 Impact '96
These WERE within the "era of the PC", are absolutely not PCs, and run UNIX in all it's multi-user, networked glory.
We never moved from high-end/UNIX to PC/Mac and then back. Both worlds existed in parallel, with very little communication between the two.
Re:Premise of article is utterly false (Score:2)
followed almost immediately by ^C because ten billion iterations of anything is just ridiculous.
Steven
Objection... (Score:2)
To save readers from my wordy retort, I'm moving the summary I put at the end of my reply at the beginning, which follows:
You're right. The features you named are "missing" in that there is no glossy package you can install as a slam-dunk solution to the general problems involved. On the other hand, for each item, it's either a matter of time (6-18 months away), or the issues involved are much to complex to treat as a simple feature that can be added like a car accessory.
Now the long version.
Taking into consideration your self-reply about these things being available but not production-quality, I would like to add that all of these will be at or above whatever production-quality is _eventually_. Since these things are done when someone volunteers, there is no hurry. If you want it faster, write it yourself. Also, all of these things are a lot closer than they appear:
- SMP - SGI seems to be trying to speed up development of this. Judging from recent slashdot activity it would appear that SGI is trying to bring Linux up to IRIX level in all of IRIX' specialties so they can dump OS development on the community and focus on what they really make money on. I think this is great. It's the whole point of cooperation. Let everyone do what they want and as long as it stays cooperative, everyone wins.
- 3D - Again, SGI seems to be helping out here, as well as CreativeLabs, 3DFX, NVidia, Matrox, and a few other companies. Anyone with 3D hardware to sell wants as many viable platforms as possible, especially stable ones. No, Linux isn't a drop-in replacement for IRIX or an Evans and Southerland workstation...yet.
- Journalling FS - SGI and IBM are both bringing their own filesystems to linux. They aren't even asking the community to do it for them. They're doing it themselves and giving it to us all. It could be a gimmick, but I think they Get It.
- Dynamic kernel patching - I haven't seen any major threads on this on the kernel list, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was on the horizon for 2.7 or so. On the other hand, with the user space linux kernel doing so well, why bother with a patchable kernel when you can spawn a new kernel with its own VM? Certainly this is an over-simplification, but the point remains that the problem a patchable kernel solves has real-world Linux answers right now.
- Real time scheduling - There's a project or two dedicated to RTLinux, and I'm sure they're progressing nicely. No, it's not production quality, if by that you mean 'apt-get install rtlinux' makes your debian box "real time". On the other hand, RT scheduling is a pretty small niche, and it's only being worked on because someone has a need and is willing to do the work themselves, not because we're competing with QNX or something.
- Display Postscript - My first thought is "yawn", but I have to remember that people use computers for many more things than I do. I have no idea what projects are underway to satisfy this goal, but I know that Unix and Linux are similiar enough that you could buy DisplayPostscript for Linux if you really wanted to, and a free version will exist some day. It's just a matter of someone having the time and inclination.
- ObjectiveC - GnuSTEP anyone?
- Management tools - I had a big argument with my previous boss on this one. He wanted a single window he could consult to feel like he was at the helm of a dozen machines. I told him many times that while there are tools that give you that feeling, nothing gives you the control you get from actually having a clue. I probably could have been more diplomatic. The GNU world has NFS/NIS, LinuxConf is its own beast, DebConf is
... interesting, and there are many other solutions. I don't see this as a problem. If you have more than a handful of machines, you're going to come up with a solution of your own that suits your situation. Otherwise, you don't need "integrated and functional" management. Your situation is too simple. It would be like using wharehouse tracking software to manage your household. "Where's the toilet paper? - Hold on, I'll look it up in the database..."
Maybe this is preaching to the choir on SlashDot, but the point of free software is not to compete with commercial software in the marketplace, but to satsify the individual programmer's goals, and work cooperatively on goals the community has in common. Whether those goals are compatible with commercial demand is irrelevant. Some day someone will do something for free that already exists for money. It's not that it can't be done, it's just a matter of time. If you want it now, buy it. If you want it free, write it or wait.All UNIXes have good and bad points (Score:2)
Re:No, the GUI *is* the OS... (Score:2)
My brother's only computer literate at a user level, and my parents are barely that.
Of course, they don't have passwords or anything, but its definitely multi-user.
Try tomorrow's Linux... (Score:2)
The rest of your argument - well, points-by-example, I can see pretty well. If you want an entertainment machine (ie, web, e-mail, vidgames) Linux is not there. However -
Mozilla is cranking right along towards release and will be 'released' with in the year.
X4 is cranking right along and will support 3D and DRI and all that great stuff to make games go.
Wine is cranking right along, and can actually -run- things. Wow.
And, of course, Corel and others have slapped some really good installation-and-support stuff on top of the nuts-and-bolts. (And Debian has made the BEST packaging system ever for Corel to build on! No, I don't really want to start a flame war, I'm just a Debian user, it was mandatory to spout that.
My point is, I've always said, 'Well, -someday- Linux will be good for the ordinary user.' Now, I'd say, 'within 1-2 years, Linux will be good for the ordinary user'; for some definitions of ordinary, anyway.
I estimate that 1 year from now we should start seeing distributions with a stable X4, stable Mozilla (or, more likely, derivative web browser that spins off from the beta Mozillas, 'cause people are getting impatient and Mozilla is getting stable enough to spin projects off of without having to duplicate effort), a Beta Wine that is pretty much as stable as Windows itself (not saying much, but hey), and with any luck, a stable ALSA.
Now, if Corel/Caldera/RedHat/etc keep up the 'friendly-front-end' progress, all this core functionality should be easy to use.
Passwords at the console aren't necessary if people don't want them - though the code isn't in place, it is perfectly technologically feasible to permit login at the console without a password, and require password only for remote access (if the home user even bothers running a telnet or sshd in the first place).
Logging in as root to install things isn't necessary - just make real ('human') users part of the 'installers' group and the installer program -rwsr-x--- root installers -- all behind the scenes of course, so the ordinary user doesn't have to know how to operate 'install'. (install should, of course, only work for people at the console - the more advanced permissions structure of 2.4 might help with this, or not, I'm still on 2.2).
Any-way. Ordinary users -do- want some of what linux can offer them... namely -
remote access to their machine (mostly to check e-mail)
stability (though they don't want to pay an ease-of-use price for it)
ip-masquerading. No. Really. I meant it. Every windows user I know wishes they had ipmasq. Of course, they don't want to deal with the IPMASQ howto, or even the WinGate install program, they want it to just work, so they can end their fights over who gets the modem line now.
If the end-user-distributions can get Ethernet/IPMasq setup cleanly automated, that'll be a big step forward towards grabbing the web-and-e-mail sorts of 'ordinary users'. (And a minor-+ for game users that like networked games, though what they really want is a stable and automatic X4-with-DRI + ALSA + Joystick, and they want it all without having to know any technical terms.
Interoperability with MS-Office is still, and will continue to be, I'm sure, a big stumbling block with the 'productive' sorts of 'ordinary users'. (Funny how many categories of 'ordinary' there are, isn't it?). Any-way, between the opening staroffice, the Corel-WPOffice, and KOffice, there are options for those who don't need -perfect- interoperability, and if even a few percent go to other office suites, it will discourage MS-core-users from shipping MS-only documents. (ie,
Any-way, if you want to give your family Linux right now, expect to spend days, nay, -weeks-, configuring, optimizing, installing KDE, removing KDE and installing Gnome, switching back, setting up sudo so they can do root tasks transparently and then setting up ipchains and tcp_wrappers so the Evil Crackers don't then exploit the weakened security, etc, etc, until it's a smooth ride, 'cause frankly, I don't think out-of-the-box linux -does- have much ease-of-use, but I know that tweaked-until-it-begs-for-mercy linux sure does.
Anyway. Are we offtopic yet?
--Parity
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:2)
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:3)
A) Userbase is king. Windows has the userbase. If Linux doesn't get a big userbase, then people won't develop there.
B) Developing for UNIX is not necessarily better.
- There are a lot of commercial developers that grew up using Microsoft code generators. Those people will be the last to switch to *NIX.
- For a lot of smaller developers (database developers, etc) the fastest way to do something is still use generation tools (like database generators, or stuff like Delphi.) Those developer's won't switch until a similar body of apps are available on Linux.
- Any tool you can use in *NIX, you can use in NT. (GCC, Emacs, etc.)
- The Windows APIs are generally less chaotic. While Linux is in a constant state of flux, the Windows APIs are more stable. For example, in Linux, you have the major DE's changing heavily quite often. In Windows, the major DE APIs haven't changed all that much since Win95.
- Linux suffers from API overload. Which sound system do you program for? If you want featues and speed, you use ALSA. However, can you expect your users to have it? You could use OSS, but why not just forget it and use DirectSound? Which DE should you program for? KDE or GNOME? In the end, most commercial developers will just give up trying to choose and use Motif. And by using motif, they lose out on the cool features of KDE and GNOME. What toolkits? How can I make sure the user has the correct toolkit? What version of glibc? What version of X? You don't have these kinds of problems with Windows, mainly because MS forces people to stay on an upgrade path, and thus most users will have NT4, service pack 6a. And if they don't it's relativly easy to just include it on your CD, so you can be sure of the state of the system.
- In terms of mutlimedia, the Windows APIs are still much better.
- Developers still care about user experiance. When Sierra didn't let people choose the install directory in it's utilities, people had fits, and threatened to boycott their programs. In Linux, many programs have pages of installation instructions. Recently, I read a review of the 3 IDE's available for Linux. In the case of RedHat's GNUPro toolkit, the installation instructions consisted of half a page of CLI commands. Compare this to Visual Studio's, where you pop the CD, pick which options you want, and then go away while it installs.
Hello? Sun is thriving. (Score:2)
They've absorbed a great deal of market share. It its because they are truly innovating -- in hardware and software. What they've done today is great, but I've received my non-disclosure brefing on the new technology coming out. You think Microsoft listens to their customers? Sun has ABSOLUTELY listened to their customers about the hardware and innovated new products which address the complaints about the current line.
The software/hardware combination (which is hard to get without a major backer -- maybe Compaq can pull it off) is incredible. When you've got a production system which is choking all of the sudden and needs more CPU and memory, what other system do you know of that will allow you to add (or subtract) CPU/Memory/IO devices on the fly, while the operating system continues to run, without missing a beat? It's saved our butts more than a few times.
I'm just a little put off on the spin of the article that seems to ignore that UNIX is alive and doing well. Sun absolutely has their act together.
Re:It's sorta strange... (Score:3)
we have an sgi iris file from 1992 at our work. despite it's age, it's a pretty impressive piece of equipment.
My point was simply this - the focus of the average user went from large timesharing systems to the personal computer, and now it's almost as if networked, timesharing systems have come back into vouge. i know, the whole while, there were multiuser computers running networks and databases and whatnot, but now we're even getting that sort of os on our desktop (i forgot to mention winnt as a multiuser os.)
it was just a dumb thought provoking-type comment. don't worry too much about it. =^)
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Re:Beyond the UNIX model (Score:2)
CORBA is already location transparent (that's how GNOME works), it's been around forever, used a lot, and carefully maintained. I would suggest going with CORBA as opposed to creating Yet Another custom inter-process communication mechanism. CORBA already lets's applications deal with CORBA objects as if they were normal objects in the language's syntax...that's what bindings are for.
Re:Beyond the UNIX model (Score:2)
-- functional pseudocode: using a high-level language with a dynamic object system and built-in facilities, search entire environment and remote hosts for urgent documents which have been modified today
let docs = [ doc from World | doc
in display_numbered_list(docs)
>> ask_user("Document number: ")
>>= \n -> docs[n].display_nicely
to
-- quasi-functional pseudocode: using a high-level language without a dynamic object system but with CORBA bindings, search entire environment and remote hosts for urgent documents which have been modified today
namespace An_Arbitrary_Protected_Namespace
use ORBs_Special_Namespace
use Document_Class_Skeleton
use Special_Class_For_Object_Reference
use Special_Class_For_Object
let orb = implem_dependent_initialise_orb(lots_of_params)
in do orb.implem_dependent_initialise_boa(lots of other_params)
>> orb.get_naming_service -- if orb.supports_naming_service
>>= \ns -> filter (\s -> s.query("BIZARRE_QUERY_IN_THIRD_PARTY_LANGUAGE: DOES THIS SERVER CARRY OBJECTS OF TYPE Document?").cast_to_boolean) ns.all_hosts
>>= \hs -> map (\h -> h.all_object_refs) hs
>>= \refs -> filter (\ref -> ref
>>= \refs -> do
map (\r -> display_list_item(r->title)) refs
>> ask_user("Document number: ")
>>= \n -> refs[n]->display_nicely
A few other comments:
it's been around forever
"Since the late 80s/early 90s" =/= "forever". In any case, why not try and invent something new and potentially better, rather than to stick with an old and potentially obsolete method? "Reinventing the wheel" is worth doing if the wheel already invented is square.
carefully maintained
What do you mean by this? Are you talking about OMG's formal description of the architecture? Or about each ORB's code? Or about each CORBA program's code?
I would suggest going with CORBA as opposed to creating Yet Another custom inter-process communication mechanism
But the original poster doesn't want an IPC mechanism - he understands that today's heavyweight processes should be abolished altogether. All the conceptual overhead added by CORBA's architecture is just not worth it, any more than it is using it in a self-contained program.
Re:ahhh yes.. (Score:2)
I still have one of Ken's free Unix tapes from the PDP days. Original Unix was. We must remain ever vigilant as the saying goes.
Re:Beyond the UNIX model (Score:2)
I suppose it's dependent on language and libraries. One can easily make a library for an *existing* language to make CORBA look like the former pseudocode example. Never underestimate the value of reusing a language people already know (bindings for whatever language you want).
Yes it does. And certainly with respect to any new high level language that somebody is going to invent up today for some special purpose.
Well CORBA is far from obsolete, and what the poster was suggesting is nothing more than building CORBA-like semantics into Yet Another High Level Language. I don't really see that as reinventing anything. CORBA does its job well.
Yes, no, no. The CORBA spec, as far as I can tell, goes through a lot of scrutiny, and is accompanied by detailed documentation (and a lot of vendor support) as the spec is revved. On the other had, if we created a new language to subsume this functionality it would be prone to all the typical new language requirements and features problem, would have to go through ANSI, etc. etc.
And how exactly do threads share address space in a "lightweight" manner accross a wire? The "conceptual overhead" of doing this will be the same whether or not you call it "CORBA". *Something* has to format and send stuff over the wire and recieve it on the other end. It will just be built into a language library instead...it's not avoiding the overhead.
You can argue that the poster is not concerned with over-the-wire IPC (message passing, shared memory, whatever you want to call it), but only doing IPC optimized on the same host. But CORBA can always be trimmed down to do this (like X was modified to optimize for a client and server in the same address space), while also still supporting over-the-wire communication if necessary. On the other hand, if you invent some great novel high level language to do everything CORBA does, except not over the wire, then, when you decide you actually DO want location transparence, you have to create a whole new protocol to deal with that. I say use CORBA, trim it down for local use if necessary (I believe what GNOME has done), but if you need to go over the wire, it's there for you on both ends already.
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:2)
I agree, he does make some good points... but they don't prove his point,
Userbase is king. Windows has the userbase. If Linux doesn't get a big userbase, then people won't develop there.
certainly, marketsize influences people downstream, but it's also true that in a high growth industry there are more buyers in the future than there are in the market at the moment, According to his logic, the PC would never have taken over from the Apple II, etc. Linux is here today, and it wasn't yesterday. That calls for explanation, not dismissal.
There are a lot of commercial developers that grew up using Microsoft code generators. Those people will be the last to switch to *NIX.
... so? what's your point? Hoping they remember to shut the last windows machines off?
For a lot of smaller developers (database developers, etc) the fastest way to do something is still use generation tools... Those developer's won't switch until a similar body of apps are available on Linux
Oh gee! I don't have an answer to this!!! Oh wait, you answered it yourself:
- Any tool you can use in [NT], you can use in [*NIX].
What version of glibc? What version of X? You don't have these kinds of problems with Windows, mainly because MS forces people to stay on an upgrade path,
They must have really good crack on his planet! due to the way Windows centralizes the installation stuff, you frequently need to reinstall the whole OS when you screw up or install a piece of screwed up software. (Admit it: especially when you help your friends and relatives)
... but once it installs, don't go anywhere: you can't do unattended builds when you need to click buttons in a GUI to get the source code, build it, etc. Oh, the perils of a CLI!
But, as easy as it was to refute most of his points, or at least show the other side of the same coin, none of it's important. The most influential people make decisions for the masses, so it does not matter what the masses expect. Look at the Computer Science labs of all of the top CS universities (MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc.) You will see more unix and linux than Windows, and if you talk to people they can articulate 1000s of reasons why. Even if they work on more advanced or experimental OSs or environments, chances are they do their work from Unix. They respect it. Nobody with credentials respects Windows.
Ohhhh.... buzzwords!!! (Score:2)
Too bad for the drones that bill's implementation of all of the above blows goats.
The Amiga, as you say, had all of the above in the '80s. Didn't save the commode from getting flushed.
It's not at all uncommon for real operating systems to have uptimes measured in *YEARS*. At my previous job, we had a Solaris NFS server that has been up and running WITHOUT A REBOOT since 1993!!! Show me a windoze box with even HALF that uptime. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? I'm waiting...
Yeah windows is buzzword compliant. But gates' horde of trained monkeys typed out one piss-poor imitation of a pre-emptive, protected, multithreaded, "moderm" OS. My SuSE mail/web SERVER at home has been up without a single reboot since I moved into my new apartment two MONTHS ago. My windoze workststion at work (which has duty no more stressful than running Exceed to xterm into the real computers there) crashes, on the average, every two DAYS!!! (always at the WORST time)
Hell, even my Macintosh, without protected memory, minimal threading support, and cooperative multitasking OS, crashes less than the windoze box... averaging only one crash a week, and then only while running a unique combination of Netscape and AIM.
The difference being, that MacOS (X) is an EXCELLENT implemantation of a co-operative OS, wheras windows is a shoddy, piss-poor implimentation of a pre-emptive os. (With Linux ranking GOOD and Be EXCELLENT in the pre-emptive competition).
It doesn't matter if you have infinite money to throw at infinate code-monkeys. The OS will still SUCK, compared to one designed by a smaller number of COMPETENT, dedicated, inspired programmers.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:They just don't get it. (Score:2)
TGL
Use for multitaasking, multiuser, networked boxes. (Score:2)
In the days when there was one computer in the house and it was used by one person, this was true. However, it is becoming less and less the case.
If I have a computer, my brother has a computer, and my parents share a computer, I definitely need networking if I want to be able to do anything useful if I sit down at any machine other than my own.
I also don't want to deal with synching my home directories on several different machines, which means having one dedicated system for storage.
As I don't want my brother rearranging my home directory and I don't want my directory stomped if Windows crashes badly on one of the other machines, I need to have some concept of user-based permissions to protect my directories from others' mistakes... which means multi-user support.
As I've had a few drives die on me over the years, and as I don't want to keep my own machine on all of the time, it's prudent to put user home directories on a dedicated fileserver with a software RAID...
...and so forth.
Whenever you have more than one machine and more than one user in a house, you have something that looks less like the old "one person, one PC" model and more like a university computer lab - complete with multiuser support and networked services.
So, I would indeed argue that these aspects of OS design are becoming more important for Joe Average user.
Re:Hello? Sun is thriving. (Score:2)
After leaving Uni, I didn't want to have to work on MS-DOS but I couldn't afford my own Sun box. So, for the past 6 years I have been working on Linux. To start off with I thought Linux sucked a bit. It was cool to have the same sort of environment as at Uni but there were so many things missing.
These days however. Linux rocks! I mean, everything I want to do I can do under Linux. Also, Linux is moving at a fast pace and every day people are bringing out new things, kernel patches and security enhancements etc.
Recently, I have had to work on Sun Solaris machines. It was the first time I had had to do this since Uni. I was quited excited at first when my new Solaris workstation and server arrived in the office. Soon though, disappointment sunk into my heart. Solaris really sucks! I couldn't believe at how antiquated and stagnated Solaris was. I couldn't believe that some of the things I used to hate about Solaris years ago...still hadn't been fixed.
I am not saying that Solaris hasn't changed at all. Most of the changes though are for the high end server market. May be this is where Sun see their market niche. However, they better watch out because Linux is racing and they are going to loose out.
What annoys me today is when I hear people say The trouble with Linux is it is not mature These people should take a closer look and the commerical UNIX distributions should look too. If the commerical Unices don't start proper innovation across the market they are sure to loose out. The battle isn't over. We still need to innovate ourselves more in pushing Linux forward. But it isn't the commerial Unices who are going to compete with Linux in taking the market.
Re:It's sorta strange... (Score:2)
But the deeper point is that the hypothetical "average user" changed his focus by changing who he was, not by individuals changing focus that much. The big thing that the PC did was to break the computer from being a piece of equipment used by a comparatively small number of people who could wrangle terminal time on an expensive time-sharing system to anyone who could plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for a cheap desktop machine. Most of the business types who were using big iron kept using big iron, and today they're laughing at the PC zealots who claimed big iron was obsolete- only to find that their PCs are relying heavily on centralized servers.
Re:But is linux any good? (Score:3)
Linux is a mess of different libraries
I have 1067 .DLL files on my NT systems main drive. I'll bet you a shiny new dollar thats a hell of a lot more than any Linux system.
I am back to using Windows98SE and AmigaOS - why? One runs everything, and is faster for desktop use than *nix. The other is the only OS that had an advanced design and implementation. I really hate those fuckers who found out Unix in the past year or so and think it's fucking brilliant.
Maybe Win98 is faster, maybe it isn't. I work alongside someone who does OpenGL development, and he find Linux far faster running and compiling his code than Windows is, on the same code. So 'is faster' probably isn't true for everything. Linux is more stable. Thats a win for some people, more than speed. Meanhwile, BeOS probably has AmigaOS beaten in terms of implemented advanced design and implementation. Dont get me wrong, I loved my Amiga, and the OS was fantastic, but just because its the newest shiniest, doesnt make it better. I guess you're one of those fuckers who found out the new AmigaOS in the past year or so and think its fucking brilliant, eh?
Linux is the past. It's merely a free implementation of something thats been around for years.
And thats a problem why? Because its not new, it would appear. Sorry, but thats not good enough. Linux provides a solution for a problem. A modern Unix, capable of using a very decent subset of modern hardware, that has an aggressive development policy. Why is that somehow 'not good'? Lack of GUI apps? Sorry, GUI software doesnt make an OS better or worse, it just means you have GUI software. Desktop Linux is in its infancy. So what. Its progressing faster than the Mac or Windows ever did. And meanwhile, the core OS is still exactly what Unix always was; stable, secure, powerful.
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++