23 ms·

It might just be nostalgia to the first computers I used, but the shear complexity, mystery, and stability that allows this stuff to accrete in Windows fills me

It might just be nostalgia to the first computers I used, but the shear complexity, mystery, and stability that allows this stuff to accrete in Windows fills me with a sense of Wonder, even if it is also terrible. Unix is very less bloated, which is better, but also means there is basically no sense of Wonder. So Linux, my daily driver, I gripe about, but Windows, which I thankfully never have to use, makes my eyebrows raise and lips smile from a safe distance.

xeromal 5y ago
Linux is like using a constructed language. It's precise, constantly pared down, and optimized. It's effective and boring. Windows is like English. A mishmash of different languages with no perfect rules. It's a pain in the ass to get right. Lots of fun nuggets to find amusing though.
- skissane 5y ago
  > A mishmash of different languages with no perfect rules There is some of that in Unix/Linux as well, even if to a lesser degree than Windows exhibits it. One good example is the dd command–both the command name and its rather unique syntax are inspired by the IBM mainframe operating system MVS (nowadays rebranded as z/OS) and the omnipresent DD statement of its (in)famous JCL job control language, although the inspiration is only at a very high level and the actual details are quite different. Another is the fact that one of the fields in the /etc/passwd file is named pw_gecos, after the mainframe operating system General Electric Comprehensive Operating System (GECOS), which was used at Bell Labs in the early days of Unix. Some of those early Unix systems used the Bell Labs GECOS mainframe for print spooling, and pw_gecos was used to store the GECOS account name for each user. pw_gecos is still around, and has even spread from Unix into much newer systems such as LDAP and SCIM, although nowadays it stores the user's full name instead, and sometimes other contact details such as email or phone number as well. GECOS is still around too (if a shadow of its former self), having been passed from General Electric to Honeywell and since then to the French firm Groupe Bull (now part of Atos), and having been renamed from GECOS to GCOS along the way. The Unix terminal subsystem (line drivers, termios, terminfo/termcap, curses, etc) is full of all kinds of crazy legacy crud which made sense back when people used to use real physical terminals running over RS-232, but now in the 21st century it is basically just legacy complexity we are stuck with due to inertia, backward compatibility, and the inability of any redesign to offer enough value to overcome all that inertia. Current versions of Solaris [0] and its derivatives (such as Illumos) still contain the header file "rje.h", which is for an old Bell Labs system for submitting batch jobs to IBM mainframes. I doubt the actual code has been present for a long-time – the header references "/dev/dn2", which I believe is a PDP-11 modem device (see [1], [2]) – but I take it the Solaris developers never removed this file just in case doing so broke backward compatibility, maybe some developer somewhere included it in their C code and removing the file might stop their code from compiling. Linux, lacking the same heritage as Solaris, doesn't contain anything quite as ancient as this. The use of "VTOC" as a term for partition table by a number of Unix systems (including Solaris) is inherited from IBM mainframe systems, where VTOC is one of the most fundamental on-disk structures – although in normal use more like a root directory with embedded allocation information than an actual partition table, but the partition table usage is inspired by the fact that when Unix was ported to IBM mainframes, the mainframe VTOC filesystem was used as a partition table, with each Unix filesystem being stored as a separate file ("dataset" to use the proper mainframe terminology) in the mainframe filesystem. Linux can run on IBM mainframes (z/Linux), and on them it actually literally supports the IBM VTOC filesystem as a partition table format [3], along with a bunch of other weird mainframe features–use of 3270 terminals as a system console [4] and even integration with virtual card punches and card readers [5]. Filesystems in particular are an area in which the Linux kernel supports a huge amount of legacy cruft, with all manner of rarely used filesystems supported for backward compatibility, for example the ADFS filesystem of Acorn RISC OS [6], the classic Mac OS HFS filesystem [7], the HPFS filesystem of OS/2 [8], the "System V" filesystem used by old x86 Unix systems such as Xenix and Coherent [9], the "Boot File System" used by the boot process of SCO Unixware [10] [0] see for example https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/head/rje.h https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/... [1] http://squoze.net/UNIX/v5man/pdf/man4/dn.pdf http://squoze.net/UNIX/v5man/pdf/man4/dn.pdf [2] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/head/rje.h https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/... [3] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/s390/include/uapi/asm/vtoc.h https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/s390/incl... [4] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/s390/3270.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [5] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/s390/char/vmur.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/s390/c... [6] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/adfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [7] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/hfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [8] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/hpfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [9] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/sysv-fs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [10] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/bfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...
  - SanderSantema 5y ago
    Thanks for the interesting tidbits!
- royjacobs 5y ago
  That's an interesting analogy. I would say even the market share is similar to Esperanto and English, respectively.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  > Linux is like using a constructed language. It's precise, constantly pared down, and optimized. It's effective and boring. That depends on what you consider "Linux". The Linux kernel probably sits within that definition and to be fair so does the Windows Kernel (which a lot of folks forget about). It's all the other stuff that sits on top of the kernels that make up the "mish mash".
skissane 5y ago
> the shear complexity, mystery, and stability that allows this stuff to accrete in Windows fills me with a sense of Wonder, even if it is also terrible. If "complexity, mystery and stability" induce in you a sense of wonder – learn yourself some IBM z/OS, and prepare to take that wonder to a whole new level Open the JCL reference manual [0] to a random page (in true lectio divina style) – it is like reading some esoteric religious text, you have no idea what it even means, only a sense that it must be something profound. I think some other manuals, such as the many volumes of the Authorized Assembler Services Reference [1], are even better at inducing this effect No doubt some of that is due to the mistake of reading the Reference manual without reading the Guide manual first – but I think many will find the Guides almost as inscrutable as the References are, and much in the Reference manuals will remain incomprehensible even after the Guides have been fully digested. The endless cross-references from one weighty tome to another form a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. [0] https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3SA231385/%24file/ieab600_v2r3.pdf https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pag... [1] https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3sa231373/$file/ieaa200_v2r3.pdf https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pag...
- ngcc_hk 5y ago
  They are consistent and hence for a old dos (not the pc) and mvs/esa support, nothing particular. Just job. And I suspect you do not have one guy (Amdahl aside) has a name to these.
pjmlp 5y ago
> Unix is very less bloated Depends on which UNIX you are talking about, specially commercial UNIXes.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
I suppose Unix's sense of wonder is in the culture surrounding it. So much lore to read about. Using Unix must have been quite the social experience back in those days. Completely unlike today's multi-user systems being used by a single person on a computer at home.
- usefulcat 5y ago
  In college (early 90’s), anyone who took a CS class got a Unix account, mainly for access to email. The machine was running, I believe, SunOS 4. No idea what the exact hardware was, but obviously there were a bunch of user accounts on it, and unsurprisingly they had disk quotas enabled. Eventually someone figured out that if you created a sub directory in $HOME and chown’d it a professor’s user ID that it wouldn’t be counted against your quota. And since you still owned the parent directory you could still change the ownership back any time you wanted. Fun times..

xeromal 5y ago

Linux is like using a constructed language. It's precise, constantly pared down, and optimized. It's effective and boring. Windows is like English. A mishmash of different languages with no perfect rules. It's a pain in the ass to get right. Lots of fun nuggets to find amusing though.

skissane 5y ago
> A mishmash of different languages with no perfect rules There is some of that in Unix/Linux as well, even if to a lesser degree than Windows exhibits it. One good example is the dd command–both the command name and its rather unique syntax are inspired by the IBM mainframe operating system MVS (nowadays rebranded as z/OS) and the omnipresent DD statement of its (in)famous JCL job control language, although the inspiration is only at a very high level and the actual details are quite different. Another is the fact that one of the fields in the /etc/passwd file is named pw_gecos, after the mainframe operating system General Electric Comprehensive Operating System (GECOS), which was used at Bell Labs in the early days of Unix. Some of those early Unix systems used the Bell Labs GECOS mainframe for print spooling, and pw_gecos was used to store the GECOS account name for each user. pw_gecos is still around, and has even spread from Unix into much newer systems such as LDAP and SCIM, although nowadays it stores the user's full name instead, and sometimes other contact details such as email or phone number as well. GECOS is still around too (if a shadow of its former self), having been passed from General Electric to Honeywell and since then to the French firm Groupe Bull (now part of Atos), and having been renamed from GECOS to GCOS along the way. The Unix terminal subsystem (line drivers, termios, terminfo/termcap, curses, etc) is full of all kinds of crazy legacy crud which made sense back when people used to use real physical terminals running over RS-232, but now in the 21st century it is basically just legacy complexity we are stuck with due to inertia, backward compatibility, and the inability of any redesign to offer enough value to overcome all that inertia. Current versions of Solaris [0] and its derivatives (such as Illumos) still contain the header file "rje.h", which is for an old Bell Labs system for submitting batch jobs to IBM mainframes. I doubt the actual code has been present for a long-time – the header references "/dev/dn2", which I believe is a PDP-11 modem device (see [1], [2]) – but I take it the Solaris developers never removed this file just in case doing so broke backward compatibility, maybe some developer somewhere included it in their C code and removing the file might stop their code from compiling. Linux, lacking the same heritage as Solaris, doesn't contain anything quite as ancient as this. The use of "VTOC" as a term for partition table by a number of Unix systems (including Solaris) is inherited from IBM mainframe systems, where VTOC is one of the most fundamental on-disk structures – although in normal use more like a root directory with embedded allocation information than an actual partition table, but the partition table usage is inspired by the fact that when Unix was ported to IBM mainframes, the mainframe VTOC filesystem was used as a partition table, with each Unix filesystem being stored as a separate file ("dataset" to use the proper mainframe terminology) in the mainframe filesystem. Linux can run on IBM mainframes (z/Linux), and on them it actually literally supports the IBM VTOC filesystem as a partition table format [3], along with a bunch of other weird mainframe features–use of 3270 terminals as a system console [4] and even integration with virtual card punches and card readers [5]. Filesystems in particular are an area in which the Linux kernel supports a huge amount of legacy cruft, with all manner of rarely used filesystems supported for backward compatibility, for example the ADFS filesystem of Acorn RISC OS [6], the classic Mac OS HFS filesystem [7], the HPFS filesystem of OS/2 [8], the "System V" filesystem used by old x86 Unix systems such as Xenix and Coherent [9], the "Boot File System" used by the boot process of SCO Unixware [10] [0] see for example https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/head/rje.h https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/... [1] http://squoze.net/UNIX/v5man/pdf/man4/dn.pdf http://squoze.net/UNIX/v5man/pdf/man4/dn.pdf [2] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/head/rje.h https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/... [3] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/s390/include/uapi/asm/vtoc.h https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/s390/incl... [4] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/s390/3270.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [5] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/s390/char/vmur.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/s390/c... [6] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/adfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [7] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/hfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [8] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/hpfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [9] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/sysv-fs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/... [10] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/filesystems/bfs.rst https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...
- SanderSantema 5y ago
  Thanks for the interesting tidbits!
royjacobs 5y ago
That's an interesting analogy. I would say even the market share is similar to Esperanto and English, respectively.
teh_klev 5y ago
> Linux is like using a constructed language. It's precise, constantly pared down, and optimized. It's effective and boring. That depends on what you consider "Linux". The Linux kernel probably sits within that definition and to be fair so does the Windows Kernel (which a lot of folks forget about). It's all the other stuff that sits on top of the kernels that make up the "mish mash".

skissane 5y ago

> the shear complexity, mystery, and stability that allows this stuff to accrete in Windows fills me with a sense of Wonder, even if it is also terrible. If "complexity, mystery and stability" induce in you a sense of wonder – learn yourself some IBM z/OS, and prepare to take that wonder to a whole new level Open the JCL reference manual [0] to a random page (in true lectio divina style) – it is like reading some esoteric religious text, you have no idea what it even means, only a sense that it must be something profound. I think some other manuals, such as the many volumes of the Authorized Assembler Services Reference [1], are even better at inducing this effect No doubt some of that is due to the mistake of reading the Reference manual without reading the Guide manual first – but I think many will find the Guides almost as inscrutable as the References are, and much in the Reference manuals will remain incomprehensible even after the Guides have been fully digested. The endless cross-references from one weighty tome to another form a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. [0] https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3SA231385/%24file/ieab600_v2r3.pdf https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pag... [1] https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3sa231373/$file/ieaa200_v2r3.pdf https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pag...

ngcc_hk 5y ago
They are consistent and hence for a old dos (not the pc) and mvs/esa support, nothing particular. Just job. And I suspect you do not have one guy (Amdahl aside) has a name to these.

pjmlp 5y ago

> Unix is very less bloated Depends on which UNIX you are talking about, specially commercial UNIXes.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

I suppose Unix's sense of wonder is in the culture surrounding it. So much lore to read about. Using Unix must have been quite the social experience back in those days. Completely unlike today's multi-user systems being used by a single person on a computer at home.

usefulcat 5y ago
In college (early 90’s), anyone who took a CS class got a Unix account, mainly for access to email. The machine was running, I believe, SunOS 4. No idea what the exact hardware was, but obviously there were a bunch of user accounts on it, and unsurprisingly they had disk quotas enabled. Eventually someone figured out that if you created a sub directory in $HOME and chown’d it a professor’s user ID that it wouldn’t be counted against your quota. And since you still owned the parent directory you could still change the ownership back any time you wanted. Fun times..