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The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

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

#291

Post by pmoriarty »

seagreen wrote: post #231
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…

Well, the browser already did replace Unix for most people=( Presumably we'd be trying to design something good and not awful though, so lets not stop there. But it does give us a starting point: + one click installation of applications + applications are always up to date + applications are sandboxed Then, since we want users to be able to tinker: + the source for all software installed through this mechanism is ava…

You forgot:

+ web applications almost always have a shitty, slow, ad-infested, dumbed-down interface with bare-bones features

+ you're at the mercy of whatever company owns and runs the servers that the application is served from, if they decide to end the service or change it in a way you don't like tough luck for you

+ your privacy and control over your own data are usually forfeited

+ your data is usually trapped on the servers or difficult to extract and use independently of the web service itself

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

#292

Post by dahart »

andrewbinstock wrote: post #277
dahart wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! I switched to Mac so I could have pipes, grep and bash. I personally believe a big reason for the Mac resurgence has to do with the switch to UNIX. I was on Windows using Cygwin for years before anyone I knew was using a Mac. Then OSX came out, and all of a sudden all the academics I knew switched to Mac, and a couple years later most of the professional programmers I knew had switched. The great thing about a Ma…

> I personally believe a big reason for the Mac resurgence Mac resurgence is more of a perception than reality. In 2016, Apple sold ~18.5M Macs, down from the previous two years [1] and off more than 10% from last year. Granted that the Mac numbers are falling at a slower pace than the PC market as a whole, but resurgence is probably an over-characterization. [1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/state-apples-device-sale…

The other comments here are absolutely correct -- I was referring to OS9 vs OSX, on a 10-20 year time frame. OSX ushered in new waves of adoption that outshines previous numbers by an order of magnitude.

Given that Mac has gone from well under half a percent market share to over 7% today, I'd say "resurgence" is an under-characterization, relative to what I was talking about. ;) OS9 never had the market share that OSX has, so it's less coming back, and more dominating like it never did before.

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

#293

Post by AsyncAwait »

aninteger wrote: post #290
gshulegaard wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'll bite. What's missing? I ask as I type from my Dell XPS 13" DE (aka Sputnik).

It's mostly hardware support still. As an example, try using a Baytrail/CherryTrail laptop with Windows 10. Now try in Ubuntu. Oh you need Linux 4.11. Oh that's not out yet, so you need to run a bleeding edge kernel directly from git. Even Ubuntu 17.04 is supposed to ship with 4.10 so you'll have to wait until Ubuntu 17.10 before your hardware might be usable.

Yeah, but that's not really an argument for macOS, given Windows is not even Unix and OP mentioned macOS.

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

#294

Post by INTPenis »

Hate all you want but I regularly have moments where I solve something using a string of commands and think to myself; gosh darn I love Unix!

It's not really Unix, sometimes it's Macintosh with GNU tools installed but mostly it's CentOS or Debian servers where all this magic takes place.

Sure I need to have a lot of stuff in that thick head of mine to do magic, but the joy of stringing together a series of commands to solve a problem my windows using co-workers would have to spend license money to solve is just amazing.

Hating Linux is definitely right if you're looking from the perspective of universal user friendliness. But for true power users, the programmers, the scientists and the sysadmins; I can't picture life without it.

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

#295

Post by gshulegaard »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #293
aninteger wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly hardware support still. As an example, try using a Baytrail/CherryTrail laptop with Windows 10. Now try in Ubuntu. Oh you need Linux 4.11. Oh that's not out yet, so you need to run a bleeding edge kernel directly from git. Even Ubuntu 17.04 is supposed to ship with 4.10 so you'll have to wait until Ubuntu 17.10 before your hardware might be usable.

Yeah, but that's not really an argument for macOS, given Windows is not even Unix and OP mentioned macOS.

This and I was also under the impression that Ubuntu was experimenting with Bay Trail/Cherry Trail support in 16.10:

> http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/14/ubuntu-16-10-images-r...

Seemingly confirmed here:

> http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com/2016/10/running-ubuntu-on-...

Where this guy updated to say that current ISOs of 16.10 should work...

> Whilst two ISO sets of various Ubuntu flavours for both 16.04.1 and 16.10 releases are provided, I recommend first trying one of the 16.10 ISOs as these are the most recent and incorporate the latest kernel, patch sets and fixes based on previous releases and feedback. In particular, the Yakkety 16.10 ISO kernels support micro SD cards (although with some limitations), includes a patch for I2C bus, has improved RTL8723BS wifi and bluetooth support and most recently I've included support for full disk encryption on Lubuntu and fixed the home directory encryption for all flavours.

OpenSource tends to have a lag time to hardware by nature...but I do believe there was some exaggeration here.

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

#296

Post by spc476 »

vidarh wrote: post #36
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? :)

I still miss things from AmigaOS (still being developed, but ultra-niche; with "clones" in the form of AROS - which is open source - and MorphOS). Things like ubiquituous scriptability of apps via Arexx (the language is awful, but you don't need to use the language much to call the APIs), heavy multi-threading throughout the OS, datatypes (new image format? drop a library in the right directory and every application…

Further more, you get a new application on floppy. The disk is named FOOAPP. The application can then request data files such as FOOAPP:data1.dat and FOOAPP:data2.dat. If the program is running and you remove the floppy, no issue. When the program tries to open FOOAPP:data3.dat, the operating system will then ask you to insert disk FOOAPP (and there's no having to dismiss the alert box or anything---the system will detect the inserted disk and dismiss the alert box automatically).

Later, when you get a harddrive (or decide you like the app and want to continue using it), you can copy it to the harddrive (wherever you want) and add an assign "FOOAPP=MY_APPS:new/fooapp" and the application will still work just fine.

It's still something I miss.

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

#297

Post by oxryly1 »

jle17 wrote: post #267
slrz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which emulator did you use? Simh?

Not OP but I recently installed OpenVMS 7.3 on Simh following this guide [1], (ignoring the building Simh part) and it works like a charm. [1] https://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html

What's the easiest way to get OpenVMS these days?

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

#298

Post by pvg »

dwheeler wrote: post #155

Funny book, I have it in my hands (with the barf bag!). The anti-forward by Dennis Ritchie is awesome all by itself. Some of it is long obsolete. For example, Usenet/NNTP is rarely used today. And many of the specific implementation problems they mention are long-fixed on modern systems. Some of the problems they note are still valid. Some of the challenges of dealing with filenames are absolutely still true; because…

Stop saying that! It's a foreword. Like 'foreplay' but with 'word'.

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

#299

Post by icedchai »

Aloha wrote: post #237
michrassena wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to imagine a world which in a 100 years Unix-derived systems are prevalent let alone running everything from phones to supercomputers. I can't imagine what would come along, but whatever it is will eventually be just as crufty, because that's just the way of things. What I'd really like to know, what is Unix, at the core. I know POSIX defines certain standards, but what can we rip out and still call wh…

I dont see a world in 100 years where anything is unix derived - but that doesnt mean it wont be Unix compatible.

Why not? We still have software that was written 50+ years ago for IBM System/360's running on a derived architecture today (System z.)

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

#300

Post by convolvatron »

lispm wrote: post #204
jff wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lisp machines were expensive, the early ones at least took a very long time to boot, and I think there are weaknesses to the Lisp "image"/"world"/whatever model that Lisp-M partisans aren't quite willing to acknowledge. They're still extraordinarily cool machines.

> very long time to boot Actually a typical Symbolics 3600 didn't boot much longer than a SUN... my NXP1000 Lisp Machine boots in three minutes from a very large image.

i'm not trying to be fussy, but we would boot the 3670 overnight when the GC stopped being able to catch up with itself. because as i recall it took a couple hours
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