Xah Lee's Unixism

[Patrick Scheible]

Rupert Pigott <roo at try-removing-this.darkboong.demon.co.uk> writes:

> John Thingstad wrote:
> > On Thu, 02 Sep 2004 08:35:30 GMT, Brian Inglis
> > <Brian.Inglis at SystematicSW.Invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 14:26:03 GMT in alt.folklore.computers, "John W.
> >> Kennedy" <jwkenne at attglobal.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Andre Majorel wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 2004-08-31, Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis at SystematicSW.Invalid> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 01:12:55 +0000 (UTC) in alt.folklore.computers,
> >>>>> Andre Majorel <amajorel at teezer.fr> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On 2004-08-30, Antony Sequeira <usemyfullname at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>> Windows (MS) is not 'Unixism'?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> If by unixism, you mean any operating system that has a
> >>>>>> hierarchical filesystem and byte stream files, yes. But that
> >>>>>> would include quite a few other non-Unix operating systems,
> >>>>>> including Mac OS 9, Prologue and probably everything else this
> >>>>>> side of CP/M (DOS 1.x shall be deemed to be CP/M).
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> DOS 2.x+ shall be deemed to be CP/M+!
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Wasn't it in version 2 that they added directories and
> >>>> Unix-style file handles ?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Yes, and also a single-process pipe emulator.  Ever since 2.0, MS has
> >>> been trying to turn MS-DOS (later, Windows) into a Unix clone.
> >>
> >>
> >> MS has been borrowing code from Unix to create a real OS: TCP/IP;
> >> NTFS<-ffs; memory mapped files<-mmap.
> >> Shame they keep trying to add their own ideas in too: that must be
> >> what causes the crashes!
> >>
> > You seeem misinformed.
> > Microsoft swallowed up a team from DEC.
> > The were developing a operating system called PRISM.
> > When the project was cancelled they quit DEC in protest.
> > These peaple had more than a 100 years of experience in developing
> > muliuser /
> > mutitasking operating systems between them. The fact that the NT
> > kernel is  not
> > entirely stable yet really shouldn't supprise anyone. Afterall Unix
> > has  messed with
> > it's kernel for 30 years. But the modular arcitecture and the
> > microkernel  are new ideas in
> > OS design and should in time lead to a more extensible OS than unix.
> 
> uKernels are *NOT* a new idea at all. They weren't a new idea when
> NT was unleashed on the world. What people think of as "NT" is a big
> pile of shite that obscures the uKernel. Since the graphics stuff
> got put into ring 0 I think that you could legitimately claim that
> BSD Unix is more of a micro kernel than NT. :)
> 
> > (Unix tradionally has a spagetti of intercalling function calls as a
> > kernel.)
> 
> Remember NeXTStep ?

Yes.  NeXTStep didn't have a microkernel.  The Mach kernel didn't get
changed to a microkernel design until after NeXTStep split off from
it.

-- Patrick