Xah Lee's Unixism

[Rupert Pigott]

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 ?

> As for following standards thats just plain sense.
> Note the Mac OS 10 / Darwin uses a unix kernel because of all the 
> problems  with
> interoperabillity OS 9 had with talking to Windows and Unix boxes.

Which I believe is derived from a Mach uKernel... The "UNIX" bits
are the FreeBSD userland utilities that surround it.

Cheers,
Rupert