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Can GNU Ever Be Unix?
An anonymous reader writes "The question isn't whether Linux can be certified as Unix. At least some distributions no doubt can. But who would pay for it? And is it worth the trouble? Jem Matzan asks these questions on NewsForge, and reminds us that the Open Group, not SCO, owns the Unix trademark,"
can Unix ever be *nix?
...
Seriously, for all practical purposes, GNU + Linux is setting the trend now. Ask IBM, Novell, SCO
Is there really a good reason why would GNU be considered as UNIX officially? GNU has it's own credibility. What is UNIX anyway? Does anyone have a concrete definition of what UNIX is right now (no historical reasons, not the fact that the filesystem starts with /).
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
PHP Queb
Hey RMS, I thought you didn't read slashdot
GNU = GNU's Not UNIX...
:p
Have to change that to say GIU Is UNIX
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that GNU's Not Unix!
Can GNU ever be unix?
I don't know. Maybe we should just ask SCO. They would probably have a reasonable opinion.
http://ablegray.com
If it's "close enough", surely big business are going to do more research than just look at whether it's been certified by The Open Group just so the Linux community can use its trademark?
The problem, as well, is what to certify. There are so many combinations of kernel, drivers, libc, userspace utilities and windowing systems that any certificate could well be rendered useless.
For example, if IBM paid for SuSE to get certified, would that apply to RHEL or Debian, if they were using slightly different kernel versions or different kernel patches as is often the case?
GNU's Not Unix. Do I need to say more?
This is particularly evident when you notice that the major improvements in some recent version of Solaris (8 & 9, but not 10 apparently) is to add more open source software and stability improvements.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
No, no, no. It's only GNU/Linux when those thieving Linux bastards don't give credit to the GNU folks, by calling the OS just 'Linux'.
RMS has no problem with you just calling it GNU.
--
Using GNU/Linux - Windows-free zone!
I think it is almost certain that some distro of Linux could easily pass OG's test suite. It is also almost a certainty that FSF/GNU would never opt for it on religious grounds.
The rest of the thread is now available for stupid /. jokes.
In Soviet Russia, The Open Group petitions GNU for certification.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
GNU's Not Unix Unix :)
Can my cat ever be a bicycle?
But, the BSDs, and I believe even Solaris and AIX have a Linux compatability layer, or at the very least, "the GNU toolset", GCC, glibc, etc. Of course you wont beable to run IA32 binaries on a UltraSPARC, regardless of the compatability layer, but you could run IA32/Linux stuff on IA32/*BSD, or SparcLinux stuff on a Solaris box.
I guess Im trying to say, given that lots of things can run Linux binaries, can cleanly compile Linux targeted sources, Linux + GCC + glibc may be a better standard to target then POSIX and whatnot. It is definitly more modern. Or to put things another way, UNIX is irrelevent, the question shoud be: can UNIXes ever be Linux?
Linux deviates from Posix in several ways, and at least one of them is deliberate - because Linus is convinced that his way is better. Posix can't change because that would break all the existing and past unixes. IMHO Linus is unlikely to change because he believes in the advantages of his way.
(I don't recall what the particular difference was but as I recall Linus had a very good point. Security? Robustness? Anyhow it should be trivial to look it up - which I'd do if I had the time just now.)
And I don't see that it really matters, since they can continue as two operating systems and virtually anything will operate well on both, and some things break even crossing between Posix-compatible systems. Linux is doing quite well as is and may end up dominating. The rumors of the demise of the BSDs seem overblown. And who knows what will come next.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
UNIX® describes any operating system sold under a brand licensing agreement with the Open Group. This requires the product to pass a checklist that includes certification to the Single UNIX Specification (free reg. req.) on a given set of supported hardware, based in part on product testing, and payment of brand fees pursuant to the Trademark Licensing Agreement (PDF). Often these brand fees are high enough to shut out publishers of low-volume operating system products.
GNU/Linux seems to be evolving as its own standard
And this standard is called LSB.
SCO doesn't own the UNIX name, the open group does.
Its just for 'brand recognition' anyway, and Linux has that now.
If you say 'Linux' to the general IT population, they already know what you are talking about. ( and they also realize the differences beteeen it and 'unix' ) so why muddy the waters?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Dude, read your f\w+ screen!
When GNU is Unix, LAME must be an MP3 encoder and WINE must be an emulator.
- Save a tree, eat more woodpeckers
not reading the full article is one thing, but only reading the headline? come on, man -- what do you think this is? slashdot?
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
What's the point? To be facetious, Unix is old and busted, linux is the new hotness. Instead of being focused on the past, look to the future. Being stamped "Unix" doesn't have the same meaning today as it did ten years ago. Bean counters today aren't asking about a Unix solution but a Linux one. Its the tech buzz word of the last 5 years. To the general public Linux has better name recognition than Unix. In fact, I commonly hear non-tech people referring to real Unix systems as "Linux".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
No. GNU/Linux is not the same as GNU. The "official" kernel of the GNU system is Hurd. From the linked website:
"The GNU Hurd is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. The Hurd is a collection of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux)."
This clearly indicates that Hurd is the kernel specifically designed to be the centerpiece of the GNU system. Linux is just an acceptable placeholder until the Hurd is ready for spotlight. Therefore GNU/Linux is just a precursor for the True GNU System.
Seriously speaking, the Hurd does seem to have a number of very nice ideas - the translators (little programs that can be attached to directories and files, and which will then control all access to those files - so you can attach one to a directory and make the contents of an FTP site or whatever appear there - not unlike the proc filesystem on Linux), for example. I wonder if anything like them could be implemented in Linux ?
It also has some very serious problems, such as a lack of device drivers and every existing filesystem server memorymapping the entire partition, which means that you can't use partitions larger than 2 GB on a 32-bit system...
Oh well, it's good to know that the next generation free open source operating system is already being worked on - should keep Linux from getting fat and lazy ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
One of the reasons that GNU's Not Unix is because intentionally or not, a lot of the GNU tools differ from and are often outright incompatible with their counterparts from the original Unix and its descendents. There would be a lot rewriting and outright disposal of some of the primary features (or "incompatible extensions", as we would say if this were Microsoft) of the GNU utilities and libraries. These changes would also break compatibility in innumerable ways just among various pieces of GNU software. File formats would have to change. (gtar archives, Makefiles, etc)
The GNU project was a good idea with a good mission, but specifically calling it "GNU's Not Unix" really backfired on them in this aspect because Unix as we know it today is now more popular than it's ever been among both geeks and the corporate world.
I have access to a Sun Box and several Linux boxes. I use the Linux box by default because the tools are better. I only use the Sun box sometimes because it has 12GB memrory and the Linux boxes have on 4GB. The GNU tools may at one time have been imitations of their Unix counterparts, but they are far superior these days. I frequently download the source to the GNU version and compile it so that I have it's functionality on Unix machines.
It's not a question of Linux fusing with Unix. They are, for most purposes, the same thing.
If you ask google , it does not seem a good idea. SCO comes up first.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
IOW, it's ok to ignore the BSD and other non GPL licensed code as long as you give GNU credit.
That is just stupid.
In addition to the point made by previous replies, the name UNIX is a trademark, not copyrighted. You can't copyright a name.
Free BSD as the name suggests IS free. Unix is not a valad trademark beacause beacause of its many forks and variations it has become a generic term. IMHO I think the people at SCO and Sony (with its joke of a digital music player) fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. Protecting your copyrights has become difficult these days. In a world of convergance, reverse engineering and "hey that was my idea" tactics A review of copyright laws and procedures needs to take place. If we come together and decide on open and fair standards that make things work. Things are going to change, biusness models that were viable before will no longer work. But its time to evolve.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
The GNU people would just have to think up a new name, and then we'd have to put THAT in front of Linux. Not to mention it would probably be another fucking self-referential acronym :)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I though the whole idea was that GNU doesn't try to be Un*x compatible, it's just heavily inspired by it.
The woman in the dis.org jpegs isn't that cute.
Is what should GNU be. Not to be pedantic but if you have done real work with more than one GNU/Linux distribution you have run into compatibility issues. Its a fact of life and an impediment to the progress of GNU's penetration.
If standardization is a good thing (I think it is, but your opinion may vary) how should The GNU/Linux world go about it, and what parties should certify. Right now there are the DeFacto standards (Redhat/slackware/Suse/Mandrake) of the big distributions. The problem with these defacto standards is eventually the game collapses. There have been attempts to have multiparty standards (United linux comes to mind) but those for various reasons havent made a big push.
You can allready see the problems in setting a GNU/linux standard when there are vicious arguments over naming it Linux or GNU/Linux. Just who is going to be able to make decisions on filepaths, naming conventions, and library depencies and then shove it down the throats of the contrarians.
So before you ask can "GNU be Unix", you need to ask does GNU want to be standard, Who's standard, and does that standard want to be close enough to Unix to comply.
Meanwhile, commercial Unix vendors are going out of their way to achieve Linux compatibility, at either the source or binary level. Linux is quickly becoming the standard to which other Unices are compared. This means two things:
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
This is redundant, but not knowing what its going to cost beforehand is the downfall of Open Group. $45,000 is one thing, half a million is another matter.
Linux has indeed been repackaged and registered. (To avoid flames from those that don't already know, I won't say which ones.) Linux as in say Gentoo and BSD in say FreeBSD are very successful now and it would be hard to justify the value in risking so much money for a seemingly worthless qualification.
I'm sure Suse (Novel) and Redhat will actually seek registration as commercial products. If X/Open would agree to fixed priced terms, they would do far more business. (Are you seeing this Open Group?) All things considered, this is like the MSCE scam and might have a negative impact.
The above mentioned BSD and Linux have treated me very well on a number of hardware platforms. Keep up the good work.
... just to be called a "unix"? Is this necessary, or just for coolness factor, are businesses demanding it, what? I really don't know, it's a legit question.
When I am running something,right now fedora core 2, I don't even think "fedora core 2 gnu/linux a unix type system" I just think and say "fedora". What do I again if I can say "I am running unix" instead of saying "fedora"?
Within the google search I fonud Developing LSB-certified applications http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-lsb.html maybe this is the subject we should be discussing, how many applications ARE following LSB guidelines?
;)
p l?CALLER=index.tpl
Also, why is the Linux Standard base hosted by the open group? Isn't the Open Group doing it's part already? so the other way arround becomes less relevant.
http://www.opengroup.org/lsb/cert/cert_prodlist.t
I am running Willy!
;)
I payed nobody, and it's the same Linux Mandrake I downloaded fron da net
Check out my Willy girls!
The more relevant question is, Can GNU ever be linux? (GNU/Linux)
Gnu's Not Unix.
Your question has been answered, o Anonymous Reader.
Re-reading the article, I noticed a small point I missed when I posted the previous message. AT&T didn't sell the trademark to the Open Group. They sold the whole thing, source, trademark, and compliance certification to Novell, who split up their purchase to SCO and the Open Group. It was Novell who as a corporation recognized the difference between Unix as a standard interface to Unix as a body of source code.
Linux will soon be the second most pervasive operating system after Windows. Whether Linux can be certified to be a variant of UNIX is a moot question. The better question is whether UNIX can be certified to be a variant of Linux.
The top dogs set the standard, and the underdogs are all measured against the top dogs. In the days of mainframe glory, you had the IBM mainframe as the top dog. All the clones, made by Fujitsu and its ilk, were advertised as being CERTIFIED to be 100% compatible with the IBM mainframe.
Long live, Linux! Sir Linus Torvalds shall slay the dragon in Redmond!
Hurd is definitely a good idea, but so far it is only that: an idea.
I have been hearing about Hurd at least since 1992 or so, ever since Linus started his project. This is 12 years now, and nothing concrete has come up yet, that can be adopted by the masses.
Don't get me wrong, I like many of the ideas and design decisions they have. But my gripe is that their model does not allow hordes of programmers to join in and get things out faster, like the Linux model.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
"IMHO Linus is unlikely to change because he believes in the advantages of his way."
Does Linus get to really call the shots these days?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Sure he does. But he understands that he's working for the distro companies. If RedHat/Suse/IBM/etc thought it was a priority to get UNIX-Certified, Linus would merge their patches.
Note that Linus did a 180 on "Linux Threads" versus "POSIX Threads" because Linux vendors wanted portability.
What's in a Name? that which we call a Linux,
By any other name would operate as sweet
There isn't much like the scent of a fresh harddisk
Is the branding alive or not?
What Unix passes Unix 2003? OK. Who passed UNIX 98? Get the picture? Its going to cost ~$0.5M when all said and done. What advantage is there? Some of the 'UNIX' systems out there have not passed a checklist in over a decade.
Linux does not need people who dont code deciding what is right and wrong in expensive ongoing beurocratic processes. Things are decided much faster in open forums which document the process in ample detail.
Linux does deviate but given a coin toss, it goes with the previous 'standards.' If the legacy means does not make sense, its ignored and documented.
The UNIX branding made sense with legacy closed source Unix systems. It provided a level of trust that customers could drop to without even (imagine!) seeing the underlying code.
It was a bandaid on a broken model. The outdated Unix systems deviated but the customer could only read documentation, not code.
So systems like Solaris, AIX, HP-UX
If they decide to open up the process, they have to decide wether to join open source projects or try to replicate the efforts.
'UNIX' is dead. Do we need a netcraft survey?
I know people are going to say that wont work. "Look at all the forks in apache and perl and python. It will be anarchy."
Thats proven to not be the case. The problem has always been closed source.
Do I need to say more?
I though it was called United Linux.
I thought SCO was in on UnitedLinux.
You are right. This could make life easier for all and would be an improvement facilitating deployment of Linux on the desktop - but imagine the (micro.political) difficulties of LSB-certification along the spectrum of distributions </sarcasm /> .
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
well, it mattered to me.
Back in the days, around 1995, my friends and I were looking for any UNIX to put on our machines to learn. We tried an old copy of SCO Unix which didnt work, and were busy snooping till we found Linux just as it was getting popular online. We got into Linux because we were out looking for UNIX.
Nowadays I've got AIX and Solaris on ultrasparc to play with, so I can finally brag about knowing 'unix', but would be real nice if Linux is called UNIX. Even though SCO has spilled cold water on the brand name, it still carries enough weight, and maturity of two decades, to get attention. Linux is still new to the scene, and UNIX has carried the full weight of the Internet since its birth... that means something.
Linux means alot more now, so can UNIX be Linux, or at least its former self? Thats possible, if Linux is branded UNIX, and UNIX can once again claim to be a popular flexible modern OS. Cant do that with SCO Unixware.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
My first reaction was: "Why the heck should Linux be Unix-certified? With increasing popularity, Unix will soon have to be Linux-certified if it wants to get any kind of market acceptance."
Well, as amusing as it may be, this thought is flawed. First of all Linux is merely the kernel; it's not even glibc, nor any other GNU tools, or third party packages. BSDs are Unix-like OS, just like Linux(-distros) are Unix-like. Solaris is also _a_ Unix-like OS, just like HP-UX.
Actually Unix has become a generic term which refers to all kind of kernels that expose a POSIX (don't remember the exact number) interface to userland applications. Any kernel (or microkernel + servers) that implements this interface, can be justly called Unix (or at least Unix-like; so as to not feed SCOundrel or Open Group lawyers).
The really interesting thing about the hype around Linux, is when we will move on and replace the Linux kernel with something totally different (be it microkernelized, or whatever). Then, we won't have just a GNU/Linux system anymore, but, say, also a GNU/Hurd/L4, GNU/Hurd/Mach or GNU/BSD, BSD/Linux, BSD/Hurd/*, ... system
(terminology being
"OS personality"/"OS servers"/"microkernel"
or "OS personality"/"monolithic kernel").
It seems silly to use the kernel name only as a brand for all kind of Unix-oid systems, regardless of them using the Linux kernel or something else; but providing the POSIX Unix interface.
To wrap it up: it's just a matter of names and brands. As other posters have commented before, Linux has gained enough popularity and visibility. It doesn't need to be certified to be successful!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
For the amiga's design purposes, it was pretty close to unix. It was intended to be a single-user system, so obviously, it didn't have all of unix's multi-user/network stuff. But it had true multitasking including it's own form of task prioritisation, pipes, similar commands, dynamic libraries, a powerful scriptable shell, etc.
Sure, it wasn't unix technically speaking. However, if you allow a certain 'artistic license' like we do for OS X, and add in a 'handicap' since this was a 16-bit 7Mhz machine usually with 1MB RAM or less, we can start to see just what AmigaOS was. IMHO, it was closer to a personal version of GUI-enabled Unix than OS X has managed yet. Technology has moved on, but I still miss the productivity I had on AmigaOS.
Does noone remember that GNU stands for "GNU is Not Unix"
Seriously speaking, the Hurd does seem to have a number of very nice ideas - the translators (little programs that can be attached to directories and files, and which will then control all access to those files - so you can attach one to a directory and make the contents of an FTP site or whatever appear there - not unlike the proc filesystem on Linux), for example. I wonder if anything like them could be implemented in Linux ?
VFS, and at a user level, LUFS and fuse.
It's implemented by mounting a new filesystem at that point, not by attaching something to a directory.
May we never see th
If it isn't, it must be bloody close. How else could SCO launch lawsuits on linux?
If you pay him $50 he will grudgingly allow you to omit the "GNU" from the name of your linux/busybox/dietlibc system. But you can't tell anyone else! Otherwise people will find out how truly unessential GNU is to Linux.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
GNU (GNU's not Unix) has been certified Unix. In other news... Richard Stallman died today of a sudden heart attack.
I don't know if this is a new idea, but why not just use Linux as an acronym.
LINUX:
Linix Is Not UniX
Similar to PINE:
Pine Is Not Elm
Linux and GNU has its on street cred now. I really don't think the people still need to be sold on Linux and GNU being up to the job anymore. Most people wether they will admit it or not *know* Linux and GNU are now as good as the admin or engineer that runs the system, its the support network behind GNU and Linux they still worry about.
I think whats telling is how often and for how long we have seen Unices shipping with the GNU tools and compiler in the system. GNU is not Unix its something that in most or maybe all cases is inspired by Unix works like Unix but is better then Unix. Getting GNU certified as Unix would in that sense almost be a slap in the face to GNU, although it might still be an endorsement to the Linux kernel. Linux though as stated before does have enough of its own cred that Unix certification will have very little meaning.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If Linux fully follows the Open Group standards, a lot of source code would run without change across compatible systems. Say you wrote a specialized, expensive CAD application for AIX. Now you might ask customers to cough up the hardware, since it will be only 30% of the cost anyway. On the other hand, if you can release it for Linux without any further effort, why wouldn't you?
That is the real question. The answer of course it that given it time, Linux will define UNIX.
The simple fact is that throughout all of this both SCO Group and IBM do have certified products, are licensed to and do use the UNIX trademark in association with certified products with the correct attribution.
You can help us to remind the industry of the ownership of the UNIX trademark and ensure that its proper use as a neutral indicator of certification for the benefit of customers of UNIX systems.
To help, is very simple, all you have to do is to publish the following attribution.
"UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries."
Consider it done.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course, this is propably caused at least partially by Linux's success - Linux is drawing all the the good OS programmers.
The dev mailing list archives seemed depressingly empty when I checked :(.
Ironically, the Hurd should (at least in theory) be a lot easier to modify and develop. I wonder if I should give it a go... Maybe someone could port the Mach microkernel so it would work under Linux (or put a "Mach emulation layer" into the kernel) ? This would allow the Hurd to use the Linux device drivers, and allow people to try it without needing to repartition (you could use files as block devices via the loopback device). It would be just the kind of kick this project needs...
Of course, you could make an user-mode Mach emulator, but that would likely be pretty inefficient. Or would it ? Hmm...
Great, I already have all kinds of projects underway, from a roguelike for Java to a Usenet picture grapper with a web interface, and now this tought just had to pop in ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I think it only runs on Power Macintosh, and it's the only flavor of Linux that will work on NuBus (first generation) Power Macs.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"Can GNU ever be Unix?" Doubtful at best. Personally I think GNU is not Unix and never will be. Incidentally, that is the very reason I use GNU in the first place, for I think it is much better than Unix, probably the EMACS alone is better (or at the very least complexier and more feature rich) than Unix. So no, GNU will not be Unix, in my opinion.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Great, that's what we need! Now the Santa Caldera Operation Group with Darl McBribe and other greedy rednecks from Tarantella, Utah, will want our money! When GNU was NOT Unix the life was simple. Now, everything is going to change, in this up-side-down world when GNU's Now Unix... Frightening perspective
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Nobody cares about Unix or it's owner SCO anymore. What we need is a certified API for Linux (and possibly *BSD/OSX if they want to play along) with a freely available test suite to ensure that any distribution or update remains compliant without having to take someone else's word for it. This frozen API should include the device driver side too or everyone needs to stop making excuses about why hardware support for Linux sucks and switch to OSX.
Can GNU Ever Be Unix?
Of course not !
GNU's Not Unix, you insensitive clod !
Last year the Open Group sued Apple because Apple was advertising OSX as a "UNIX". This was reported on slashdot here. Apparently Apple had originally licenced the trademark, but had stopped paying fees and the licence lasped. Apple contended that "UNIX" is now a generic term and that they shouldn't have to pay to licence it. The Open Group, of course, felt compelled to defend their cash-cow trademark, so they lauched a lawsuit.
So, where is this now? I did a search but even the mighty power of Google can't seem to find any reference to the outcome or status of the case. Does anybody know what the status of this case is? Was it settled, or just languishing on the court's docket?
GNU is NOT Unix. GNU is NOT Unix.
It's all in a name. Why even write an article about when "GNU is NOT Unix" will become certified Unix. This is a lot like having, say anarchists revolt and form a tolitarian government. Next article please.
-- $G
Project for a Non-American Century - sounds like a good idea to me. Here's 5 points for the budding European superpower to keep in mind:
1: Being a superpower is expensive. Your government must be willing to dedicate at least 5 euros per year to military spending.
2: Nobody ever got an aircraft carrier by wishing for it really hard. Be willing to dedicate at least a dozen full-time workers (6 hrs/day, 4 days/week, unless they're striking for shorter shifts this month) to building one.
3: A functioning military needs equipment. A national arsenal consisting of 4 rifles left over from WWI and a medieval broadsword is totally insufficient.
4: Tell the Americans to take all their military spending home. It's hard claim you're a superpower when you've got someone else's military camped out all over your country.
5: Next time some half-assed dictator invades a neighboring country, goes on a genocidal rampage, or imposes an unfair import duty on Italian cheeses, go whinge to someone other than the Americans about it.
What idiot asked this stupid question?
The amiga was not a Unix machine.
It wasn't even close to a Unix machine.
Windows NT is closer to being Unix than the Amiga was (through the Posix subsystem)
And OS X doesn't need a certain artistic license, it really is Unix (just not trademark Unix).
Therefore Linux is God and consequently Linux == Unix.
That would make perfect sense to 60% of Americans...
Oh well, what the hell...
What about this?
testing out my trending skills
I still can hardly calm down. Please tell me, when GNU's Now Unix, I should send my cheques directly to Darl, shouldn't I? Or to SCO? Maybe Caldera? Or was it Tarantella? I am confused... Is it in Santa Cruz or Utah? Redmont, you say? You mean, I should pay the pimp Bill directly instead of using Darl, his bitch? What was the brothel called again? Caldera? SCO? Canopy? Microsoft? "Open" Linux my bloody arse... This is outrageously frightening. Please, let GNU continue being Not Unix. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The difference between what the HURD has designed and the various efforts to implement them in Unix like operating systems is in user space. The HURD allows (or will allow, once its done) per-process overrides of any system call. LUFS simply allows a user space program to tell the kernel how to represent a device. With the HURD, there is no reason why another user will even see the results of your translators.
What I don't understand, is how the HURD is so late when it has these features. Creating or modifying a new system call should just involve installing a translator, testing it, and at worst logging out. No rebooting to test a new kernel feature.
Linux is making a case for itself as being "NOT Unix".
I saw an ad a while back in Ccmputer Reseller News that went something like: "Do we HAVE to use UNIX for our database?"...
The implication is that "everybody knows"... UNIX==EXPENSIVE. Linus is much, much cheaper, and you can save $X,000 using Linux.
Given its history of high price, vendor lockin, and balkinization, why would anything Linux even care about "being Unix"? Linux has buzz, Unix has a buzz. Which would you prefer?
Unix is a good ancestor to Linux. Remember, GNU is NOT UNIX!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
First of all Linux is merely the kernel; it's not even glibc, nor any other GNU tools, or third party packages.
Once upon a time, that was true - when you said 'Linux' it meant a kernel. These days, not so much.
Technically, the Linux Standards Base includes kernel, c libaries, and various GNU tools (and their versions and interfaces).
These days, kernel developers call themselves kernel developers. When people talk about Linux, they mean an OS. When people talk about getting a new version of Linux, they mean a new OS. Compare kernel.org with Linux.org.
I think a good point to remember is that the UNIX standard only lists minimum requirements for a UNIX. Linux could merely implement these requirements and still be able to innovate.
.NET and the upcoming Longhorn. If Linux is going to be relevant after Longhorn on a technical level, it needs to start to innovate. The UNIX standard is a good place to start.
Not only would this increase the capabilities of Linux but it could also serve as a way to bring UNIX applications into the Linux world with little effort. Once this is done, Linux can then efficiently replace UNIX itself.
What I believe the industry needs, is a "modern UNIX" that can compete with Windows from not only a user point of view but also a technical one. We are starting to come to the point where not only is UNIX but Linux is starting to become "left behind" by Windows through
Why would we want to have Linux be a certified Unix?
When Saturn came around, or Asian cars came to the US, did they try and advertise themselves as "Ford-compatible" or did they try and make a name for themselves?
This might have been a good idea a good 3, 4 years ago, but not now. 3, 4 years ago, Linux didn't have a market to speak of, and was not much more than an industry-wide toy. Now, it has major backing from IBM and Novell, and even people like my mom (technophobe nurse) is beginning to hear about Linux as the next-best thing. Linux currently offers, for the most part, much more than the Unix offerings. That couldn't have be said 5 years ago.
The last thing the Linux community needs now is to have Linux associated with an old, outdated 'standard' that is Unix.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Well, as has long been clear to us old timers(tm), Unix is not a code base, it is a way to approach problems. This has been pointed out many times before, but perhaps the best description around is an excerpt from the recent science fiction novella PDU-1:
Linux is just the latest stage in the evolution of Unix, only this time it has finally achieved the type of license (GPL) it needs to keep on evolving. And because it is not a code base, antics such as those by SCO or other corporations will never be able to kill it.
--ern
and get 53 different answers.
1 from IBM and Novell and 52 from SCO.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
It Can't.
Then it would be GIU, and that just looks like a typo of GUI.
LSB is kinda neat, but I think that ruling out revolutionary distributions like GoboLinux due to non-compliance with the LSB would be unfair to those distributions. Revolution always seems to work better than evolution anyway.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Yes it GNU could be Unix. But by the time they finished certifying it, the version would be far too old for anyone to care. The opensource software cycle is quite a bit different than the traditional software cycle.
You are totally wrong. The OS X kernel has nothing to do with FreeBSD... OS X is based on Darwin. Darwin is based on Mach and NeXTstep, with many userland programs from FreeBSD. The heart of OS X has little/nothing to do with FreeBSD.
-Jem
GNU's not Unix. It can NEVER be Unix. Duh!
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
of course, the fact that the New Posix Threading Library (AKA NPTL) is an order of magnitude faster than LinuxThreads were, had absolutely nothing to do with it...
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Note that Linus did a 180 on "Linux Threads" versus "POSIX Threads" because Linux vendors wanted portability
Actually, he quite rightly didn't want to implement POSIX threads in the kernel originally, but went for a much more flexible Plan-9 style clone() call originally.
He never "did a 180" on this, either. He originally wanted a userspace implementation on top of Posix threads, which is what Xavier Leroy's LinuxThreads package was. Then Ingo cam along and made another implementation in userspace called NPTL. During the process of designing it he discovered that a few features at the kernel level (most notably futexes and the CLONE_DETACHED option) could help tremendously. futexes are useful for many things outside of Posix threads (Linus insisted on making a generic mutual exclusion mechanism rather than one that's pthread-specific), and CLONE_DETACHED is no different from similar flags that had been added before.
In short, Linus merely switched his endorsement from one implementation of pthreads at the userspace level to another. Had Xavier Leroy come up with a fast kernel mutex implementation, Linus probably would have accepted that as well. The original idea, though--that of using a much more general (and flexible, and easier to maintain) clone() call rather than implementing Posix threads at the kernel level--has not changed at all. In fact, at least some Java implementations use the native Linux threads without the POSIX wrappers, as do certain web servers.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
GNU compliant systems proliferating as they are, they're no longer the rebellious and oppressed minority.
If anything, TOG should start advertising itself as
..UNG - It's not just a noise you emit when slugged in the solar plexus!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The Hurd lacks device drivers. Most of them are copied from Linux 2.0, and the penguin has gone on a long way since then. Also, there is no support for sound cards currently. Then there's the annoying problem that the current filesystem translators have been designed to memory map the whole partition at once, which means that on a 32-bit system you can only have 2GB partitions (which, according to the development mailing list posts, prevents XFree86 from being compiled on the Hurd, among other things - there's simply not enough disk space (even the Hurd comfirms it - XFree86 is dying ;))...
And you can't make testing new device drivers something that can be done by any user. A device driver must run at a higher permission level of the processor in order to communicate with the rest of the machine; and, of course, a faulty or malicious hard drive device driver will end up wiping your data under any operating system. The device drivers are the bane of any new PC operating system.
Add the fact that, as I said, the penguin has marched on. Linux is eating Window's market, slowly but surely, but it's also eating Hurd's market. People who want a stable, efficient, free operating system are migrating to Linux. As a result, Linux gets more users, leading to everyone putting their efforts into improving Linux (and consequently not putting them into improving Hurd), which attracts more users which attracts more developers and so on. The Hurd is not only trying to do (AFAIK) something completely new, but it's directly competing with a technically superior, entrenched and still rapidly growing competitor at the same time.
As long as Linux keeps on improving at a steady pace, Hurd will stay marginal. If/when the day comes that the monolithic kernel architechture has been tuned to it's limit with nothing left to improve (because any change is likely to cause weird bugs), then the developers might turn to the Hurd for new growth. But not before.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This topic is probably so old that no one is reading it any more, but I just came across an old note that I left to myself about this document summarizing the differences between POSIX and LSB