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What is UNIX, Anyway?
Lieutenant writes "Technology professionals have loosely used the term "UNIX" since the first person had to explain the difference between the Berkeley and AT&T flavors, so it's not surprising to find as many UNIX standards as there are versions of the operating system. Peter Seebach wades through the wellspring of UNIX standards and sorts them out for you, concluding that the rumors of the death of UNIX are (as usual) greatly exaggerated."
i don't take any reports of UNIX's death as fact without a Netcraft confirmation.
"There were only two things to come out of Berkeley in the 60's, LSD and Unix. I doubt that is a coincidence."
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum, author of Minix.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
They'll probably try to stop you from using it by applying the Patriot Act. I think in section 3.14.a.2.2.b it says that a terrorist is someone who uses standards documentation without renewing their license.
(It's actually a giant space clam that wants you to give all your money to L Ron Hubbard)
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Indeed, the story of UNIX today is depicted in this documentary.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Unix is not GNU.
That command is only valid for System V type variants.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Ah. I see you've been forced to use AIX as well!
// well, actually not so much the systems themselves, but the assinine UNIX mentality of "harder is better" and "more documentation eliminates the need for good design.", which set back Computer Science departments and academia 15 years behind industry.
/// fortunately, one of the unintended side-effects of Linux is that the mentality, at least amongst Linux users, is slowly, ever so slowly, fading away.
/// you say that Linux programmers are going away from //. They are, they're just not doing the documentation. ;-)
Hmm.. yes, in
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
If Linux is a kernel, where is Solaris/Linux (in the same misbegotten naming scheme as GNU/Linux)? That makes no sense, of course, since the operating system *is* the kernel plus whatever runs on it. Linux is Linux, GNU is GNU, and Solaris is Solaris. Name/modifier is crap/shit. Just say no to crap/shit.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You've never read a Sendmail.cf file, have you?
E pluribus unum
yeah. It was next to impossible to get id's quake 1 source to compile on linux. oh, the horror.
i had to type 'make'!! and then, get this, i had to move the quake binary to ~/bin myself!
Have you ever programmed on Unix/BSD/Linux systems? When writing non-trivial applications, there are substantial differences among them. Why do you think GNU autoconf was created?
Having programmed on both, I can say that Win32 is, and always has been, much more uniform across variants of the system than Unix/BSD/Linux. That doesn't mean it's better, or more consistent on any givem implementation. I generally prefer the Unix/BSD/Linux APIs, and would say they're more consistent on any given implemenration, but the differences among implementations are clearly bigger than the differences among Win32 implementations, especially if graphical APIs are added to the mix. There's also a much wider variety of different Unix/BSD/Linux systems developers have to worry about than is the case with Win32.
To be fair, he did say "drug induced". Sendmail.cf (Heck, M4 in its entirity) clearly is not drug induced. It is a many tentacled being which slithered forth from the darkest nether regions of hell to lay waste to the minds of humanity. On a good day.
From http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_comeagain.shtml
One of the best quotes I've ever heard was from a colleague of mine,
"Unix isn't."
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
Check out chapter 7 titled "The X Windows Disaster: How to make a 50-Mips Workstation run like a 4.77MHz IBM PC"
I especially like the opening quote:
"If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer
than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which fol-
lowed the same principles--but you'd be able to shift gears with your
car stereo. Useful feature, that."--Marcus J. Ranum, Digital Equipment Corporation