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> I haven’t thought about this before - who are the others? All of the workstation vendors: IBM, HP, Dec/Compaq/HP, SGI, Sun. I don't think any of these are pa

> I haven’t thought about this before - who are the others? All of the workstation vendors: IBM, HP, Dec/Compaq/HP, SGI, Sun. I don't think any of these are particularly popular, but AIX (IBM) and Solaris (Sun) are probably more popular than the others. I wouldn't be surprised if IRIX (SGI) is totally dead. And funnily enough, Microsoft. Although they sold Xenix to Sco. I think it's in a lot of POS devices (so probably dying to iPad installs). Edit: Oops - just realized that "Dec/Compaq/HP" probably doesn't belong in the list. I guess technically there was Tru64 Unix, but everyone I've ever heard of who ran Alpha boxes used VMS.

deleted 3y ago
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kjs3 3y ago
IBM is the only one really left...for now. They just shuttered US-based AIX development and moved everything to India, so the writing is on the wall. HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. SGI IRIX is long dead. RIP. SCO (the part with a product, not the part that fails miserably at litigation) got sold to someone noone has ever heard of and probably never will. I speculate there's an SMB PoS market out there supporting it and that'll turn out just as well as the OS/2+ATM market did. No innovation going on there, just milking a dwindling revenue stream. I doubt anyone has sold a Xenix license in decades.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. I figured as much for HP/UX. The failure of Itanium was the death knell there. I mostly lump Solaris together with Illumos/SmartOS. Is there a good reason not to (unless when talking about Oracle specifically)?
  - kjs3 3y ago
    Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. I dunno, I'm not so much involved in the Solaris world anymore (having started on SunOS 3.5), but I suppose I take them at their word.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. That's fair. I know that, after Oracle re-closed OpenSolaris, they can't (legally) incorporate the innovations happening in Illumos into Solaris proper, so the 2 siblings will continue to drift apart. And it sounds like there was quite a lot of bad blood that proceeded the founding of Illumos (unsurprising when Oracle is involved), so I'm not super surprised that users would talk that way.
      - kjs3 3y ago
        That matches my perspective. I personally don't get the impression that Illumos, et. al., have the critical mass for a robust long-term future, but I surely don't see all the places it's being used. Fortunately, I guess, a lot of the nifty things Solaris brought to the table (ZFS, dtrace, etc.) have been pulled up into the BSDs and Linux with varying degrees of success.
retrocryptid 3y ago
Square ships iPads, most of the other payment terminals are some brand of leenucks (some are android, some are not.) There are more WinCE terminals still out there than you would expect (verifone's been around for a LONG time and has probably used every embedded toolchain/cpu architecture/rtos that's come down the pike. And that's just one example.) IBM 4690's supposedly run a SuSe derivative, and Walmart doesn't seem to be replacing them with iPads. I think Sears & KMart also used 4690s, but also a mix of predecessor systems which ran an unholy assemblage of OSes: flex, dos, a bizarre mix of Os/36 and IMS, etc. As best I can tell, they never ran an OS from CMU. Next time you're in a gas station, grocery store, cinema or chain restaurant look closely at the cash register. It's not an iPad. Square did a mightily brilliant thing to marry its dongle to a consumer friendly iPad to support small retail, but apple is not in the business of selling PoS systems. Heck, apple stores didn't use apple devices for PoS for the first two or three years after they were launched. The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample. That's fair. I think I notice iPad PoS devices when ever I run into them, whereas the other devices are less remarkable to me. But my experience really mirrors what you say - gas stations and grocery stores aren't running iPads. It's usually restaurants and small vendors where I see them.
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    And it's a brilliant idea for small businesses. People are already familiar with it and trust Apple. I mean... I'm a BSD & Leenooks person and generally have a decent opinion of apple products. They just don't do what I want to do. But square piggy-backing on Apple's reputation was a great idea.
criddell 3y ago
Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Apple is the basically the last Unix company. All the others are gone or are winding down.

deleted 3y ago

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kjs3 3y ago

IBM is the only one really left...for now. They just shuttered US-based AIX development and moved everything to India, so the writing is on the wall. HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. SGI IRIX is long dead. RIP. SCO (the part with a product, not the part that fails miserably at litigation) got sold to someone noone has ever heard of and probably never will. I speculate there's an SMB PoS market out there supporting it and that'll turn out just as well as the OS/2+ATM market did. No innovation going on there, just milking a dwindling revenue stream. I doubt anyone has sold a Xenix license in decades.

nordsieck 3y ago
> HP/UX and Solaris are barely on life support and basically moribund. I seem to recall a recent announcement that HP/UX goes end-of-support in 2025. As far as Solaris...Oracle is gonna Oracle. Illumios, et. al., won't save it. I figured as much for HP/UX. The failure of Itanium was the death knell there. I mostly lump Solaris together with Illumos/SmartOS. Is there a good reason not to (unless when talking about Oracle specifically)?
- kjs3 3y ago
  Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. I dunno, I'm not so much involved in the Solaris world anymore (having started on SunOS 3.5), but I suppose I take them at their word.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Last time I tied Solaris and Illumos/SmartOS at the hip in a comment someone from the Illumos camp responded adamantly that while they were based on Solaris, they were their own thing evolving their own direction. That's fair. I know that, after Oracle re-closed OpenSolaris, they can't (legally) incorporate the innovations happening in Illumos into Solaris proper, so the 2 siblings will continue to drift apart. And it sounds like there was quite a lot of bad blood that proceeded the founding of Illumos (unsurprising when Oracle is involved), so I'm not super surprised that users would talk that way.
    - kjs3 3y ago
      That matches my perspective. I personally don't get the impression that Illumos, et. al., have the critical mass for a robust long-term future, but I surely don't see all the places it's being used. Fortunately, I guess, a lot of the nifty things Solaris brought to the table (ZFS, dtrace, etc.) have been pulled up into the BSDs and Linux with varying degrees of success.

retrocryptid 3y ago

Square ships iPads, most of the other payment terminals are some brand of leenucks (some are android, some are not.) There are more WinCE terminals still out there than you would expect (verifone's been around for a LONG time and has probably used every embedded toolchain/cpu architecture/rtos that's come down the pike. And that's just one example.) IBM 4690's supposedly run a SuSe derivative, and Walmart doesn't seem to be replacing them with iPads. I think Sears & KMart also used 4690s, but also a mix of predecessor systems which ran an unholy assemblage of OSes: flex, dos, a bizarre mix of Os/36 and IMS, etc. As best I can tell, they never ran an OS from CMU. Next time you're in a gas station, grocery store, cinema or chain restaurant look closely at the cash register. It's not an iPad. Square did a mightily brilliant thing to marry its dongle to a consumer friendly iPad to support small retail, but apple is not in the business of selling PoS systems. Heck, apple stores didn't use apple devices for PoS for the first two or three years after they were launched. The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample.

nordsieck 3y ago
> The assertion that iPads are "taking over" PoS seems to be based on an inappropriately small sample. That's fair. I think I notice iPad PoS devices when ever I run into them, whereas the other devices are less remarkable to me. But my experience really mirrors what you say - gas stations and grocery stores aren't running iPads. It's usually restaurants and small vendors where I see them.
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  And it's a brilliant idea for small businesses. People are already familiar with it and trust Apple. I mean... I'm a BSD & Leenooks person and generally have a decent opinion of apple products. They just don't do what I want to do. But square piggy-backing on Apple's reputation was a great idea.

criddell 3y ago

Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Apple is the basically the last Unix company. All the others are gone or are winding down.