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Unlike some other commenters, I believe having alternatives to coreutils is beneficial. Since I started using Unix, I've worked with HPUX, IRIX, SunOS, Solaris,
by vzaliva 2y ago
Unlike some other commenters, I believe having alternatives to coreutils is beneficial. Since I started using Unix, I've worked with HPUX, IRIX, SunOS, Solaris, *BSD, Linux, Xenix, and probably a few others I've forgotten. This diversity in implementations necessitated standardization. Nowadays, 90% of the systems I use are various Linux distributions, and I often encounter packages that implicitly assume on specific versions like GNU make or GNU tar. Having alternatives encourages better compatibility and flexibility across different systems.
- IntelMiner 2y agoIn the 90's that balkanization was problematic because everyone was reinventing UNIX but with "our one useful feature" (graphics rendering, networked machines, etc) Eventually it boiled down to today where we have the BSD's and Linux. Other than helping force compatibility with the BSD's, who else stands to benefit from breaking away from "GNU-isms"? MacOS?
- account42 2y agoBSDs still exist though and they do have their own make and tar. Of course they tend to also have GNU versions for ports because that's easier than fixing all software. So existence of alternatives is not enough, people also need to care about them.