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>while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening
by Arizhel 10y ago
>while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.
The problem here is that there aren't a lot of alternatives. You could use Windows, which is like listening only to music by MC Hammer, or you could use a Mac, which is like listening only to music by Duran Duran.
Because of software/backwards compatibility concerns, and how dependent everything is on the underlying OS, it's really hard to change anything in the OS, especially the fundamental design. It'd be nice to make a clean-sheet new OS, but good luck getting anyone to adopt it: look at how well Plan9 and BeOS fared.
- pjmlp 10y agoThe thing is UNIX, by definition, is never going to move beyond its original design, meaning POSIX + C. Whereas Mac OS, Windows, iOS, Android, ChromeOS have moved into more productive language runtimes, with rich frameworks, improving safety across OS layers, even if they have a few bumps along the way.
- michaelmrose 10y agoWhat do you mean by unix in this context? Everything save for windows bears a strong kinship with Unix and every OS is more than capable of running additional runtimes and frameworks beyond C.
- pjmlp 10y agoUNIX and C are symbiotic, regardless of whatever runs on top, only POSIX and C are common to any UNIX. Windows roots are on VMS, not UNIX. There is hardly anything UNIX related on its architecture, regarding kernel design.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoIt was an OpenVMS derivative wiyh code copied or clean-slated against a modified form of its behavior. However, I heard the networking stack was from BSD.
- throwanem 10y agoThe IP stack is. There's even still an etc/ directory buried in the Windows tree to support it.
- pjmlp 10y agoThis is no longer true, the TCP/IP stack was rewritten on Windows Vista. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb545475.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb545475.aspx
- pjmlp 10y agoOnly up to Vista. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb545475.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/network/bb545475.aspx
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThanks for the tip.
- _-david-_ 10y ago>only POSIX and C are common to any UNIX. What about something like this: https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/ Its written in Rust not C. In fact, according to the github stats, there is no C. >Rust 72.4% >Shell 13.2% >Makefile 12.5% >TeX 1.9%
- pjmlp 10y agoYes, but Redox is not UNIX.
- Arizhel 10y agoThat's not true. Windows in particular is greatly limited by past design choices, such as filename limitations, the security model, the fact that many programs have to be run as administrator because that's how they were written years ago, etc. There's nothing preventing you from running different language runtimes and such on Linux/Unix systems; people do it all the time. Have you not noticed Mono? It's been around for many years. Plus frameworks like Qt; that certainly wasn't around before the late 90s.
- pjmlp 10y agoWindows 10 already sorted out the filename limitations. A few more releases and in around 10 years, Win32 will be drinking beers with Carbon. Mono and Qt don't change the architecture of UNIX and their adoption across UNIX variants isn't a game changer.
- Arizhel 10y ago>Windows 10 already sorted out the filename limitations. No, it hasn't. Filenames are still case-insensitive (and in a terrible way, where it seems to remember how they were first typed but that can never be changed), backslashes are still used for path separators instead of escaping characters, and the worst of all is that drive letters are still in use, which is an utterly archaic concept from the days of systems with dual floppy drives. Also, try making a file with a double-quote character in it, or a question mark. I've run into trouble before copying files from a Linux system to a Windows system because of the reserved characters on Windows. >Mono and Qt don't change the architecture of UNIX and their adoption across UNIX variants isn't a game changer. Nothing you've mentioned has changed the architecture of Windows. The fundamental architecture of Windows hasn't changed at all since WinNT 4.0 (or maybe 3.5); it just has an ugly new UI slapped on top and some slightly different administration tools.
- pjmlp 10y agoComplaints of a UNIX refugee on Windows. For us, Windows pathanmes are just fine. As for Windows architecture, maybe you should spend some hours reading Windows Internals book series, BUILD and Channel 9 sessions about MinWin, Drawbridge, Picoprocesses, UWP, User Space Drivers, Secure Kernel,....
- TheRealDunkirk 10y ago> which is like listening only to music by Duran Duran You say that like it were a bad thing.
- camperman 10y agoIt's OK at first but once you get beyond the shiny, it's quite limiting.
- salesguy222 10y agoi'm hoping you are being sarcastic, but i do not want to live in a world where i only listen to my favorite band
- mahyarm 10y agoIt's why everyone focuses on making something on some cross platform abstraction layer or something similar. In many ways, things like amazon lambda are a 'new os'.
- webmaven 10y agoSo which OS is like listening only to music by Simon and Garfunkel?