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Unix is both a technology and an idea

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61–70 of 97 posts

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fully agree. Also, jq exists, a simple example how open and simple interfaces (text streams) allow for extensibility. There is a reason why so much is built on top of "simple terminals".

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#62
Do one thing correctly and do it well - like everything is a file OS and clib and the C language.

Sigh the same cannot be said of the terrible wonky state of the web - JS is just so shit and anything that followed it as just a new mess on top the existing pile of messes.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#64
I agree with many of the sage points here, however, I think Unix is more of a general philosophy as well as a set of related operating systems that are loosely based on the original UNIX. My recent KW-LUG presentation revolved around this, specifically: https://archive.org/details/kwlug_meeting_2023-07-10/KWLUG+2...

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#65
post #43
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.

Its UNIX influence is a phyrric victory, without any real value as Google can completly replace it with Fuschia at any time they feel like it, and those regular users won't even notice.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#66
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…

> the UNIX haters book exists for a reason

For the same reason that is behind complaints about undefined behaviour in C/C++: because there are people who do, and people who can't do. Those who can't do, need to complain in order to relieve their frustration.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#67
post #24
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 it's a de facto monopoly on enterprise computing. Most medium sized business or organizations don't really have much choice but to go with the industry standard. It's natural to feel resentment against an oppressive monopoly. Posix compatibility has nothing to do with it.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#68
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…

iOS is also a UNIX btw ;)

I don't believe that's correct. MacOS has been a certified UNIX for ages, but to my knowledge Apple have never claimed nor sought to have their "smaller" operating systems certified as UNIX.

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#69
post #66
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…

> the UNIX haters book exists for a reason For the same reason that is behind complaints about undefined behaviour in C/C++: because there are people who do, and people who can't do. Those who can't do, need to complain in order to relieve their frustration.

See, I CAN program C++. I still prefer Rust.

“Some people who can use other systems fine, can’t use my preferred system” is possibly the worst defense of a system. It’s bad. It’s not something to be proud of.

Re: Unix is both a technology and an idea

#70
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…

> Those that keep trying to make a point of Android being UNIX, never really shipped anything on the Play Store.

most people never ever even ship anything that is actually dependent on having any kind of unix underneath.

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