This would be good if it was Free Software. I just don't see any reason to give this long-obsolete and moribund system any mindshare if I'm just sharecropping for some company as a beta tester. It's the same reason I avoid Mac OS and Windows and the rest - no need to use proprietary software when the Free stuff is as good or (for my purposes) better.
OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
41–50 of 51 posts
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#42i used VMS in the very early 80s, when i was working at a college which was part of the university of london. i never cottoned on to it - that versioning file system (obviously designed to sell hard disks) and all that SYS$SYSTEM stuff (i mean - why?). and then i changed jobs somewhere else, using a dec-10, and discovered what a really horrible OS was like.
I used VMS in the late 70s and early 80s. I started using Unix too, in the late 80s. What was wonderful about VMS at that time, relative to Unix, was that DEC sold a large set of books, the "pumpkin books", which explained everything you needed to know to do just about anything with the systems (there was also an "internals" book). In contrast, at that time, if you wanted to learn to do something difficult in Unix, y…
Unix has always had comprehensive online manuals since the very earliest days. As a kid I was told how to ls and cd and use man and apropos and that was all I needed.
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what what has fundamentally changed? I used VMS on various types of VAXen in the mid 1980s and I liked it because of its systematically designed command line interpreter. A Unix shell is a complete mess compared to that. I switched to Unix in the late 1980s and to Linux later and found it technically more powerful. Lightweight processes, pipes and many more. Is there anything in OpenVMS that Linux is fundamentally…
> Is there anything in OpenVMS that Linux is fundamentally lacking? File versioning. This is bodged on in all xNixes by embedding version numbers into filenames, then writing a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-lines shell scripts to track all the versions, make loads of symlinks so programs can find them if they don't need specific revisions, occasionally add new versions and remap hundreds of links, occasionally prune old…
Linux does not have a single filesystem, but many of them. I guess you could create one that implements versioning. As a matter of fact around 2000 I used one (Unix, not Linux). It was a version control system where different file versions appeared under different POSIX paths. I liked it, but it was at least as complicated as git and most developers in our organization did not really understand it a complained when things went wrong.
For system administration I use etckeeper these days. That serves nearly the same purpose. But for programming VMS was superior unless you are disciplined and commit frequently enough.
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there anything in OpenVMS that Linux is fundamentally lacking? File versioning. This is bodged on in all xNixes by embedding version numbers into filenames, then writing a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-lines shell scripts to track all the versions, make loads of symlinks so programs can find them if they don't need specific revisions, occasionally add new versions and remap hundreds of links, occasionally prune old…
Linux does not have a single filesystem, but many of them. I guess you could create one that implements versioning. As a matter of fact around 2000 I used one (Unix, not Linux). It was a version control system where different file versions appeared under different POSIX paths. I liked it, but it was at least as complicated as git and most developers in our organization did not really understand it a complained when t…
You could, but no normal Unix app will understand it or be able to use it, since this is one of the things that the Unix creators removed from the more complicated forerunners of Unix to make their smaller, simpler OS.
Sadly, this simplification was, IMHO, a step too far and a bad thing to remove. But Unix's namespace is much simpler, and doesn't really understand and incorporate extensions and things either. Which is a limitation but it makes it much simpler.
The fact that most Unix GUIs, from NeXTstep to KDE, put back in and use file extensions to associate files with applications shows that this is in fact important functionality.
Without extensions, having version numbering doesn't make as much sense.
But a Unix with file extensions and file numbers would be less like Unix than is, say, Plan 9 or Inferno.
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux does not have a single filesystem, but many of them. I guess you could create one that implements versioning. As a matter of fact around 2000 I used one (Unix, not Linux). It was a version control system where different file versions appeared under different POSIX paths. I liked it, but it was at least as complicated as git and most developers in our organization did not really understand it a complained when t…
You could, but no normal Unix app will understand it or be able to use it, since this is one of the things that the Unix creators removed from the more complicated forerunners of Unix to make their smaller, simpler OS. Sadly, this simplification was, IMHO, a step too far and a bad thing to remove. But Unix's namespace is much simpler, and doesn't really understand and incorporate extensions and things either. Which i…
An application does not need to understand that the filesystem keeps a copy of the previous version of a file. Also in VMS if you use a file without version number it defaults to the newest one.
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#46Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
From "VMS Software / Documentation / x86-64 V9.2 Installation Guide" https://docs.vmssoftware.com/vsi-openvms-x86-64-v92-installa... 1.2.1. Recommended Settings for Virtual Machines VSI recommends that your OpenVMS virtual machine be configured with: Memory Minimum of 6 GB Minimum Number of CPUs: 2
How sad. VMS originally ran on a VAX 11/780 which maxed out at 8 MB. Now it apparently needs almost 1000 times more memory.
Yeah, and Unix originally ran on a PDP with 256KB of RAM. Alas...
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what what has fundamentally changed? I used VMS on various types of VAXen in the mid 1980s and I liked it because of its systematically designed command line interpreter. A Unix shell is a complete mess compared to that. I switched to Unix in the late 1980s and to Linux later and found it technically more powerful. Lightweight processes, pipes and many more. Is there anything in OpenVMS that Linux is fundamentally…
> Is there anything in OpenVMS that Linux is fundamentally lacking? File versioning. This is bodged on in all xNixes by embedding version numbers into filenames, then writing a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-lines shell scripts to track all the versions, make loads of symlinks so programs can find them if they don't need specific revisions, occasionally add new versions and remap hundreds of links, occasionally prune old…
The file versioning in OpenVMS is really not that powerful. It also led to it's own set of issues, specially in terms of space waste.
Also VMS had their own issues when it came to it's filesystem(s).
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could, but no normal Unix app will understand it or be able to use it, since this is one of the things that the Unix creators removed from the more complicated forerunners of Unix to make their smaller, simpler OS. Sadly, this simplification was, IMHO, a step too far and a bad thing to remove. But Unix's namespace is much simpler, and doesn't really understand and incorporate extensions and things either. Which i…
An application does not need to understand that the filesystem keeps a copy of the previous version of a file. Also in VMS if you use a file without version number it defaults to the newest one.
I know. I ran clusters of VAX boxes, in production, in the mid-1990s.
An ordinary user app doesn't need to know. A file version control system does, though. Development environments need to know. IDEs and programmers' tools need to know.
Re: OpenVMS 9.2 for x86 is finally available for hobbyists
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there anything in OpenVMS that Linux is fundamentally lacking? File versioning. This is bodged on in all xNixes by embedding version numbers into filenames, then writing a multi-tens-of-thousands-of-lines shell scripts to track all the versions, make loads of symlinks so programs can find them if they don't need specific revisions, occasionally add new versions and remap hundreds of links, occasionally prune old…
The file versioning in OpenVMS is really not that powerful. It also led to it's own set of issues, specially in terms of space waste. Also VMS had their own issues when it came to it's filesystem(s).
Sure it did, yes.
OTOH, the point here is that if facilities like this were available, tools like Git -- VCSes -- could be far simpler and easier to use, because a core part of the functionality they add is built into the filesystem.
Disk space is less of an issue now. This is a server OS for big systems. Terabytes are cheap.
All filesystems have issues.
Remember, all software sucks: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/