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Unix is both a technology and an idea

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Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#51

Post by bmitc »

dale_glass wrote: post #29
bmitc wrote: post #23

This article just keeps repeating the two concepts of Unix technology and Unix ideas but doesn't clarify what they mean by either. The links, seemingly complaining about iOS or Android, don't really seem to clarify. It seems many want Unix technology or ideas to be about what Unix meant in the 70s and 80s and don't have much interest in moving things forward from that plateau. (To be clear, I think all the major oper…

I agree, PowerShell does the same thing better. And I'm disappointed that things have stagnated so much. I mean, cool, a commandline is an useful concept that sometimes fits a given task excellently well. But why in the hell are we still emulating a VT100? How is a modern Linux console sticking to a 50 year old level of functionality? And why are we scripting in something as painful as Bash?

I agree with what you've said here and in other comments. Terminals are useful, to a degree, but there's so much fruit to be had. And I don't see why we need to be stuck in terminals (I guess terminal emulators is more accurate) as the primary mode of interaction.

Warp is interesting enough, but it's a shame it isn't cross-platform to begin with, and I'm dubious about the business model of a terminal product. I think the best hope is that they're purchased by Microsoft, and it gets integrated into VS Code. It also continues to lean into the terminal idea, although it does approach it from scratch, which is nice.

https://www.warp.dev/

I think the idea of notebook type interfaces is perhaps underrated for scripting purposes. Microsoft's Polyglot Notebooks and .dib format addresses this.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#52

Post by canadianfella »

pjmlp wrote: post #12

Those that keep trying to make a point of Android being UNIX, never really shipped anything on the Play Store. Yes, it uses the Linux kernel, and several components born on the Linux world and that is about it. Only Google and OEM partners get to see that layer, and those that root their devices. Nothing on the Android userspace, the Java and Kotlin frameworks, or the NDK official APIs have anything to do with Linux…

[dead]

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#53

Post by bobby_the_whale »

harry8 wrote: post #43
pjmlp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After enabling the developer mode, and using tools regular users never get to see.

so what? Regular users (whatever they are) don't know or care that a mac is unix under there somewhere. At moments like these i feel the loss of the nokia N900 that was glibc, gtk+ linux all the way down and up. Best phone I ever owned by a margin. Also arguably not a machine owned by apple/goog/samsung/etc whose purpose is surveillance of the schmuck (me) who just paid for it.

[dead]

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#54

Post by matheusmoreira »

vilunov wrote: post #49
matheusmoreira wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Termux count? I literally develop software on my phone with it.

It's a system inside a system shipped as an app, isolated from other apps and with no integrations with the wider operating system. It's not far from WSL or a VM.

It forks and execs new programs using the actual Linux system calls. It's a real Linux terminal emulator that opens and drives /dev/ptmx. Not sure what else it needs to be a real Linux.

Termux is very well integrated. Termux:API allows access to phone sensors, location and cameras, sharing data with android apps, issuing notifications... All from the command line. Things like xdg-open work fine.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#55

Post by lioeters »

dale_glass wrote: post #26
safety1st wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's often lost in a simple review of the history is that in modern times certain elements of the Unix philosophy [1] have become more important than ever. In fact as technology becomes more pervasive I would argue that the ideas it encapsulates are no longer only relevant to computer architecture, they're now relevant to the survival of a free and open society. This isn't just about how to build the best widget an…

The principles are good, the implementation sadly is not. Plain data streams have outstayed their welcome. Pretty much nothing but the classic old Unix tools communicates with plain text streams. Smarter, new commandline tools tend to provide at least JSON, but there's plenty that don't and that makes them absolutely painful to reuse. I've written large amounts of code that amount to running a process, parsing its ou…

> classic old Unix tools communicates with plain text streams. Smarter, new commandline tools tend to provide at least JSON

And JSON is plain text. If new tools agree to communicate by passing JSON around, it would be in the spirit of the UNIX principles.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#56

Post by bmitc »

chargingmarmot wrote: post #5
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

I would argue that while Unix the technology is helpful, Unix the idea is now actively harmful. The Unix idea just doesn’t scale well or have the necessary security. It seems we are more and more going to an idea that is even older than Unix - the mainframe. From fault tolerance to distributed computing to security to memory channels our modern architectures are more resembling mainframes than Unix and that is good.…

There's a book I like called "Design Rules: The Power of Modularity"; it was written by some business professors in 2000 and is loosely about the industrial organization and the history of IBM's System/360 (the first "modular computer family") and more generally about how modularity enables innovation and growth. They enumerate what they call "modular operators" which are basic ways a system can be changed: * "splitt…

Thanks for the reference to that book. I need to check it out now.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#58

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Dalewyn wrote: post #24
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Those that keep trying to make a point of Android being UNIX, never really shipped anything on the Play Store. Yes, it uses the Linux kernel, and several components born on the Linux world and that is about it. Only Google and OEM partners get to see that layer, and those that root their devices. Nothing on the Android userspace, the Java and Kotlin frameworks, or the NDK official APIs have anything to do with Linux…

I wonder how much of the hate Windows gets is simply because Windows has nothing to do with Unix's bloodlines and heritage. Aside from cursory accomodations like the Microsoft POSIX Subsystem (what we would in theory call Windows Subsystem for POSIX if it existed today), that is.

Windows gets hate because as a desktop OS it's an unreliable user-hostile experience with obvious security vulnerabilities.

Unix gets hate because as a command line OS it's an unreliable user-hostile experience with obvious security vulnerabilities.

They're both examples of worse-is-better, and (mostly) ignore the history of mainframe operating systems with more sophisticated security and reliability and - sometimes - a friendlier shell/UI.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#59

Post by [deleted] »

dale_glass wrote: post #40
bluetomcat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terminals are a central idea affecting Unix process control and hierarchy, and signal delivery. Emulating them was the easier decision that didn't require any changes to the rest of the system. You introduce a virtual terminal device and the rest stays the same. We are still trapped in those basic abstractions of the 1970s without even noticing them, building shiny stuff on top.

I mean, sure, terminals make some sense. But why are we in 2023, and people are still coming up with fancier versions of "top" that try to draw graphs in text? Every modern computer boots to a graphical console. Every terminal emulator in a GUI runs in a graphical environment. Wouldn't be be much nicer and much less awkward to actually use pixels?

[deleted]

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#60

Post by HPsquared »

dale_glass wrote: post #29
bmitc wrote: post #23

This article just keeps repeating the two concepts of Unix technology and Unix ideas but doesn't clarify what they mean by either. The links, seemingly complaining about iOS or Android, don't really seem to clarify. It seems many want Unix technology or ideas to be about what Unix meant in the 70s and 80s and don't have much interest in moving things forward from that plateau. (To be clear, I think all the major oper…

I agree, PowerShell does the same thing better. And I'm disappointed that things have stagnated so much. I mean, cool, a commandline is an useful concept that sometimes fits a given task excellently well. But why in the hell are we still emulating a VT100? How is a modern Linux console sticking to a 50 year old level of functionality? And why are we scripting in something as painful as Bash?

This is the downside of organic growth.
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