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> In the real UNIX(R) circles Real UNIX(R) sucked. Those who had to use it, were glad, if they could install the GNU utilities. Compared to the vendor supplied

> In the real UNIX(R) circles Real UNIX(R) sucked. Those who had to use it, were glad, if they could install the GNU utilities. Compared to the vendor supplied tools, they were high quality, and without the arbitrary limitations that the supplied tools had. There are earned lessons from these real UNIX(r) behind some rules in the GNU Coding standards.

mceachen 8y ago
Can confirm. My first job out of college was building out a compatibility layer across some 14 variants of UNIX. Hopping between boxes involved an uncomfortable amount of time waiting for nroff to render your man page because common options to common commands were decidedly uncommon .
- Annatar 8y ago
  SVR UNIXes like HP-UX, Solaris and IRIX were very consistent (I used all three of them simultaneously): if one understood SVR4, one could move between those three seamlessly. DEC UNIX, OSF/1 and Ultrix were a variation of BSD. If one knew that, there was no problem either. No comment on AIX, since my brush-ins with it were far too short to be able to claim anything. What else was there? 14 is a large number when it comes to operating systems.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    DEC UNIX and OSF/1 (and Tru64) is the same OS, just different releases.
    - Annatar 8y ago
      I know that, since I used all three of them.
Annatar 8y ago
"Compared to the vendor supplied tools, they were high quality, and without the arbitrary limitations that the supplied tools had." I've been using both GNU and SVR4 tools for almost 30 years and GNU tools are horrible, even worse than horrible when compared to SVR4. Which limitations?
- vetinari 8y ago
  The vendor utils assumed limits on data they processed (max file size, max line lenght, etc). If you ran over them, you wouldn't either get the correct results, or it died, or something else happened. That's the reason behind the section of 4.2 Writing robust programs. One of the other things is a rapid slownown and allocating too much memory. For example, when using Sun's grep and hitting a binary file, now you could wait hours for the result. It didn't help, that some Sun applications did put binary files into /etc, so in the end, you couldn't grep /etc. Well, not until you installed the GNU version, which didn't have that problem.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    That is utter nonsense what you write: these were bugs in earnest, which got fixed 20 years ago! You obviously haven't used a modern SVR4, illumos-based UNIX.
    - vetinari 8y ago
      Nothing beats personal experience. The last Sun I've used was Blade 100, which is almost 20 years ago, indeed. At that time, GNU tools were vastly superior. It also happens to be time, since when the Real Unix(R) is dead. Yes, there is an occasional zombie, but that doesn't change the point. So they caught up with GNU? Who cares today?
      - Annatar 8y ago
        Anybody who wants simple, robust, bare metal performance containers: provisioning lasts a few seconds and is dead simple. Unlike the cgroups mess, one gets a full blown UNIX server running at the speed of bare metal, and it can run GNU/Linux distributions at the speed of bare metal as well. It's superior cloud technology, superior to any GNU/Linux solution, by several light years.

mceachen 8y ago

Can confirm. My first job out of college was building out a compatibility layer across some 14 variants of UNIX. Hopping between boxes involved an uncomfortable amount of time waiting for nroff to render your man page because common options to common commands were decidedly uncommon .

Annatar 8y ago
SVR UNIXes like HP-UX, Solaris and IRIX were very consistent (I used all three of them simultaneously): if one understood SVR4, one could move between those three seamlessly. DEC UNIX, OSF/1 and Ultrix were a variation of BSD. If one knew that, there was no problem either. No comment on AIX, since my brush-ins with it were far too short to be able to claim anything. What else was there? 14 is a large number when it comes to operating systems.
- vetinari 8y ago
  DEC UNIX and OSF/1 (and Tru64) is the same OS, just different releases.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    I know that, since I used all three of them.

Annatar 8y ago

"Compared to the vendor supplied tools, they were high quality, and without the arbitrary limitations that the supplied tools had." I've been using both GNU and SVR4 tools for almost 30 years and GNU tools are horrible, even worse than horrible when compared to SVR4. Which limitations?

vetinari 8y ago
The vendor utils assumed limits on data they processed (max file size, max line lenght, etc). If you ran over them, you wouldn't either get the correct results, or it died, or something else happened. That's the reason behind the section of 4.2 Writing robust programs. One of the other things is a rapid slownown and allocating too much memory. For example, when using Sun's grep and hitting a binary file, now you could wait hours for the result. It didn't help, that some Sun applications did put binary files into /etc, so in the end, you couldn't grep /etc. Well, not until you installed the GNU version, which didn't have that problem.
- Annatar 8y ago
  That is utter nonsense what you write: these were bugs in earnest, which got fixed 20 years ago! You obviously haven't used a modern SVR4, illumos-based UNIX.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    Nothing beats personal experience. The last Sun I've used was Blade 100, which is almost 20 years ago, indeed. At that time, GNU tools were vastly superior. It also happens to be time, since when the Real Unix(R) is dead. Yes, there is an occasional zombie, but that doesn't change the point. So they caught up with GNU? Who cares today?
    - Annatar 8y ago
      Anybody who wants simple, robust, bare metal performance containers: provisioning lasts a few seconds and is dead simple. Unlike the cgroups mess, one gets a full blown UNIX server running at the speed of bare metal, and it can run GNU/Linux distributions at the speed of bare metal as well. It's superior cloud technology, superior to any GNU/Linux solution, by several light years.