81–90 of 126 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No current open source *BSD is anymore UNIX than Linux is.
I doubt the BSD developers that are part of BSD since the days before the lawsuit will agree with you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the meaningful way for UNIX (and Linux) to succeed as a popular product, according to the aspirations of its proponents, was on the desktop. It wasn't just about the server side back then (late 90s, early 00s) it was all about taking over Windows. If somebody uses some hardware product (e.g. set top box) and doesn't know its Linux, then it's no big win for the Linux community. And it's not just necessarily that…
If somebody uses some hardware product (e.g. set top box) and doesn't know its Linux, then it's no big win for the Linux community. I have to disagree there. It may not be a marketing win, but that doesn't mean that there are no other benefits. The fact that the PlayStation 4 runs FreeBSD has resulted in a large number of improvements becoming available to us; whether Johnny knows that his games are running on a daem…
I've never seen someone refer to it like that before. Awesome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The name UNIX is just not well defined. Saying Linux is a UNIX is perfectly valid imo, but everyone has a different idea of what UNIX means. That pdf btw has quite a few misconceptions about the history of UNIX.
> The name UNIX is just not well defined. Saying Linux is a UNIX is perfectly valid imo, but everyone has a different idea of what UNIX means. The trademark UNIX® and its specification is (still) tightly controlled[1] and licensing and compliance was far too expensive for Linus to think about it for his tiny Linux-like OS. (A Linux distribution did recently get certified as UNIX® but that's a recent exception.) There…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The name UNIX is just not well defined. Saying Linux is a UNIX is perfectly valid imo, but everyone has a different idea of what UNIX means. The trademark UNIX® and its specification is (still) tightly controlled[1] and licensing and compliance was far too expensive for Linus to think about it for his tiny Linux-like OS. (A Linux distribution did recently get certified as UNIX® but that's a recent exception.) There…
I think Linux is perfectly UNIX in terms of userland and 'spirit', if you will. It's not UNIX officially, but that's because nobody bothered to pay for the licensing, since it's not worth it, not because it couldn't get certified as UNIX if somebody wanted to do it - in fact D. Ritchie himself said: "I think the Linux phenomenon is quite delightful, because it draws so strongly on the basis that Unix provided. Linux…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the meaningful way for UNIX (and Linux) to succeed as a popular product, according to the aspirations of its proponents, was on the desktop. It wasn't just about the server side back then (late 90s, early 00s) it was all about taking over Windows. If somebody uses some hardware product (e.g. set top box) and doesn't know its Linux, then it's no big win for the Linux community. And it's not just necessarily that…
If somebody uses some hardware product (e.g. set top box) and doesn't know its Linux, then it's no big win for the Linux community. I have to disagree there. It may not be a marketing win, but that doesn't mean that there are no other benefits. The fact that the PlayStation 4 runs FreeBSD has resulted in a large number of improvements becoming available to us; whether Johnny knows that his games are running on a daem…
wait, what?
Awesome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the meaningful way for UNIX (and Linux) to succeed as a popular product, according to the aspirations of its proponents, was on the desktop. It wasn't just about the server side back then (late 90s, early 00s) it was all about taking over Windows. If somebody uses some hardware product (e.g. set top box) and doesn't know its Linux, then it's no big win for the Linux community. And it's not just necessarily that…
The only successful desktop UNIX derivative is MacOS. That ship has sailed. However the most relevant computing devices for consumers are phones and tablets nowadays, not desktops. UNIX derivatives run almost all of them. Big success, I'd say. UNIX derivatives are running most servers too and are making inroads into the Windows desktop. The outlook is good unless a new popular market suddenly open with no meaningful…
As for desktops, the market share still slowly creeps up. Desktop Linux has definitely graduated from "uber-nerd" to "power user" territory. Plenty of people I know who aren't particularly into Free Software, UNIX etc dual-boot Ubuntu.
Wow. I have to say that it is funny how you hear the legendary tales of computing history over and over again and then some little crucial minor details like "we sold the CEO's office on it" eventually slip out. Ok, that was important at AT&T, but not really why Unix currently rules the universe. Due to anti-trust settlements and cheap licensing, and copyright foibles, Unix was the cheap midrange choice for students…
What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.
VMS had early clustering technology, but that got added to TruCluster.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.
In VMS, revision control was built into the file system. It was easy to retrieve older versions of files. Unix didn't have anything like that until rcs was invented, and even then it was a tool, not something built in like what VMS had.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In VMS, revision control was built into the file system. It was easy to retrieve older versions of files. Unix didn't have anything like that until rcs was invented, and even then it was a tool, not something built in like what VMS had.
I wonder what the VCS landscape would have looked like if git was being developed on top of VMS rather than Linux...
git checkout filename.c;2