5 ms·

Unix desktops

77 points by signa11 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago
The best UNIX desktops experiences were the ones with vertical integration, where the desktop, vendor tooling and hardware provided a unique experience, instead of yet another UNIX fork. NeWS, NeXTSTEP, Irix, ... As for Android and Chrome OS, yeah they might use Linux kernel, which is an implementation detail on Android SDK/NDK official APIs for app developers, and on ChromeOS only exposed via the sandboxed Crostini environment. Google could switch to another POSIX like kernel and app developers would barely notice, only OEMs and people rooting their devices would.
- benreesman 3y ago
  In a lot of ways macOS is that. It’s a very workable Unix and (I wasn’t watching when), Homebrew has gone from being a PITA even on its home turf to working great on everything from NixOS to WSL2. But I’m still about one free weekend away from virtualizing Linux on my Macs because you just hit a limit with Yubai or Rectangle or Divvy or whatever. I want a real tiler, I want rounded corners to fuck off, and I’ll pay a little in sub-pixel hinting to get it.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    OS X is still basically NeXTSTEP in many regards.
    - SllX 3y ago
      A fairer characterization would be to say it is in NeXTSTEP’s lineage. Not only had a lot changed by 10.0, but at this point Mac OS X has been under development (and forked into multiple OS projects several times over) more than twice as long as NeXT had existed as an independent entity.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Some ways in how the NeXTSTEP culture prevails in 2024. Its approach to kernel design, the way drivers are written in a OOP based framework, UNIX is there as bottom layer (certified even) but doesn't get the spotlight, Objective-C (and now Swift) frameworks is all that matters for developers invested into the platform, heavy IDE based development (remember famous Sun vs NeXT 1990's commercial), what cool stuff can be done with OS frameworks (starting with products like Lotus Improv or Web Objects). This is what I meant, not what NSSomething are still in use.
        SllX 3y ago
        I gotchu and I understand what you mean, just assisting with clarity because it is more fair to say "Mac OS X has continued the lineage of NeXTSTEP" than it is to say "Mac OS X is basically NeXTSTEP." Think about everything Mac OS X has or has had which NeXTSTEP has never had. DTrace, HFS+ and then APFS, Quartz replaced Display PostScript, OpenGL and Metal, IOKit replaced DriverKit and is now being functionally replaced (at least in part) by something called Driver Kit, Catalyst, SwiftUI, Quick Look, Spotlight, Safari/WebKit, Keychain, Xcode has replaced both Project Builder and Interface Builder, Core Audio, Core Animation, QuickTime and then QTKit and then AVFoundation, I mean the list goes on. Unicode is everywhere now too, which is neat; NeXTSTEP and Mac OS had their own character encodings. Carbon was also a significant technology for the first few years, as was the first Rosetta (and we have Rosetta 2 now), and the Classic environment. So, clarifying more than disagreeing. :)
    - flohofwoe 3y ago
      Only under the hood unfortunately. It would be great to have a desktop OS aimed at professional use again, but everybody has been chasing the needs of the mythical "casual user" in the last few decades (which is basically the tiny cross section of the taste and requirements of all computer users lumped together, but that tiny cross section on its own is useless without being extensible and customizable to the needs of each specific user)
      - mbreese 3y ago
        What are the features you’d say are required for “professional” use? I can think of a few things that I’d like to see, such as better keyboard navigation and the return of a spatial finder. But I think that if you asked ten people that question (especially here), you’d get 11 different opinions. So the only option is something that covers a pretty minimalist overlap.
        flohofwoe 3y ago
        Mostly things that would hurt security unfortunately, e.g. opening up (maybe even requiring) each UI application to be scriptable and (to some extent at least) controlable from the command line (e.g. going full in on ideas like AppleScript and Automator instead of letting those go stale), getting rid of the stupid notarization requirements and quarantine mode for executables downloaded from the the internet, being able to extend OS features with system-wide plugins (e.g. installing new 'data types'), being able to extend the Finder with new features (similar to how TortoiseSVN integrated into the Windows explorer context menues), provide an official package manager (although Homebrew is mostly good enough). E.g. there should be a toggle which says "this is my computer, I want to do with it what I want, and yes, I know the risks and won't sue Apple if things go sideways").
        sbuk 3y ago
        There kind of is. Restart in recovery mode, open a terminal and type `csrutil disable`. Also, there are finder extensions that do what you suggest.
  - Thri4895o 3y ago
    I thing macos sucks for Linux development. There is not enough memory and disk space for virtualization, so you run random scripts from Internet on your main machine. Command line tools are decades old and obsolete...
    - steve1977 3y ago
      How is not enough memory or storage a problem of the operating system?
      - walterbell 3y ago
        Problem of the macOS licensing model, which mandates excessive margins for bundled memory and storage.
        microtonal 3y ago
        I usually bought a Mac every 1.5 years or so, because I liked being on the cutting edge. However, I am now still rocking a 2021 MacBook Pro 14" because it's still great. In half a year the model is about 3 years old. When I purchased it, it was close to 3000 Euro, and it has 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. If I'd sell it, I'd still get between 1000 and 1500 Euro. Let's say for the sake of the argument I get 1200 when it is three years old, then the yearly cost was 600 Euro. Which is... cheap for a tool that I use daily and my income depends on? I mean, if I had to drive by car to work, my yearly cost would be much more than 600 Euro. I would readily agree that Apple overcharges for memory and SSD, but the amortized cost is not really large.
        Thri4895o 3y ago
        If you depend on this machine for living... You should have a spare machine. Way to recover data very fast if it breaks.... Way to fix it... It gets expensive pretty fast. Also if you travel with Mac, you need to carry two laptops. There is no easy way to move NVME drive to new machine like with Pc laptops.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    Does Homebrew not mess up permissions on a multiuser system anymore? (haven’t checked for a while, using MacPorts)
irusensei 3y ago
Sad part is to know how many great ideas have been crushed by circumstance or bad decisions. Just imagine all the cool stuff we could have today if companies like SGI and Be had survived. Even Sun was giving the world things like ZFS and OpenSolaris before Oracle killed it.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Has Oracle killed it, or everyone else that didn't care for Sun's assets leaving Oracle as the only bidder left? How much responsibility carries Google by torpedoing Sun with Android, IBM for withdrawing their offer, everyone else for not caring?
  - microtonal 3y ago
    Yeah, even when Sun made Solaris open source, not a lot of people cared. It spawned a small number of derivative distributions, but it barely got any traction. By that the time Sun open sourced Solaris Linux had long won the server market and the small FLOSS desktop niche.
Gud 3y ago
I'm still using a Unix desktop, it's called FreeBSD, and it's awesome. The article doesn't mention the shameful lawsuit against Berkley Software Design and the University of California over some alleged UNIX code in the BSD source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc..... "Of the 18,000 files in the Berkeley distribution, only three had to be removed and 70 modified to show USL copyright notices. A further condition of the settlement was that USL would not file further lawsuits against users and distributors of the upcoming 4.4BSD-Lite release."
- blackhaz 3y ago
  After 5 years running FreeBSD and Xfce on my laptop I cannot imagine using anything else. I have a few Windows machines in the house and I am always flabbergasted how slow, ad-ridden and convoluted they are. To each his own, of course, but Unix desktop is absolutely freaking awesome today.
  - Gud 3y ago
    Indeed! I've been using the same setup for 20 years - FreeBSD + XFCE, and I love it. I toyed around with different window managers and desktop environments, but I think the developers of XFCE and I have the same philosophy. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Not much has changed how I use my computer network over the last two decades, only small improvements, and the introduction of ZFS(a game changer). While in my corporate job I am forced to use Windows, and for every year that passes, somehow it has gotten worse. The start menu was replaced by some horror show. The settings I used to easily change in the control panel in the Windows NT/2000/XP era are now all over the place, and always changing. And now recently, I have to go through the Microsoft app store to download software for my HP printer?? I've had similar experiences with Linux, where things are changing for no good reason. One day, ifconfig was replaced with ip???? While in FreeBSD, it's the same old configuration files as it always was. There is one thing I miss though, and that is functioning bluetooth. The wifi is not the best, but I get by using wifibox, a tiny virtual linux machine with pci passthrough for my wifi network interface. Despite this, I still prefer FreeBSD over any other operating system. OpenBSD is great, too. With the BSDs, I am in control of my hardware, not some profit driven mega corporation. end rant
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vermaden 3y ago
I use UNIX desktop daily since 19 years and its great. Details: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/
- heywoodlh 3y ago
  Been a long-time lurker of your blog. Some of the best FreeBSD content out there, imo, thank you for putting it out there. Despite never being able to fully commit to a BSD over Linux/MacOS (due to hardware compatibility, lack of Linux containerization support, and now being fully invested in Nix) I appreciate the core values of the FreeBSD project. At one point, I got Docker up and running on FreeBSD with Lima[0]. At this point, I’d be really curious how well Nix does on [Free,Open]BSD — I think I’d switch if I knew Nix was rock solid. Regardless, thanks for your blog — it’s invaluable to anyone getting into FreeBSD. :) [0] https://heywoodlh.io/freebsd-docker-2022 https://heywoodlh.io/freebsd-docker-2022
simonblack 3y ago
I discovered that, almost without noticing it, I had been using LinuxMint MATE for about a dozen years. Even when I install a Debian system, I use the MATE desktop with that also. Before Linux, I was using Solaris as my daily driver. That was good too. There are many reasons Windows beat Unix. Windows didn't beat UNIX. Linux beat UNIX. The rise of the Linux-based internet was what killed both UNIX and Windows servers.
AtomicOrbital 3y ago
seems bizarre Ubuntu is not mentioned ... its the 800 pound elephant in the room ... to me its the path of least resistance for server side developers ... especially when kicking tires of endless repos on a daily basis

77 points by signa11 3y ago

The best UNIX desktops experiences were the ones with vertical integration, where the desktop, vendor tooling and hardware provided a unique experience, instead of yet another UNIX fork. NeWS, NeXTSTEP, Irix, ... As for Android and Chrome OS, yeah they might use Linux kernel, which is an implementation detail on Android SDK/NDK official APIs for app developers, and on ChromeOS only exposed via the sandboxed Crostini environment. Google could switch to another POSIX like kernel and app developers would barely notice, only OEMs and people rooting their devices would.

benreesman 3y ago
In a lot of ways macOS is that. It’s a very workable Unix and (I wasn’t watching when), Homebrew has gone from being a PITA even on its home turf to working great on everything from NixOS to WSL2. But I’m still about one free weekend away from virtualizing Linux on my Macs because you just hit a limit with Yubai or Rectangle or Divvy or whatever. I want a real tiler, I want rounded corners to fuck off, and I’ll pay a little in sub-pixel hinting to get it.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  OS X is still basically NeXTSTEP in many regards.
  - SllX 3y ago
    A fairer characterization would be to say it is in NeXTSTEP’s lineage. Not only had a lot changed by 10.0, but at this point Mac OS X has been under development (and forked into multiple OS projects several times over) more than twice as long as NeXT had existed as an independent entity.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Some ways in how the NeXTSTEP culture prevails in 2024. Its approach to kernel design, the way drivers are written in a OOP based framework, UNIX is there as bottom layer (certified even) but doesn't get the spotlight, Objective-C (and now Swift) frameworks is all that matters for developers invested into the platform, heavy IDE based development (remember famous Sun vs NeXT 1990's commercial), what cool stuff can be done with OS frameworks (starting with products like Lotus Improv or Web Objects). This is what I meant, not what NSSomething are still in use.
      - SllX 3y ago
        I gotchu and I understand what you mean, just assisting with clarity because it is more fair to say "Mac OS X has continued the lineage of NeXTSTEP" than it is to say "Mac OS X is basically NeXTSTEP." Think about everything Mac OS X has or has had which NeXTSTEP has never had. DTrace, HFS+ and then APFS, Quartz replaced Display PostScript, OpenGL and Metal, IOKit replaced DriverKit and is now being functionally replaced (at least in part) by something called Driver Kit, Catalyst, SwiftUI, Quick Look, Spotlight, Safari/WebKit, Keychain, Xcode has replaced both Project Builder and Interface Builder, Core Audio, Core Animation, QuickTime and then QTKit and then AVFoundation, I mean the list goes on. Unicode is everywhere now too, which is neat; NeXTSTEP and Mac OS had their own character encodings. Carbon was also a significant technology for the first few years, as was the first Rosetta (and we have Rosetta 2 now), and the Classic environment. So, clarifying more than disagreeing. :)
  - flohofwoe 3y ago
    Only under the hood unfortunately. It would be great to have a desktop OS aimed at professional use again, but everybody has been chasing the needs of the mythical "casual user" in the last few decades (which is basically the tiny cross section of the taste and requirements of all computer users lumped together, but that tiny cross section on its own is useless without being extensible and customizable to the needs of each specific user)
    - mbreese 3y ago
      What are the features you’d say are required for “professional” use? I can think of a few things that I’d like to see, such as better keyboard navigation and the return of a spatial finder. But I think that if you asked ten people that question (especially here), you’d get 11 different opinions. So the only option is something that covers a pretty minimalist overlap.
      - flohofwoe 3y ago
        Mostly things that would hurt security unfortunately, e.g. opening up (maybe even requiring) each UI application to be scriptable and (to some extent at least) controlable from the command line (e.g. going full in on ideas like AppleScript and Automator instead of letting those go stale), getting rid of the stupid notarization requirements and quarantine mode for executables downloaded from the the internet, being able to extend OS features with system-wide plugins (e.g. installing new 'data types'), being able to extend the Finder with new features (similar to how TortoiseSVN integrated into the Windows explorer context menues), provide an official package manager (although Homebrew is mostly good enough). E.g. there should be a toggle which says "this is my computer, I want to do with it what I want, and yes, I know the risks and won't sue Apple if things go sideways").
        sbuk 3y ago
        There kind of is. Restart in recovery mode, open a terminal and type `csrutil disable`. Also, there are finder extensions that do what you suggest.
- Thri4895o 3y ago
  I thing macos sucks for Linux development. There is not enough memory and disk space for virtualization, so you run random scripts from Internet on your main machine. Command line tools are decades old and obsolete...
  - steve1977 3y ago
    How is not enough memory or storage a problem of the operating system?
    - walterbell 3y ago
      Problem of the macOS licensing model, which mandates excessive margins for bundled memory and storage.
      - microtonal 3y ago
        I usually bought a Mac every 1.5 years or so, because I liked being on the cutting edge. However, I am now still rocking a 2021 MacBook Pro 14" because it's still great. In half a year the model is about 3 years old. When I purchased it, it was close to 3000 Euro, and it has 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. If I'd sell it, I'd still get between 1000 and 1500 Euro. Let's say for the sake of the argument I get 1200 when it is three years old, then the yearly cost was 600 Euro. Which is... cheap for a tool that I use daily and my income depends on? I mean, if I had to drive by car to work, my yearly cost would be much more than 600 Euro. I would readily agree that Apple overcharges for memory and SSD, but the amortized cost is not really large.
        Thri4895o 3y ago
        If you depend on this machine for living... You should have a spare machine. Way to recover data very fast if it breaks.... Way to fix it... It gets expensive pretty fast. Also if you travel with Mac, you need to carry two laptops. There is no easy way to move NVME drive to new machine like with Pc laptops.
- steve1977 3y ago
  Does Homebrew not mess up permissions on a multiuser system anymore? (haven’t checked for a while, using MacPorts)

irusensei 3y ago

Sad part is to know how many great ideas have been crushed by circumstance or bad decisions. Just imagine all the cool stuff we could have today if companies like SGI and Be had survived. Even Sun was giving the world things like ZFS and OpenSolaris before Oracle killed it.

pjmlp 3y ago
Has Oracle killed it, or everyone else that didn't care for Sun's assets leaving Oracle as the only bidder left? How much responsibility carries Google by torpedoing Sun with Android, IBM for withdrawing their offer, everyone else for not caring?
- microtonal 3y ago
  Yeah, even when Sun made Solaris open source, not a lot of people cared. It spawned a small number of derivative distributions, but it barely got any traction. By that the time Sun open sourced Solaris Linux had long won the server market and the small FLOSS desktop niche.

Gud 3y ago

I'm still using a Unix desktop, it's called FreeBSD, and it's awesome. The article doesn't mention the shameful lawsuit against Berkley Software Design and the University of California over some alleged UNIX code in the BSD source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc._v._Berkeley_Software_Design,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc..... "Of the 18,000 files in the Berkeley distribution, only three had to be removed and 70 modified to show USL copyright notices. A further condition of the settlement was that USL would not file further lawsuits against users and distributors of the upcoming 4.4BSD-Lite release."

blackhaz 3y ago
After 5 years running FreeBSD and Xfce on my laptop I cannot imagine using anything else. I have a few Windows machines in the house and I am always flabbergasted how slow, ad-ridden and convoluted they are. To each his own, of course, but Unix desktop is absolutely freaking awesome today.
- Gud 3y ago
  Indeed! I've been using the same setup for 20 years - FreeBSD + XFCE, and I love it. I toyed around with different window managers and desktop environments, but I think the developers of XFCE and I have the same philosophy. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Not much has changed how I use my computer network over the last two decades, only small improvements, and the introduction of ZFS(a game changer). While in my corporate job I am forced to use Windows, and for every year that passes, somehow it has gotten worse. The start menu was replaced by some horror show. The settings I used to easily change in the control panel in the Windows NT/2000/XP era are now all over the place, and always changing. And now recently, I have to go through the Microsoft app store to download software for my HP printer?? I've had similar experiences with Linux, where things are changing for no good reason. One day, ifconfig was replaced with ip???? While in FreeBSD, it's the same old configuration files as it always was. There is one thing I miss though, and that is functioning bluetooth. The wifi is not the best, but I get by using wifibox, a tiny virtual linux machine with pci passthrough for my wifi network interface. Despite this, I still prefer FreeBSD over any other operating system. OpenBSD is great, too. With the BSDs, I am in control of my hardware, not some profit driven mega corporation. end rant

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

vermaden 3y ago

I use UNIX desktop daily since 19 years and its great. Details: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/

heywoodlh 3y ago
Been a long-time lurker of your blog. Some of the best FreeBSD content out there, imo, thank you for putting it out there. Despite never being able to fully commit to a BSD over Linux/MacOS (due to hardware compatibility, lack of Linux containerization support, and now being fully invested in Nix) I appreciate the core values of the FreeBSD project. At one point, I got Docker up and running on FreeBSD with Lima[0]. At this point, I’d be really curious how well Nix does on [Free,Open]BSD — I think I’d switch if I knew Nix was rock solid. Regardless, thanks for your blog — it’s invaluable to anyone getting into FreeBSD. :) [0] https://heywoodlh.io/freebsd-docker-2022 https://heywoodlh.io/freebsd-docker-2022

simonblack 3y ago

I discovered that, almost without noticing it, I had been using LinuxMint MATE for about a dozen years. Even when I install a Debian system, I use the MATE desktop with that also. Before Linux, I was using Solaris as my daily driver. That was good too. There are many reasons Windows beat Unix. Windows didn't beat UNIX. Linux beat UNIX. The rise of the Linux-based internet was what killed both UNIX and Windows servers.

AtomicOrbital 3y ago

seems bizarre Ubuntu is not mentioned ... its the 800 pound elephant in the room ... to me its the path of least resistance for server side developers ... especially when kicking tires of endless repos on a daily basis