4 ms·

now you should try openbsd or netbsd, as they are even less tolerant of linux-isms

by otherflavors 8y ago

na85 8y ago
Given that Linux is the de facto standard, wouldn't it be more correct to describe the BSDisms as idiosyncrasies?
- the_trapper 8y ago
  It's not usually seen that way because the BSDs are considered to be directly descended from the original UNIX codebase and GNU and Linux are clones.
  - antpls 8y ago
    The analogy isn't used correctly : BSD was initially a codebase clone of UNIX, in other words, BSD is a fork. GNU/Linux was initially developed from scratch to behave like UNIX to a certain extent (hence the name "Unix-like"). In other words, it's a rewrite inspired from a model.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      UNIX is a trademark, so you may not call something UNIX unless you are allowed to use that trademark (which costs several 100k USDs to get certified). Apple paid that price for macOS, so (certain versions of) macOS are UNIX. macOS has a marketshare in server market segment of around 0% (client of around 5%, iOS substantial though), and Linux is the defacto standard in that area. Which OS do people learn nowadays? Linux distributions. So it makes sense to see it from that PoV. Because chances are that you're going to use that defacto standard. And even if you prefer UNIX(tm) or BSD or Solaris you'd rather use Linux than Windows or OpenVMS. Cause the latter are aliens from outer space.
      - msla 8y ago
        As a purely technical note, there is a Linux which is a UNIX: Inspur K-UX. More philosophically, insisting on a definition of UNIX which includes z/OS and excludes Seventh Edition Unix isn't going to win you many friends. http://www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/norationale=1&noreferences=1&RID=ibm%252FXU1%252F6.html http://www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/norationale=1&norefe... And speaking of aliens from outer space, z/OS is a JCL-eating Martian speaking EBCDIC through its virtual cardpunch. ;)
        shlomifish 8y ago
        We've written about certified UNIX wrt macOS vs. Linux here - https://github.com/shlomif/Freenode-programming-channel-FAQ/blob/master/FAQ.mdwn#is-it-true-that-macos--mac-os-x-is-superior-to-linux-because-it-is-a-certified-unix https://github.com/shlomif/Freenode-programming-channel-FAQ/... .
      - wbl 8y ago
        Aliens have something to teach us. The current OS monoculture is not conducive to innovation.
    - LambdaComplex 8y ago
      "BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC."
- jrumbut 8y ago
  Linux may be the de facto standard, but BSD cares about the de jure standard. It's a matter of perspective. Also many of these are actually GNU idiosyncrasies, and from it's name GNU suggests that there is a standard, and they are going to be different.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    Fun to think it's come full circle; BSD used to be the rule-breakers.
    - hyperman1 8y ago
      Isn't that the history of computing? the word UNIX points at the disdain its makers had for Multics. They broke every rule IBM had. PCs were these toys for people who had no acces to real computers, until they were the standard. Microsoft provided toy OSes until they wiped out almost anybody else. Java, MySql and subversion are other examples. I've read somewhere that every succesfull product has a phase where the world laughs at it. If that hadn't happened, it would have been smothered in the cradle by the behemots of its time. Being laughed at gave it time to grow.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      They break the rule these days by actually giving a shit about security instead of doing what many of us are guilty of doing: dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator user to make money. Has created some incredible UI paradigms and elements, but...
- smcameron 8y ago
  I think of linux as the new SunOS 4.x. I remember back in the day when random crap you got would work fine on SunOS, but was a pain on HP-UX, AIX, or whatever other weird unix you had around. Now linux is like SunOS 4.x was back then.
  - nineteen999 8y ago
    That's a totally weird way to think of it, since up to SunOS 4.x, it was mostly based on BSD, and afterwards, after being renamed to Solaris, on SysV.
- wahern 8y ago
  Which distro? Which libc? Which minimum kernel version? Which minimum version of GNU Make? Which specific version of GCC or clang? Linux isn't a static environment. The closest thing to static is POSIX, and by and large every Unix environment, including various Linux environments as well as BSD environments, asymptotically approach POSIX compliance. If you want to maintain a project long-term (5+ years), attempting to minimize deviations from POSIX is a solid strategy in terms of avoiding bit rot and long-term maintenance burdens. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but the point is to weigh your options carefully and don't undervalue the benefit of POSIX compliance. If you want to maximize the chance that your software will compile and execute correctly on a Linux distro 5+ years from now, a good first step is making sure it builds and runs natively on some of the BSDs. There's a trend to discount the value of POSIX and to even actively break POSIX compliance in a way that makes it very difficult to support both POSIX semantics and some feature du jure. Developers should be wary of those who do this because if such projects and their maintainers don't see any value in POSIX they're not likely to see value in the long-term maintenance and stability of whatever feature they're selling you on today. Else thread somebody says that they see Linux as the new SunOS. I agree.[1] But where is SunOS today? [1] Except that Sun put much more emphasis on backwards compatibility. The Linux kernel developers emphasize backward compatibility, but the distros don't, and if the distros rip something out then inevitably it gets removed from upstream. OTOH, while the kernel developers rightfully have said they won't compromise sane design for POSIX, it turns out that such situations have been exceedingly rare and in general they take POSIX compliance seriously.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    maintainers don't see any value in POSIX The problem is that POSIX only provides a tiny subset of the API surface that an application might need today. Just to give two random examples: how can an application inhibit system sleep or use a webcam? The best one often can do is rely on some widely-used library and hope that they (will continue to) support multiple platforms. But where is SunOS today? Comparing apples and oranges. For a large part of its lifetime, SunOS was a proprietary UNIX that only worked with Sun hardware. If we include SunOS 5/Solaris, they open sourced Solaris way after Linux already had a stronghold in the market. Linux is now so dominant in mobile phones, servers, network devices, and IoT, that even it will take much longer to disappear than SunOS.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

now you should try openbsd or netbsd, as they are even less tolerant of linux-isms

na85 8y ago

Given that Linux is the de facto standard, wouldn't it be more correct to describe the BSDisms as idiosyncrasies?

the_trapper 8y ago
It's not usually seen that way because the BSDs are considered to be directly descended from the original UNIX codebase and GNU and Linux are clones.
- antpls 8y ago
  The analogy isn't used correctly : BSD was initially a codebase clone of UNIX, in other words, BSD is a fork. GNU/Linux was initially developed from scratch to behave like UNIX to a certain extent (hence the name "Unix-like"). In other words, it's a rewrite inspired from a model.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    UNIX is a trademark, so you may not call something UNIX unless you are allowed to use that trademark (which costs several 100k USDs to get certified). Apple paid that price for macOS, so (certain versions of) macOS are UNIX. macOS has a marketshare in server market segment of around 0% (client of around 5%, iOS substantial though), and Linux is the defacto standard in that area. Which OS do people learn nowadays? Linux distributions. So it makes sense to see it from that PoV. Because chances are that you're going to use that defacto standard. And even if you prefer UNIX(tm) or BSD or Solaris you'd rather use Linux than Windows or OpenVMS. Cause the latter are aliens from outer space.
    - msla 8y ago
      As a purely technical note, there is a Linux which is a UNIX: Inspur K-UX. More philosophically, insisting on a definition of UNIX which includes z/OS and excludes Seventh Edition Unix isn't going to win you many friends. http://www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/norationale=1&noreferences=1&RID=ibm%252FXU1%252F6.html http://www.opengroup.org/csq/repository/norationale=1&norefe... And speaking of aliens from outer space, z/OS is a JCL-eating Martian speaking EBCDIC through its virtual cardpunch. ;)
      - shlomifish 8y ago
        We've written about certified UNIX wrt macOS vs. Linux here - https://github.com/shlomif/Freenode-programming-channel-FAQ/blob/master/FAQ.mdwn#is-it-true-that-macos--mac-os-x-is-superior-to-linux-because-it-is-a-certified-unix https://github.com/shlomif/Freenode-programming-channel-FAQ/... .
    - wbl 8y ago
      Aliens have something to teach us. The current OS monoculture is not conducive to innovation.
  - LambdaComplex 8y ago
    "BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC."
jrumbut 8y ago
Linux may be the de facto standard, but BSD cares about the de jure standard. It's a matter of perspective. Also many of these are actually GNU idiosyncrasies, and from it's name GNU suggests that there is a standard, and they are going to be different.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Fun to think it's come full circle; BSD used to be the rule-breakers.
  - hyperman1 8y ago
    Isn't that the history of computing? the word UNIX points at the disdain its makers had for Multics. They broke every rule IBM had. PCs were these toys for people who had no acces to real computers, until they were the standard. Microsoft provided toy OSes until they wiped out almost anybody else. Java, MySql and subversion are other examples. I've read somewhere that every succesfull product has a phase where the world laughs at it. If that hadn't happened, it would have been smothered in the cradle by the behemots of its time. Being laughed at gave it time to grow.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    They break the rule these days by actually giving a shit about security instead of doing what many of us are guilty of doing: dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator user to make money. Has created some incredible UI paradigms and elements, but...
smcameron 8y ago
I think of linux as the new SunOS 4.x. I remember back in the day when random crap you got would work fine on SunOS, but was a pain on HP-UX, AIX, or whatever other weird unix you had around. Now linux is like SunOS 4.x was back then.
- nineteen999 8y ago
  That's a totally weird way to think of it, since up to SunOS 4.x, it was mostly based on BSD, and afterwards, after being renamed to Solaris, on SysV.
wahern 8y ago
Which distro? Which libc? Which minimum kernel version? Which minimum version of GNU Make? Which specific version of GCC or clang? Linux isn't a static environment. The closest thing to static is POSIX, and by and large every Unix environment, including various Linux environments as well as BSD environments, asymptotically approach POSIX compliance. If you want to maintain a project long-term (5+ years), attempting to minimize deviations from POSIX is a solid strategy in terms of avoiding bit rot and long-term maintenance burdens. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but the point is to weigh your options carefully and don't undervalue the benefit of POSIX compliance. If you want to maximize the chance that your software will compile and execute correctly on a Linux distro 5+ years from now, a good first step is making sure it builds and runs natively on some of the BSDs. There's a trend to discount the value of POSIX and to even actively break POSIX compliance in a way that makes it very difficult to support both POSIX semantics and some feature du jure. Developers should be wary of those who do this because if such projects and their maintainers don't see any value in POSIX they're not likely to see value in the long-term maintenance and stability of whatever feature they're selling you on today. Else thread somebody says that they see Linux as the new SunOS. I agree.[1] But where is SunOS today? [1] Except that Sun put much more emphasis on backwards compatibility. The Linux kernel developers emphasize backward compatibility, but the distros don't, and if the distros rip something out then inevitably it gets removed from upstream. OTOH, while the kernel developers rightfully have said they won't compromise sane design for POSIX, it turns out that such situations have been exceedingly rare and in general they take POSIX compliance seriously.
- danieldk 8y ago
  maintainers don't see any value in POSIX The problem is that POSIX only provides a tiny subset of the API surface that an application might need today. Just to give two random examples: how can an application inhibit system sleep or use a webcam? The best one often can do is rely on some widely-used library and hope that they (will continue to) support multiple platforms. But where is SunOS today? Comparing apples and oranges. For a large part of its lifetime, SunOS was a proprietary UNIX that only worked with Sun hardware. If we include SunOS 5/Solaris, they open sourced Solaris way after Linux already had a stronghold in the market. Linux is now so dominant in mobile phones, servers, network devices, and IoT, that even it will take much longer to disappear than SunOS.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]