5 ms·

Many many years ago, when I was working at a large 3-letter-starting-with-S Unix company (no, not the graphics guys, nor the suing-Linux-for-Microsoft guys), we

Many many years ago, when I was working at a large 3-letter-starting-with-S Unix company (no, not the graphics guys, nor the suing-Linux-for-Microsoft guys), we were planning a Linux compatibility layer... At the time, there were a couple of options out there - lxrun and uml. Anyone remember lxrun? I tested them both and did a little write-up, basically saying that neither of them ran reliably or fast enough to be worth adopting What we decided was to go with option 3 - we implemented a Linux system call interface within our own kernel to give us 'native' support. This, of course, is exactly what the first version of WSL did, many years later. Plus ça change...

meruru 7y ago
>at a large 3-letter-starting-with-S Unix company (no, not the graphics guys, nor the suing-Linux-for-Microsoft guys) Is it Sun? Why use more than 20 words to (probably) mean "for Sun"?
- ghostpepper 7y ago
  Presumably they think this is a defense that will hold up in court as plausible deniability if they are ever sued for defamation relating to this comment.
  - meruru 7y ago
    Sun doesn't exist anymore though. Is getting sued even a possibility?
    - bencollier49 7y ago
      In the hypothetical scenario that this commenter is implying that Solaris contains (or contained) a load of IP which is non-clean-roomed Linux copyright (is that the implication??), then the current owners of Solaris would be the ones getting in trouble with - the FSF? That would be Oracle. https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/ https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/ And it would be Oracle chasing the commenter for an NDA breach, I suppose.
    - chungy 7y ago
      Neither does SCO, so the point is moot :)
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - vmlinuz 7y ago
    You guys are weird. It was just a bit of wordplay :D
    - meruru 7y ago
      I hope you don't code the way you talk ;) Seriously though, it's bad writing. Not a crime as bad as starting an off-topic subthread, but still...
    - some_random 7y ago
      No fun allowed here on HN
    - ghostpepper 7y ago
      I didn't really have an issue with what you wrote. It made me realize there are several three-letter, starts-with-S, Unix companies.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
glandium 7y ago
Didn't FreeBSD do this before Solaris?
masklinn 7y ago
> What we decided was to go with option 3 - we implemented a Linux system call interface within our own kernel to give us 'native' support. This, of course, is exactly what the first version of WSL did, many years later. Plus ça change... Joyent as well for SmartOS.
- jclulow 7y ago
  In fact, we revived the same code the poster above is talking about, I believe!
  - vmlinuz 7y ago
    Cantrill was one of our reviewers!
gnufx 7y ago
I wonder if that was before SunOS binaries ran on SPARC Linux; I must have been doing that at least 15 years ago.

meruru 7y ago

>at a large 3-letter-starting-with-S Unix company (no, not the graphics guys, nor the suing-Linux-for-Microsoft guys) Is it Sun? Why use more than 20 words to (probably) mean "for Sun"?

ghostpepper 7y ago
Presumably they think this is a defense that will hold up in court as plausible deniability if they are ever sued for defamation relating to this comment.
- meruru 7y ago
  Sun doesn't exist anymore though. Is getting sued even a possibility?
  - bencollier49 7y ago
    In the hypothetical scenario that this commenter is implying that Solaris contains (or contained) a load of IP which is non-clean-roomed Linux copyright (is that the implication??), then the current owners of Solaris would be the ones getting in trouble with - the FSF? That would be Oracle. https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/ https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/ And it would be Oracle chasing the commenter for an NDA breach, I suppose.
  - chungy 7y ago
    Neither does SCO, so the point is moot :)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- vmlinuz 7y ago
  You guys are weird. It was just a bit of wordplay :D
  - meruru 7y ago
    I hope you don't code the way you talk ;) Seriously though, it's bad writing. Not a crime as bad as starting an off-topic subthread, but still...
  - some_random 7y ago
    No fun allowed here on HN
  - ghostpepper 7y ago
    I didn't really have an issue with what you wrote. It made me realize there are several three-letter, starts-with-S, Unix companies.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

glandium 7y ago

Didn't FreeBSD do this before Solaris?

masklinn 7y ago

> What we decided was to go with option 3 - we implemented a Linux system call interface within our own kernel to give us 'native' support. This, of course, is exactly what the first version of WSL did, many years later. Plus ça change... Joyent as well for SmartOS.

jclulow 7y ago
In fact, we revived the same code the poster above is talking about, I believe!
- vmlinuz 7y ago
  Cantrill was one of our reviewers!

gnufx 7y ago

I wonder if that was before SunOS binaries ran on SPARC Linux; I must have been doing that at least 15 years ago.