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Windows Beat Unix, But it Won't Beat Linux
Onymous Hero writes "The amazing thing isn't that Windows beat the pants off Unix; it's that so many of the Unix companies survived until today. An article from eWeek looks at why Linux has been so successful where Unix failed." From the article: "While the Unix companies were busy ripping each other to shreds, Microsoft was smiling all the way to the bank. Because the Unix businesses couldn't settle on software development standards, ISVs (independent software vendors) had to write not a single application to get the whole Unix market, they had to write up to a half-dozen different versions. Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems? "
Make that three.
NeXT are still in the Unix business.
.. you just have to choose your API's/frameworks carefully.
.. as long as you're developing on Unix.
i mean, its not so difficult to set up a project that will cross-compile, use GTK+ or one of the other, smart, GUI libs, heck even SDL+libcairo works wonders, and then get it running on Solaris, Linux, *BSD's, OSX, and Windows
but you certainly can't easily do it the other way around: develop on Windows, and port across. It can of course be done (with GTK+, etc), but its not as easy as it is to do under Unix.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
At the OS level?
Um *cough* POSIX.1 *cough*....
My apps built and tested in Linux build in BSD routinely with little to no modification (occasionally I need to fix a makefile to use the build tools differently).
Just because some people *can't* code a program without going directly to asm to make syscalls doesn't mean things like glibc [which has threads] and the POSIX.1 standards don't exist. In fact I once wrote a webserver for QNX that built out of the box for GNU/Linux because I used nothing but standard function calls.
Stop being a poser. You don't need Java to get program portability.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
You have this comment saved up somewhere waiting for a chance to use it? I recognise it.
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http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19
Come on, you can do better AC.
all the best,
drew
--
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/57503
Paper Plane 001 video at ourmedia
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
hmmm...java - self installing executable.
Firefox, and netscape before it - self installing executable.
Flash - self installing executable.
MyEclipseIDE (a commercial J2EE feature / plugin for Eclipse) - self installing executable.
Even Oracle is a simple clicky wizard away on Linux these days.
The challenges to installing 3rd party software on Linux or any Unix are no different to the ones in Windows. - In fact, with the complete lack of package management in Windows, most Unix like systems are actually easier to create installs for.
It's not the fault of the operating system if the application vendor can't be bothered spending the extra time to make the installation process easy.
Advanced users are users too!
... at least fix the "greater than 1%" to "less than 1%". By not doing so, you are not only a troll, but a god damned stupid one.
Meh.
Unlikley. Linux, even now, is too deeply imbedded in our IT infrastructure. Banning it would cause billions worth of disruption.
mostly crossplatform
It's the mostly that's the problem. And besides, when one has to wait on a particular distro to provide their flavor of a given program (which generally you do), it's no longer mostly. As long as Linux programs have to be tailored to specific distros, Linux has a problem.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Little things like different error returns from system calls. EAGAIN varied on socket calls. Been a while since I struggled with this, but I remember having to code up shared memory and threaded apps differently for AIX, Solaris, etc, simply because some methods worked better on different systems. Some wanted mutexes in shared memory, or soemthing else some other way, and it was a real pain in the ass to deal with. HP-UX changed some socket return code semantics in some OS release, in some very subtle way.
Infuriate left and right
This is of course, going to get modded down into oblivion, but damnit, this is going too far now.
Are are you mods on crack? This is the lamest troll I've ever seen and you tools are lapping it up? Fuck me, but is slashdot ever full of POSERS if you guys can't tell that this is pure crap.
FreeBSD has Linux have always been very neck to neck. While linux would be a touch faster at this, FreeBSD would be a touch faster at this, etc. Linux has better hardware support, FreeBSD tends to have better stability. It goes on like that and pretty much always had.
FreeBSD has not benefitted from Apple. Apple has benefitted from BSD. Purely a one way relationship. Since when did Apple write FreeBSD's VM and SMP code, that makes "OSX running effiecently" -- OSX is not efficent. Its bloated to the max. You might dig is GUI and design, thats fine, but you can't tell anyone that its effiecient code because you don't have to look hard for benchmarks to make that claim a joke.
FreeBSD does not run on Apples mach microkernel, holy shit, how did this slip by? Is this just Apple fanbois modding anything even remotely pro-apple up? This has got to be happening here. What the hell is this long and precarious history of FreeBSD -- its bloody free software, what exactly is supposed to happen to it? And... ooh! So annoying, the troll even posts about how FreeBSD has wicked HARDWARE support now -- argh! Like they even run on the same machines sand you guys still modded it up!
If god were real he would strike you down for modding this up, even if you are a mindless apple fanboi.
--SD
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
He was commenting on TFA, which was about way back before glibc. Back then porting was a PITA, a daily struggle to keep track of what methods worked best on which operating systems, indeed which releases of which operating systems. The differences weren't as great as from one Microsoft OS to the next, but they were there, and there were more variants.
There was no glibc to be arsed to use. POSIX was a joke.
TFA dealt with that earlier era. You, sir, are off-topic and irrelevant.
Infuriate left and right
I'd guess that you are young. I'll speak as one of the older farts around here about the animosity towards Microsoft.
Back in the day - say 1979 - Microsoft was still a small, growing software startup. I remember one of their big products was MS BASIC, which Microsoft spent a lot of effort to make sure ran on just about any piece of silicon under the sun. And at the time there were a lot of small comuting vendors popping up all ovre. I even had MS-BASIC for the Atari 800 home computer. The idea was, and still much today, that you could write to MS-BASIC on any hardware and your program would run on any other hardware (with MS-BASIC, cha-ching). Even back then Microsoft had the idea of being the "glue" between hardware and software. It also meant that Microsoft had to make headway into any platform which looked like it might stick around.
So fast forward to 1983 and the IBM PC/XT. Microsoft wins a juicy contract for MS-DOS on the PeeCee. Then come in Leading Edge, and the rest of the clones. To maintain their "glue", Microsoft bends over backwards to make sure MS-DOS runs on all the knock-offs, as well as the real IBM desktop machines. If MS-DOS runs everywhere, you don't need to fidget with your program for every hunk of silicon, just run MS-DOS on it.
After years of working hard to make sure their software ran on just about anything, Microsoft has been able to grow to dominance by being 'the best choice' and 'runs on everything'. Still today, Microsoft with the Windows OS is still the glue between software and hardware. They've also become so dominant, that they can now dictate terms to how they will implement APIs (see DirectX) and define minimum PC hardware specs (such as PC audio). The tables have turned a bit, in that now hardware makers are trying to make sure their product now works with Microsoft instead of MS needing to sweat making thier software work with the various hardware. This of course has now led to higher software prices and lock-in. Today, Microsoft is so dominant that most software we buy at the office only works on the Windows platform. Plus the fact that Microsoft likes to maintain their dominance by crushing other companies (a whole 'nother story there). As a developer, MS is well known for "looking at" your projects if you "need support" and then all your stealing your ideas. Microsoft has decided not only to be the "glue" but also be the entire, exclusive software supplier. So, many of us don't like their dominant position (raises costs) and their almost maniacal push to destroy competitors.
/epilogue: Also, many of us old guys came from the vestiges of the IBM mainframe lock-in days [thank you DEC, for saving us] and many of us don't want to see those days again no matter who the 'new' overlord may be.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Although if I recall, support for IBM's Trusted Platform Module is in the mainline 2.6.13 kernel, so I guess there is a grain of truth here :)
Actually, FreeBSD does not use the Mach microkernel. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all use their own traditional kernels. The only free BSD flavor to sport a microkernel is Darwin (and its variant OpenDarwin). Actually, according to Apple, Darwin does not even support SMP on x86 platforms currently (though I'm sure this will change with Apple's transition to Intel)
Actually, this is only partly true. They tend to mix and match bits of the BSD userland from FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Apple's biggest contribution has been in the form of good press. Actually, Apple's OS only sort of resembles FreeBSD. The init plumming is all different. Directory structures are very different. NetInfo is very different indeed than FreeBSD's more traditional model for user management, etc.
And what's with the link in your last line to trollaxor.com? (Look at the period at the end of the last sentence.) As glowing an endorsement this would seem of FreeBSD and Apple (of which I'm fond of both), it would seem maybe that a lot of mods were cleverly trolled?
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
You're talking about Windows from 15 years ago. Interesting.
Oddly enough, Windows actually got better. Linux zealots have some trouble understanding this.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
From Information Week dated Sept 5, 2005 "businesses spent more than $4 billion in the second quarter on Unix servers. Sales of high-end machines (priced at $500,000 and more) grew around 20% in the second quarter, while sales of midrange servers ($25,000 to $500,000) grew more than 15%".
If only I could lose like that.
Its also interesting that of the companies controlling "more than 90% of the Unix market", HP, IBM and Sun, only Sun seems to be mentioned at all in this forum. Slashdotters apparently need to open their eyes to the fact that there is a vast market for systems beyond desktops and hobby servers.