7 ms·

Talk about things I’d want to bring back if I were suddenly a mega millionaire or billionaire.

by ianai 3y ago

deviantbit 3y ago
You really wouldn't. I developed code for Coherent, if anyone remembers that UNIX clone. I honestly never want that to come back.
- macintux 3y ago
  You should chime in on this Coherent (nascent) thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594866
- scruffyherder 3y ago
  I dont suppose you have coherent 8086/80286 at all? I should have ordered it as a kid but I'd been told so many times to never trust mailorder. It still bugs me I didn't send in the $99.99
  - deviantbit 3y ago
    We had it on 286, but most of where I lived was on the 68k. I never bought a personal license. We had a license w/ source. I had an Amiga at home back in those days.
frutiger 3y ago
Doesn’t this sort of exist today with Cygwin/MSYS2/Git Bash/etc?
- scruffyherder 3y ago
  not really, the exe's are a.out so it's more like EMX. It's broken up like services more like HURD, and extended to 32bit on Win16. It's far more cooler being able to run on Windows 3.1
  - frutiger 3y ago
    Sure, but from a user perspective? It says you could run vi/gcc/etc. in BoW, which you can easily do. I don't know why GGP would want to spend millions (surely would cost way more than millions) nor billions recreating something that already exists?
    - ianai 3y ago
      Really, to do something different and that might move the needle to new possibilities. The *BSDs and Linux seem like they permanently miss just a few core elements to be mass adoptable. Mass adoption would benefit everyone through things like competition but also just different features. Like imagine being able to zfs send incremental backups of your daily drivers and gaming boxes. Or if plan9 had really taken off and had real market share. Idk, just feels like we've been stuck in a place for the last few decades.
      - anthk 3y ago
        You are using plan9's UTF8 and 9p in lots of products.
    - scruffyherder 3y ago
      You're looking too close to the trees gcc/vi instead of the BSD forest. BOW's only weakness is its single user mode, more so a limitation of being a Win16. If it'd been pushed harder to a NT service/client/server DLL it'd have been a much bigger player. It's all moot, Pink/taligent died, Virtual Machines is where everyone runs their stuff these days, OS/2 had the driver/disk/filesystem stuff done right.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  I think cygwin has been around for 30 years now
doublerabbit 3y ago
This is where we should be, native support of Linux on Windows and native support of Windows on Linux. Executables should be cross-compatible, we somehow ended up in a reality of monopolistic -- 1v1. I would enjoy it to break free at some point but I doubt it. Just about everything now is it's own garden with a tiny API gate to allow you access to the minor features of the whole collection. I am aware of WSL and the likes but, it's taken many years to get that far.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Grimburger 3y ago
  > Executables should be cross-compatible So cosmopolitan? https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  As mentioned in a thread yesterday (and justifiably memed often in general)[1], Win32 is the most stable environment to target in Linux. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585729
- partomniscient 3y ago
  But they should all break on MacOS and refuse to be cross-compiled for Windows/Linux? I agree with your idealism, but I think the best we're going to get is more or less what we have now, otherwise we end up in the space where program x works with o/s y version z subsystem q, but not the other combinations you'd hope for. I'm still annoyed that we don't design enough for the future that when a new O/S version/architecture gets released there isn't more effort to save the past. We have a perfectly serviceable relatively recent printer (4-5 years old?) that my wife now can't use because her new Mac which replaced her 12 year old mac, now doesn't have a driver for it, because there are no Sonoma versions of it. I think we err on the wrong side of creating waste at the expense of not doing (admittedly annoying) work. To get back on topic, this was the point of subsytems - you managed to hold onto and get access to the past you liked from within your walled garden.
Teever 3y ago
Totally. I don't want to derail the conversation too much but when I look at what Notch has become since he became a billionaire it's frankly pathetic. Princes & Kings Isn't it strange how princes and kings, and clowns that caper in sawdust rings, and common people, like you and me, are builders for eternity? Each is given a list of rules; a shapeless mass; a bag of tools. And each must fashion, ere life is flown, A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone. ― R. Lee Sharpe
- minton 3y ago
  What happened to Notch?
  - twisteriffic 3y ago
    Bit down on about every right wing conspiracy theory you can come up with.
  - low_tech_love 3y ago
    Nothing special, I think that’s what he/she meant.
  - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    I assume his tendency to say things that upset a particularly sensitive political milieu, but I can't say that's what they meant for certain.
    - Teever 3y ago
      Is that really how you interpreted my comment? My critique of Notch is that he doesn't do cool stuff anymore. Stuff like that weird space game that he was talking about making, or something like BSD on windows.
      - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
        Ah OK. I guess I interpreted it differently because I don't follow him as a person. So my exposure to him is usually people complaining about something he said, or someone saying what he said was based. I know very little of his projects after Minecraft, so I just used the info I have. I dunno why you'd be sore about it, the guy already paid his dues? Again though, bot familiar eith what he goes around promising.
rnd0 3y ago
I'd go for a full-fledged BSD subsystem, myself. From what he wrote on the blog it sounds like this would be a pain in the butt to use for anything substantial.
scruffyherder 3y ago
I was able to cross compile from windows to BOW https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/12/cross-compiling-to-bsd-on-windows-bow-from-win32/ https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/12/cross-compiling-to-bsd-o...

Talk about things I’d want to bring back if I were suddenly a mega millionaire or billionaire.

by ianai 3y ago

Talk about things I’d want to bring back if I were suddenly a mega millionaire or billionaire.

You really wouldn't. I developed code for Coherent, if anyone remembers that UNIX clone. I honestly never want that to come back.

macintux 3y ago
You should chime in on this Coherent (nascent) thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594866
scruffyherder 3y ago
I dont suppose you have coherent 8086/80286 at all? I should have ordered it as a kid but I'd been told so many times to never trust mailorder. It still bugs me I didn't send in the $99.99
- deviantbit 3y ago
  We had it on 286, but most of where I lived was on the 68k. I never bought a personal license. We had a license w/ source. I had an Amiga at home back in those days.

frutiger 3y ago

Doesn’t this sort of exist today with Cygwin/MSYS2/Git Bash/etc?

scruffyherder 3y ago
not really, the exe's are a.out so it's more like EMX. It's broken up like services more like HURD, and extended to 32bit on Win16. It's far more cooler being able to run on Windows 3.1
- frutiger 3y ago
  Sure, but from a user perspective? It says you could run vi/gcc/etc. in BoW, which you can easily do. I don't know why GGP would want to spend millions (surely would cost way more than millions) nor billions recreating something that already exists?
  - ianai 3y ago
    Really, to do something different and that might move the needle to new possibilities. The *BSDs and Linux seem like they permanently miss just a few core elements to be mass adoptable. Mass adoption would benefit everyone through things like competition but also just different features. Like imagine being able to zfs send incremental backups of your daily drivers and gaming boxes. Or if plan9 had really taken off and had real market share. Idk, just feels like we've been stuck in a place for the last few decades.
    - anthk 3y ago
      You are using plan9's UTF8 and 9p in lots of products.
  - scruffyherder 3y ago
    You're looking too close to the trees gcc/vi instead of the BSD forest. BOW's only weakness is its single user mode, more so a limitation of being a Win16. If it'd been pushed harder to a NT service/client/server DLL it'd have been a much bigger player. It's all moot, Pink/taligent died, Virtual Machines is where everyone runs their stuff these days, OS/2 had the driver/disk/filesystem stuff done right.
jbverschoor 3y ago
I think cygwin has been around for 30 years now

doublerabbit 3y ago

This is where we should be, native support of Linux on Windows and native support of Windows on Linux. Executables should be cross-compatible, we somehow ended up in a reality of monopolistic -- 1v1. I would enjoy it to break free at some point but I doubt it. Just about everything now is it's own garden with a tiny API gate to allow you access to the minor features of the whole collection. I am aware of WSL and the likes but, it's taken many years to get that far.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Grimburger 3y ago
> Executables should be cross-compatible So cosmopolitan? https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan
Dalewyn 3y ago
As mentioned in a thread yesterday (and justifiably memed often in general)[1], Win32 is the most stable environment to target in Linux. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38585729
partomniscient 3y ago
But they should all break on MacOS and refuse to be cross-compiled for Windows/Linux? I agree with your idealism, but I think the best we're going to get is more or less what we have now, otherwise we end up in the space where program x works with o/s y version z subsystem q, but not the other combinations you'd hope for. I'm still annoyed that we don't design enough for the future that when a new O/S version/architecture gets released there isn't more effort to save the past. We have a perfectly serviceable relatively recent printer (4-5 years old?) that my wife now can't use because her new Mac which replaced her 12 year old mac, now doesn't have a driver for it, because there are no Sonoma versions of it. I think we err on the wrong side of creating waste at the expense of not doing (admittedly annoying) work. To get back on topic, this was the point of subsytems - you managed to hold onto and get access to the past you liked from within your walled garden.

Teever 3y ago

Totally. I don't want to derail the conversation too much but when I look at what Notch has become since he became a billionaire it's frankly pathetic. Princes & Kings Isn't it strange how princes and kings, and clowns that caper in sawdust rings, and common people, like you and me, are builders for eternity? Each is given a list of rules; a shapeless mass; a bag of tools. And each must fashion, ere life is flown, A stumbling block, or a Stepping-Stone. ― R. Lee Sharpe

minton 3y ago
What happened to Notch?
- twisteriffic 3y ago
  Bit down on about every right wing conspiracy theory you can come up with.
- low_tech_love 3y ago
  Nothing special, I think that’s what he/she meant.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  I assume his tendency to say things that upset a particularly sensitive political milieu, but I can't say that's what they meant for certain.
  - Teever 3y ago
    Is that really how you interpreted my comment? My critique of Notch is that he doesn't do cool stuff anymore. Stuff like that weird space game that he was talking about making, or something like BSD on windows.
    - SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
      Ah OK. I guess I interpreted it differently because I don't follow him as a person. So my exposure to him is usually people complaining about something he said, or someone saying what he said was based. I know very little of his projects after Minecraft, so I just used the info I have. I dunno why you'd be sore about it, the guy already paid his dues? Again though, bot familiar eith what he goes around promising.

rnd0 3y ago

I'd go for a full-fledged BSD subsystem, myself. From what he wrote on the blog it sounds like this would be a pain in the butt to use for anything substantial.

scruffyherder 3y ago

I was able to cross compile from windows to BOW https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/12/cross-compiling-to-bsd-on-windows-bow-from-win32/ https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/12/cross-compiling-to-bsd-o...