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This is actually one of my favorite things about Linux. I learned Unix back around 1989, using IBM AIX. The AT&T books (blue star-field covers) were mostly ap

This is actually one of my favorite things about Linux. I learned Unix back around 1989, using IBM AIX. The AT&T books (blue star-field covers) were mostly applicable (except for IBM specific items), and everything I learned then I'm still putting to good use today on modern Linux systems. Printing has improved somewhat, disk storage a bit more, and of course my favorite, the /proc file system. But all my shell, awk, sed, grep, sort, join, vi commands still work as expected. I even had something similar to gnu screen, called VTCS (virtual terminal control system), but I wasn't on the Internet at the time so I never released it. Would love to dig up the source code for that again though.

zzzcpan 7y ago
Right. And with open source software decades old programs can be compiled without issues too using last known good compilers, toolchains, libraries, preserving all the old bugs and vulnerabilities, just like on mainframes, but for free. So everything he misses is there. It's just that running legacy code is too risky these days unless you are completely isolated from the internet. And modern infrastructure has a lot more essential complexity.
- butteroverflow 7y ago
  Yeah. Here's a GCC developer experimenting with a 31-year old GCC version on a modern system (the first one with x86 support): >It is amazing how well things work – the modern assembler, linker, and debugger handles the code generated by GCC 1.27 without any problems. https://kristerw.blogspot.com/2019/01/building-gcc-127.html https://kristerw.blogspot.com/2019/01/building-gcc-127.html And the write-up he based his experiments upon: https://miyuki.github.io/2017/10/04/gcc-archaeology-1.html https://miyuki.github.io/2017/10/04/gcc-archaeology-1.html I'd say this kind of source-based backwards compatibility is superior to what's happening in Windows world -- not only it encourages you to keep the source code open, but you also don't have to keep as many hacks in the kernel/system libraries.

zzzcpan 7y ago

Right. And with open source software decades old programs can be compiled without issues too using last known good compilers, toolchains, libraries, preserving all the old bugs and vulnerabilities, just like on mainframes, but for free. So everything he misses is there. It's just that running legacy code is too risky these days unless you are completely isolated from the internet. And modern infrastructure has a lot more essential complexity.

butteroverflow 7y ago
Yeah. Here's a GCC developer experimenting with a 31-year old GCC version on a modern system (the first one with x86 support): >It is amazing how well things work – the modern assembler, linker, and debugger handles the code generated by GCC 1.27 without any problems. https://kristerw.blogspot.com/2019/01/building-gcc-127.html https://kristerw.blogspot.com/2019/01/building-gcc-127.html And the write-up he based his experiments upon: https://miyuki.github.io/2017/10/04/gcc-archaeology-1.html https://miyuki.github.io/2017/10/04/gcc-archaeology-1.html I'd say this kind of source-based backwards compatibility is superior to what's happening in Windows world -- not only it encourages you to keep the source code open, but you also don't have to keep as many hacks in the kernel/system libraries.