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The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

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Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#51

Post by pjmlp »

dijit wrote: post #33
pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that GNU is Not UNIX and many companies still have UNIX boxes without GNU on them.

that's not necessarily true as much as you think. I worked in a Solaris shop that had gnu coreutils and packages installed everywhere with a prefix, and another place running openbsd which had the same. gecho, gcat, gln etc; I'm pretty sure gnu coreutils can be built on any Unix-like OS.

It depends on the IT guys, I have occasionally sshed into boxes where that wasn't the case and compiling wasn't an option.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#52

Post by al452 »

bjourne wrote: post #37
xyzzy123 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but try and figure out how you'd do better... efficient.ly. Over the network...

You can't do opengl efficiently over the network. At least xorg can't. Most applications uses opengl these days. For me, I've been using Linux fulltime for the last 15 years and I have never, not even once, had the need to connect to a remote X11 server. ssh has always been enough for me.

> the need to connect to a remote X11 server

You mean client, not server.

(ducks for cover)

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#54

Post by ebbv »

I remember when this was new and I've never found it as amusing as other people seem to. It's super easy to shit on software that's almost 50 years old. But where's the replacement?

Windows is still worse as a web server platform than various Unix descendants (Linux and BSD) despite Microsoft's best efforts, and it's not free.

Unix has its flaws but being a "Unix hater" is just dumb.

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#56

Post by gingerbread-man »

Philipp__ wrote: post #34

I like to cover myself with some crazy question and think about them. For example, what would look like the thing that would make people go "oh this looks good enough to replace UNIX". Don't get me wrong, I am big fan of UNIX, but I hope I will be alive around the time(but I doubt that) when we will see some new thing which will make UNIX feel dated. Now, some of you might jump and say "Oh, but UNIX already feels dat…

Google's Fuschia OS project is intriguing. It's open source, but I haven't been able to find any whitepapers or conference talks about its design or Google's plans for it. The speculation is that they wanted an ultra-lightweight OS for future low-latency augmented-reality applications.

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12271354)

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#58

Post by mamon »

throwanem wrote: post #42
omginternets wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there remained a very large number of people with fond memories of other platforms, many of which did at least some things better than any contemporary or even modern Unix. Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. Could you name names? :)

Lisp machines turn up pretty frequently in this context, and I understand why - some of their capabilities still haven't been replicated anywhere else, nor are they likely to be, and that's a real loss; in particular, there is a great deal to be said for a model in which changing the behavior of the running system, right down to the microcode, can be as simple as writing up the changes you want and evaluating them. N…

Live modifications of OS code sounds like a recipe for disaster. Unless you are an expert that codes himself an OS before breakfast

Re: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

#60

Post by di4na »

tbrake wrote: post #39
open-source-ux wrote: post #18

It's interesting that no one blinks twice at the thought of using a decades-old operating system - it's "mature", "battle tested", "proven over time" or some other phrase. On the other hand, programming languages that are decades old are looked upon as antiquated and not fit for modern problems, so we create new languages and discard the old ones, including forgetting useful ideas those languages contained. Sometimes…

I think most programming languages that are decades old aren't looked at as 'not fit for modern problems' so much as 'inefficient for modern* development'. Is it possible to do the same things in C that we can in Ruby, PHP or Node? Absolutely. But can it be written in the same time frame? While I'm sure there are HNers out there who can - or who at least claim they can ;) - let's ask ourselves if that's really broadl…

Meanwhile, erlang...
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