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The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]

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

#301

Post by zrth »

magentaboy wrote: post #133
gingerbread-man wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

For decades, I have challenged people with a dollar bet tha they cannot correctly spell "fuchsia" given five tries. Everybody thinks they can spell it, but I have never lost the dollar. Sometimes I pull out the same bet six months later and still win it.

Don't bet against German speaking persons. "Fuchs" mean "fox" in German so fuchsia basically means/sounds like fox-ia in German, guessing they will be able to spell it correctly as it is to easy to miss spell.

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

#302

Post by x0 »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #210
raverbashing wrote: post #11

Unix is weird because it evolved organically and without a unified direction. But it remains because power and familiarity beat user experience. Yes, the "pure" Unix tools are awful, GNU improved on their usability a lot. But they're still a simple command that does something. Except Autotools. Those should burn in eternal damnation.

The thing is that it does have (or rather can be made to have) a good user experience for experienced users . The problem is the learning curve, and to a lesser extent, compatibility. MacOS is easy enough for non-techies to use while still having fast alt-tab, readline shortcuts in almost all apps (OS level I believe), and it's unixy-enough that we get things like homebrew while also getting things like Photoshop as…

> readline shortcuts in almost all apps (OS level I believe)

Sorry but OH MY GOD. After 4 years of obsessive, hours-a-day usage of this macbook, I never realised I could do any of this. Literally just ctrl-K'd in Chrome's address bar. This is just next level. THANK YOU.

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

#303

Post by x0 »

SSLy wrote: post #268
pjmlp wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Mount $HOME as noexec - Disable execution bit for all directories for home - If the UNIX variant allows it, jail/contain home for each user session - Punish users or their employer if a consulting firm severely that bypass IT regulations

> - Mount $HOME as noexec /usr/bin/env $your_binary

does that still work? i know the /lib/ld-linux.so /some/binary doesn't work anymore

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

#304

Post by vidarh »

spc476 wrote: post #296
vidarh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

There were lots of attention to details like that... I still hope AROS will get to the point where I can use it more. The big challenge is SMP and memory protection; without it a lot of software gets really hard to port (a lot of essential OSS software depends on fork()). It's in the works, though, so maybe one day...

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

#305

Post by FroggyMan »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #96
andai wrote: post #83

Any thoughts on UNIX security? I've been wondering what the most secure OS is for a long time, and the answer seems to be "systems that stopped being developed before you were born."

Android, iOS, and Chrome OS all have security models that are fundamentally superior to what you get on a base *nix system: Fine-grained, application-level permissions which the user can grant or deny on a case-by-case basis. And before you say that all those operating systems are based on Unix; that's true but it's mostly just an implementation detail. There's no reason, for example, that Chrome OS couldn't be based…

Windows Phone 7 did fine grained security much earlier and with full device encryption as default.

It's now also a standard on WinRT/UWP on Windows8/10.

Android was very late to the party regarding fine grained security. Google knowingly put billions of consumers at risk for a long time. And even today its security a nightmare.

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

#306

Post by lispm »

convolvatron wrote: post #300
lispm wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

A full GC could take easily take half an hour on a machine with large virtual memory.

Booting then was much faster.

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

#307

Post by dfox »

bjourne wrote: post #168
dfox wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.x.org/releases/current/doc/compositeproto/compos... I don't think that this qualifies as "tons of hackery" given the fact that other contemporary UI systems with truly transparent windows implement it in same way (IIRC in pre-Vista Windows truly transparent windows are supported on the OS level but the implementation involves hacks with backing buffer and synthesized expose events).

Hm right. That is indeed possible because the client asks xorg for a surface with an alpha channel. What I don't think clients can do is doing the transparency effects themselves. Because that involves using opengl and doesn't work (very well) in a networked context.

Clients doing transparency themselves is the hackish solution to this problems because it involves the client sohehow knowing what it paints over.

And in all this has nothing to do with OpenGL except that GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is particularly efficient way to implement it on OpenGL supporting hardware. For simple transparency, the compositor can do the blending completely in software (which involves getting the drawables to the client and back), do it via XRender (which may get translated into OpenGL by AIGLX-supporting server) or by calling OpenGL directly. For compositor that only cares about transparency XRender is probably better API, for 3D-ish effects (as in Xgl or Sun's Looking Glass) OpenGL makes more sense.

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

#308

Post by squarefoot »

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.

Before blaming Linux devs for lack of support of new chips I would first check how Intel is cooperating with them by releasing proper documentation in due time.

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

#309

Post by michrassena »

slrz wrote: post #239
michrassena wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've installed and played around with VMS on an emulator and even on my own VaxStation, but never used it in a production environment. I'm sure real world usage left a lot to be desired, but my impressions are that VMS as a product was well-rounded, feels complete as if there aren't a lot of loose ends. In contrast to the unix philosophy, VMS feels DESIGNED, as if the people working on it had a coherent idea of the w…

Which emulator did you use? Simh?

I used Simh Vax, but I've also used Charon-VAX in the past when they were allowing free usage of the software (I don't know the current situation). Charon was quite fast at the time on the hardware I had in maybe 2008 or so. But I've used Simh recently and it's plenty fast enough on modern hardware.

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

#310

Post by michrassena »

oxryly1 wrote: post #297
jle17 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The official site is here:

http://www.openvmshobbyist.com/news.php

You can sign up as a hobbyist here:

http://plato.ccsscorp.com/hobbyist_registration.php

someone will email you in the next day or so with a license installer and the URLs to download the software.

Also they have the Alpha version of OpenVMS available.

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