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I'm actually using the Plan 9 userland with my Ubuntu install. I think that since Unix was already decades ahead of any other operating system in the 70s and 8

by kunai 14y ago

I'm actually using the Plan 9 userland with my Ubuntu install. I think that since Unix was already decades ahead of any other operating system in the 70s and 80s, we're not seeing any real growth. I still have yet to see NT be as reliable as a Linux, BSD, or OS X install from 10 years ago.

pjmlp 14y ago
I remember NT being a reliable OS since the NT 4.0 days. Contrary to the hacked installations of Linux and BSD or the continuous beach balls of death from Mac OS X around 10-15 years ago.
- kunai 14y ago
  How are Linux and BSD installs "hacked"? Open-source Unix has for decades been one of the most contiguous, cohesive, and consistently packaged software experiences in all of computer history. I don't really get your point here.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    My point was the effort required 10-15 years ago to install Linux and BSD distributions into any off-the-self computer.
    - jonhohle 14y ago
      Certainly 10 years ago and debatably 15 years ago Linux already had graphical installers and more comprehensive out of the box drivers (in certain distros) than Windows. Mandrake, RedHat, SuSe were all very user friendly around the turn of the century. BSDs took a little more work, but were relatively friendly to install and worked on a wide variety of hardware around that time as well.
      - pjmlp 14y ago
        IF you had the right hardware.
- beagle3 14y ago
  We've been living in different universes then. With NT4 they moved graphics drivers into the kernel, and these were crashing often. NT3.5 was stable in this regard, although dog slow. They also added the I/O fastpath in NT4, to combat dog slowness -- and as a result of not thinking hard enough about that, killed the ability to unload storage drivers, which actually mattered to me. And that's just the design decisions - the implementatin was also abysmal; there were remote exploits published daily in those days, and only half of them were through IE (which had no reason to be bundled into the OS except for MS world domination plans, but as it was and was unremovable, it was a convenient attack vector. And don't get me started on concurrency bugs that I reported to MS on NT4 and as of Server 2003 were not yet fixed.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    > We've been living in different universes then. Well, I was doing multi-platform C development across all major commercial UNIX vendors and NT on those days, what about you? > With NT4 they moved graphics drivers into the kernel, and these were crashing often. NT3.5 was stable in this regard, although dog slow. At least they did work, not the same could be said about Linux and BSD distributions with their open source drivers 10 years ago. > And that's just the design decisions - the implementatin was also abysmal; there were remote exploits published daily in those days, and only half of them were through IE (which had no reason to be bundled into the OS except for MS world domination plans, but as it was and was unremovable, it was a convenient attack vector. Windows problems with security were no different than any other desktop operating system before it. As for being the beloved target for hacking, it happens with every system they see value into cracking, as the increase in mobile malware shows. > And don't get me started on concurrency bugs that I reported to MS on NT4 and as of Server 2003 were not yet fixed. Are every single bug fixes you report to open source projects fixed?
    - cgh 14y ago
      > Well, I was doing multi-platform C development across all major commercial UNIX vendors and NT on those days, what about you? HP-UX and AIX for me, and NT (my colleagues also worked on Netware, but I wasn't involved with it). My experiences are different than yours: we had near-daily BSODs and the system was generally regarded as a bit of a joke. We worked closely with MS back then (late '90s) and I met some of the kernel team, who told me about the farce of pushing GDI into the kernel - the worst mistake they ever made in terms of stability, though usability-wise it was great. The Windows UI was silky smooth on the limited hardware of the time. But yeah, in my experience NT defenders were few and far between back then.
jordan0day 14y ago
As has been mentioned in other comments, the idea that Unix was "decades ahead of any other operating system..." is debatable. For an insightful (but obviously biased) account of Unix's history, read the first chapter or two of "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook" (http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf). It was written back in the early 90's by a group of academics who distinctly felt that Unix was too beholden to its late-60's origins, and its' widespread adoption has held back new developments.

by kunai 14y ago

pjmlp 14y ago

I remember NT being a reliable OS since the NT 4.0 days. Contrary to the hacked installations of Linux and BSD or the continuous beach balls of death from Mac OS X around 10-15 years ago.

kunai 14y ago
How are Linux and BSD installs "hacked"? Open-source Unix has for decades been one of the most contiguous, cohesive, and consistently packaged software experiences in all of computer history. I don't really get your point here.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  My point was the effort required 10-15 years ago to install Linux and BSD distributions into any off-the-self computer.
  - jonhohle 14y ago
    Certainly 10 years ago and debatably 15 years ago Linux already had graphical installers and more comprehensive out of the box drivers (in certain distros) than Windows. Mandrake, RedHat, SuSe were all very user friendly around the turn of the century. BSDs took a little more work, but were relatively friendly to install and worked on a wide variety of hardware around that time as well.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      IF you had the right hardware.
beagle3 14y ago
We've been living in different universes then. With NT4 they moved graphics drivers into the kernel, and these were crashing often. NT3.5 was stable in this regard, although dog slow. They also added the I/O fastpath in NT4, to combat dog slowness -- and as a result of not thinking hard enough about that, killed the ability to unload storage drivers, which actually mattered to me. And that's just the design decisions - the implementatin was also abysmal; there were remote exploits published daily in those days, and only half of them were through IE (which had no reason to be bundled into the OS except for MS world domination plans, but as it was and was unremovable, it was a convenient attack vector. And don't get me started on concurrency bugs that I reported to MS on NT4 and as of Server 2003 were not yet fixed.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  > We've been living in different universes then. Well, I was doing multi-platform C development across all major commercial UNIX vendors and NT on those days, what about you? > With NT4 they moved graphics drivers into the kernel, and these were crashing often. NT3.5 was stable in this regard, although dog slow. At least they did work, not the same could be said about Linux and BSD distributions with their open source drivers 10 years ago. > And that's just the design decisions - the implementatin was also abysmal; there were remote exploits published daily in those days, and only half of them were through IE (which had no reason to be bundled into the OS except for MS world domination plans, but as it was and was unremovable, it was a convenient attack vector. Windows problems with security were no different than any other desktop operating system before it. As for being the beloved target for hacking, it happens with every system they see value into cracking, as the increase in mobile malware shows. > And don't get me started on concurrency bugs that I reported to MS on NT4 and as of Server 2003 were not yet fixed. Are every single bug fixes you report to open source projects fixed?
  - cgh 14y ago
    > Well, I was doing multi-platform C development across all major commercial UNIX vendors and NT on those days, what about you? HP-UX and AIX for me, and NT (my colleagues also worked on Netware, but I wasn't involved with it). My experiences are different than yours: we had near-daily BSODs and the system was generally regarded as a bit of a joke. We worked closely with MS back then (late '90s) and I met some of the kernel team, who told me about the farce of pushing GDI into the kernel - the worst mistake they ever made in terms of stability, though usability-wise it was great. The Windows UI was silky smooth on the limited hardware of the time. But yeah, in my experience NT defenders were few and far between back then.

jordan0day 14y ago

As has been mentioned in other comments, the idea that Unix was "decades ahead of any other operating system..." is debatable. For an insightful (but obviously biased) account of Unix's history, read the first chapter or two of "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook" (http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf). It was written back in the early 90's by a group of academics who distinctly felt that Unix was too beholden to its late-60's origins, and its' widespread adoption has held back new developments.