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The implicit point of comparison looks to be the monolithic Unix of old, where the entirety of the code of the system is (hopefully, ostensibly, allegedly) deve
by mananaysiempre 3y ago
The implicit point of comparison looks to be the monolithic Unix of old, where the entirety of the code of the system is (hopefully, ostensibly, allegedly) developed with a single vision, except for the application programs in the narrowest sense of the word (e.g. the particular piece of numerics you needed to design your airplane or whatnot, but not the editor you used to write it, the cluster scheduler you used to run it, the typesetter you used to write down your results, or the 3D viewer you used to present them).
As far as I understand, that—compared to the Linux distro which derives a similar range of capability from a primordial soup of small nuggets of software—was Raymond’s “cathedral” as well, and the original model of the BSDs, before the range of expected functionality was broad enough that distro-ish “ports” became unavoidable.
One example that’s just plain interesting to read to see what things people were exploring (because, let’s admit it, historical Unix source gets plain boring after a while) is AT&T Research’s https://github.com/att/ast https://github.com/att/ast.
- cpach 3y agoThis makes me wonder, in relation to the article: Why don’t we see more of HP-UX, AIX, Irix etc…? For better or worse, Linux has outcompeted most of those systems. I don’t claim Linux is perfect, but I believe there are reasons for it’s popularity.
- samus 3y agoIt's good enough for many applications, and few of its competitors had features that were so crucial to stop customers from leaving. Also, these competitors were all intimately tied to their platform. Unless you had one of these machines, there was no reason to ever use these OSs.
- pjmlp 3y agoLinux is free beer. We all know what trying to make Solaris free beer made to Sun. Orange juice made from bitter oranges tastes really well when given for free.
- brightlancer 3y agoCommercial UNIX was built to run on expensive RISC hardware; Linux was built to run on cheap x86 hardware. Commercial UNIX was certified to run Big Corporate applications; Linux ran FLOSS LAMP stacks. When x86 hardware became cheap AND reliable, and web apps took off, Linux became the better choice. The commercial UNIX vendors didn't adjust fast enough and were left behind. And now we have a network effect, where very few developers/ engineers know HP-UX or AIX, and software is being written specifically for Linux that would have to be ported to HP-UX or AIX.