6 ms·

Everyone is saying "Nope". A couple events happened in the US in 2013/2014 - The number of cell phones surpassed the number of computers, and the number of smar

Everyone is saying "Nope". A couple events happened in the US in 2013/2014 - The number of cell phones surpassed the number of computers, and the number of smartphones surpassed the number of basic phones. Both iOS and Android are Unix derivatives, so I'd say Unix is winning the post-PC era.

arvinjoar 11y ago
And not to forget, OS X, which still has significant market share (>5% of desktops/laptops) and is based on Unix (albeit XNU stands for X is not Unix). Looking at wikipedia, it still seems like a majority of web web clients are windows based, though[1]. [1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- justwannasing 11y ago
  OSX is not "based on" Unix. OSX IS Unix: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm
  - justinsaccount 11y ago
    Is the certification from "The Open Group" relevant to anyone? OS X 10.10 ships with a version of bash from 2007. Without something like homebrew or macports to install an updated userland the "Unix" core of OS X is rotting away.
    - tomphoolery 11y ago
      It just means that the operating system ships with the properly-licensed UNIX software binaries and libraries, rather than the GNU free software replacements for said software. If you look in the man pages for any shell command OS X ships with, you'll see it's from the "BSD General Commands Manual". On Linux systems, this originates from GNU. Your example of bash is actually not part of that distribution, it's something additional OS X ships with just for userland purposes. I suppose the point of being a "certified UNIX distribution" is just so they can put the trademark on their website because it looks pretty.
      - 0x09 11y ago
        UNIX is a spec. The point of being a "certified UNIX" is that the system conforms to SUS/POSIX and software developed targeting those specifications and their API are expected to run. One might question the usefulness of SUS/POSIX in a world where most of the *nix ecosystem targets GNU, but saying it has no purpose beyond advertising is disingenuous.
        justinsaccount 11y ago
        Oh, I think its purpose is to make money for the open group. I tried to download and run their test suite, but they lead to a page that says "For Purchase Enquiries please contact:" They don't care about standards, they care about selling things.
        justwannasing 11y ago
        Nothing could be further from the truth. Do you think these tests were created and maintained for free? Do you think the certification process happens on its own? Do you think there is no value in the whole Unix standard is stagnant, none-changing, and never reviewed or updated? And it all happens without cost? Do you think no one pays any attention to that?
        justinsaccount 11y ago
        Don't really understand your reply. Linux and GNU and {free,net,open}bsd are created and maintained "for free". Can things only have value if they cost money? Is the unix certification only for large companies who can afford to throw money at the open group in order to get certified? According to the wikipedia page: > By decree of The Open Group, the term "UNIX" refers more to a class of operating systems than to a specific implementation of an operating system; those operating systems which meet The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification should be able to bear the UNIX 98 or UNIX 03 trademarks today, after the operating system's vendor pays a substantial certification fee and annual trademark royalties Right.. Please tell me how this is not a meaningless certification? FreeBSD is more unix than OS X, and would likely have no problems running the test suite, but is not certified as "real unix" because that certification is about money.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Have you ever used a proper commercial UNIX (Aix, HP-UX,...)? That bash version is actually very modern compared with their out-of-box experience.
      - justinsaccount 11y ago
        I used to use some solaris boxes, that was always painful. I knew some sysadmins liked it. There definitely was a mindset of some admins that solaris boxes were great. You did a full install of solaris that took up like 8G of disk space. Then you installed oracle. Then you never touched the machine again. As long as you never actually needed to use the machine for anything, solaris was great. Solid kernel.. terrible userland. Still some very smart people working on zfs/dtrace/kvm, will be intersting to see what the next few years bring.
pjmlp 11y ago
Except that both lack UNIX userland, aren't POSIX compliant and have a sandbox design.
- varjag 11y ago
  Android is partially POSIX compliant at least, in larger degree than Linux+glibc has been for the first decade.
- the_why_of_y 11y ago
  ... and ridiculous hard coded limits like 128 shared objects per process: http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#SO_MAX http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#... This hilarious memset(3) bug was shipping for years: https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14699,1,libc/memset.c https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14... Well, that's what you get when you NIH your libc...
  - SamReidHughes 11y ago
    A similar memset bug happened in glibc too.
- brudgers 11y ago
  The major theme of the episode is that the important part of Unix adoption is applications users use. Of course, in the context of 1985, POSIX compliance is an anachronism anyway. The video was recorded on the front side of the Unix Wars [1]. [1]: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880014 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880...
- rbanffy 11y ago
  You can install your own glibc and run a full Linux userland on top of an Android kernel.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    I can also run a full UNIX userland on Windows, z/OS or OS/400, that doesn't make them UNIX. And I doubt IPC will work anyway, given that the Android kernel doesn't do UNIX IPC.
cmrdporcupine 11y ago
Well and this is not even mentioning that the 'cloud' is overwhelmingly Unix (well, Linux, so Unix with a small-u) In terms of installed operating systems and the applications people interact with, Unix or Unix-alike systems win. I don't care if the desktops they use are Windows, or if the phones they run (which have a Unix/Linux kernel usually) don't expose a shell prompt -- the applications they run get the largest part of their functionality through server daemons running on systems running *nix.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Which is quite sad, because now we are kind of stuck in OS design, with only Microsoft, Apple and a few universities pushing the OS research further.
  - kitsunesoba 11y ago
    Honest question: When was the last time MS actually did something interesting in regards to OS features/architecture? I read genuinely neat little tidbits about new features in OS X, Linux, and the BSDs on a fairly regular basis, but I can't remember the last time I read about something like that in Windows. The impression that it leaves is that releases of Windows newer than, say, Vista or 7 bring little outside of general cleanup and tweaks to the user-facing parts.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      The research OS: Singularity, Midori and Drawbridge The attempts to follow OS/400 footsteps with a managed userspace in Windows Phone 7. The OS architecture of Windows Phone 8. The way they are transitioning Windows into a App Container model with the WinRT execution model.
    - tomku 11y ago
      If you want to see internal changes in Windows, look at the server versions, not the desktop ones. Over that time frame where you said nothing happened, Hyper-V has gone from a research project to a central part of the Windows server space. Powershell has gone from a tech preview to the recommended way to manage servers. Windows Server 2012 introduced ReFS and Storage Spaces. I'm sure Server 2016 will have a bunch of cool stuff too. The server-side Windows experience is radically different than it was when Windows 7 came out. Why aren't you hearing about these features? Lots of reasons. Windows is closed-source, so the internal changes you hear about are the ones Microsoft wants you to hear about. Most of the shiny new toys are to support server features that you won't notice unless you're a Windows sysadmin. Most desktop users don't care about internal changes unless they break things, and Windows hasn't broken much on the internal side since Vista. Microsoft's own messaging about major changes has been targeted almost exclusively at Windows server admins. Edit: That's not even getting into the new app development platform that shipped with 8/10, DirectX 12 adding Mantle-like APIs, first-class support for touch input, hybrid boot, booting from VHDs, etc. Microsoft has been busy over the past few years.

arvinjoar 11y ago

And not to forget, OS X, which still has significant market share (>5% of desktops/laptops) and is based on Unix (albeit XNU stands for X is not Unix). Looking at wikipedia, it still seems like a majority of web web clients are windows based, though[1]. [1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
justwannasing 11y ago
OSX is not "based on" Unix. OSX IS Unix: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm
- justinsaccount 11y ago
  Is the certification from "The Open Group" relevant to anyone? OS X 10.10 ships with a version of bash from 2007. Without something like homebrew or macports to install an updated userland the "Unix" core of OS X is rotting away.
  - tomphoolery 11y ago
    It just means that the operating system ships with the properly-licensed UNIX software binaries and libraries, rather than the GNU free software replacements for said software. If you look in the man pages for any shell command OS X ships with, you'll see it's from the "BSD General Commands Manual". On Linux systems, this originates from GNU. Your example of bash is actually not part of that distribution, it's something additional OS X ships with just for userland purposes. I suppose the point of being a "certified UNIX distribution" is just so they can put the trademark on their website because it looks pretty.
    - 0x09 11y ago
      UNIX is a spec. The point of being a "certified UNIX" is that the system conforms to SUS/POSIX and software developed targeting those specifications and their API are expected to run. One might question the usefulness of SUS/POSIX in a world where most of the *nix ecosystem targets GNU, but saying it has no purpose beyond advertising is disingenuous.
      - justinsaccount 11y ago
        Oh, I think its purpose is to make money for the open group. I tried to download and run their test suite, but they lead to a page that says "For Purchase Enquiries please contact:" They don't care about standards, they care about selling things.
        justwannasing 11y ago
        Nothing could be further from the truth. Do you think these tests were created and maintained for free? Do you think the certification process happens on its own? Do you think there is no value in the whole Unix standard is stagnant, none-changing, and never reviewed or updated? And it all happens without cost? Do you think no one pays any attention to that?
        justinsaccount 11y ago
        Don't really understand your reply. Linux and GNU and {free,net,open}bsd are created and maintained "for free". Can things only have value if they cost money? Is the unix certification only for large companies who can afford to throw money at the open group in order to get certified? According to the wikipedia page: > By decree of The Open Group, the term "UNIX" refers more to a class of operating systems than to a specific implementation of an operating system; those operating systems which meet The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification should be able to bear the UNIX 98 or UNIX 03 trademarks today, after the operating system's vendor pays a substantial certification fee and annual trademark royalties Right.. Please tell me how this is not a meaningless certification? FreeBSD is more unix than OS X, and would likely have no problems running the test suite, but is not certified as "real unix" because that certification is about money.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Have you ever used a proper commercial UNIX (Aix, HP-UX,...)? That bash version is actually very modern compared with their out-of-box experience.
    - justinsaccount 11y ago
      I used to use some solaris boxes, that was always painful. I knew some sysadmins liked it. There definitely was a mindset of some admins that solaris boxes were great. You did a full install of solaris that took up like 8G of disk space. Then you installed oracle. Then you never touched the machine again. As long as you never actually needed to use the machine for anything, solaris was great. Solid kernel.. terrible userland. Still some very smart people working on zfs/dtrace/kvm, will be intersting to see what the next few years bring.

pjmlp 11y ago

Except that both lack UNIX userland, aren't POSIX compliant and have a sandbox design.

varjag 11y ago
Android is partially POSIX compliant at least, in larger degree than Linux+glibc has been for the first decade.
the_why_of_y 11y ago
... and ridiculous hard coded limits like 128 shared objects per process: http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#SO_MAX http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#... This hilarious memset(3) bug was shipping for years: https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14699,1,libc/memset.c https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14... Well, that's what you get when you NIH your libc...
- SamReidHughes 11y ago
  A similar memset bug happened in glibc too.
brudgers 11y ago
The major theme of the episode is that the important part of Unix adoption is applications users use. Of course, in the context of 1985, POSIX compliance is an anachronism anyway. The video was recorded on the front side of the Unix Wars [1]. [1]: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880014 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880...
rbanffy 11y ago
You can install your own glibc and run a full Linux userland on top of an Android kernel.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  I can also run a full UNIX userland on Windows, z/OS or OS/400, that doesn't make them UNIX. And I doubt IPC will work anyway, given that the Android kernel doesn't do UNIX IPC.

cmrdporcupine 11y ago

Well and this is not even mentioning that the 'cloud' is overwhelmingly Unix (well, Linux, so Unix with a small-u) In terms of installed operating systems and the applications people interact with, Unix or Unix-alike systems win. I don't care if the desktops they use are Windows, or if the phones they run (which have a Unix/Linux kernel usually) don't expose a shell prompt -- the applications they run get the largest part of their functionality through server daemons running on systems running *nix.

pjmlp 11y ago
Which is quite sad, because now we are kind of stuck in OS design, with only Microsoft, Apple and a few universities pushing the OS research further.
- kitsunesoba 11y ago
  Honest question: When was the last time MS actually did something interesting in regards to OS features/architecture? I read genuinely neat little tidbits about new features in OS X, Linux, and the BSDs on a fairly regular basis, but I can't remember the last time I read about something like that in Windows. The impression that it leaves is that releases of Windows newer than, say, Vista or 7 bring little outside of general cleanup and tweaks to the user-facing parts.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    The research OS: Singularity, Midori and Drawbridge The attempts to follow OS/400 footsteps with a managed userspace in Windows Phone 7. The OS architecture of Windows Phone 8. The way they are transitioning Windows into a App Container model with the WinRT execution model.
  - tomku 11y ago
    If you want to see internal changes in Windows, look at the server versions, not the desktop ones. Over that time frame where you said nothing happened, Hyper-V has gone from a research project to a central part of the Windows server space. Powershell has gone from a tech preview to the recommended way to manage servers. Windows Server 2012 introduced ReFS and Storage Spaces. I'm sure Server 2016 will have a bunch of cool stuff too. The server-side Windows experience is radically different than it was when Windows 7 came out. Why aren't you hearing about these features? Lots of reasons. Windows is closed-source, so the internal changes you hear about are the ones Microsoft wants you to hear about. Most of the shiny new toys are to support server features that you won't notice unless you're a Windows sysadmin. Most desktop users don't care about internal changes unless they break things, and Windows hasn't broken much on the internal side since Vista. Microsoft's own messaging about major changes has been targeted almost exclusively at Windows server admins. Edit: That's not even getting into the new app development platform that shipped with 8/10, DirectX 12 adding Mantle-like APIs, first-class support for touch input, hybrid boot, booting from VHDs, etc. Microsoft has been busy over the past few years.