Hi Nicholas (and everybody)!
We are getting off topic here, but it's still an interesting discussion.
On Tuesday 17 April 2007, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 08:45:37PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > On Monday 16 April 2007, brian d foy wrote:
> > > Mac OS X isn't "mostly compatible with UNIX", it is a *nix.
> > >
> > > Use.perl is missing from the Web Forums link
> >
> > Thanks for you commentary. I disagree about the Mac OS X one - some
> > things about Mac OS X differ from most other Unix-flavours, including
the
> > absense of most of /etc, their case-sensitivity problems, their
extended
> > file properties (that have often broken perl Makefile.PL) etc. I hate
the
> > term *nix because
>
> eg the use of dylib rather than dlopen (prior to 10.4), Because dlopen
is
> far less restrictive in what it allows. Given that most open source
> software hails from Linux, Solaris or *BSD where dlopen is used, it ends
up
> accidentally taking advantage of dlopen's laxness.
>
Interesting.
Well, I've started concentrating facts and links against Apple here:
http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/
Email me in private if you have any additions.
> > no one understands what it is, while "Unix-compatible, a Unix-clone, a
> > Unix-flavour, etc." is much clearer.
>
> It's a FreeBSD fork atop a Mach microkernel.
>
> It's pukka Unix, more so than Linux actually is. As I understand it,
Linux
> doesn't derive code from the original AT&T source tree, whereas FreeBSD
> does:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/history.html
>
Yes, I know Linux has all of its code rewritten from scratch. However, it
doesn't mean it's not UNIX-compatible. If someone writes a Perl
5-compatible
implementation from scratch and it p***** all the relevant tests and
behaves
according to perl*.pod it would still be a Perl implementation. That's
just
like there are (too) many Scheme implementations that are all mostly R5RS
compatible.
> Linux neither uses any of the AT&T code base, nor p***** the Unix
trademark
> conformance tests (unlike, say, z/OS) so isn't.
Like it or not, nowadays Linux has become the de-facto standard due to its
popularity, feature-set, robustness, extensive hardware sup****t (second
only
to Windows), ****tability (re****tedly even more extensive than NetBSD),
etc.
etc. It seems that the Linux Standard Base will define how future
Linux-compatible operating systems will look like. UNIX as a concept is
still
very much alive, but Linux or alternatively "*BSD" is what everybody uses
and
write for.
If you know what you're doing, you won't have problem writing code that
works
on most modern UNIX-like systems, and also potentially Win32/Win64 or even
more exotic systems. However, in most cases, you can write a program that
will only run on GNU/Linux, and most of your end-users will be happy.
>
> Whatever term you choose to use, for whatever reason, does not make you
> correct when the facts are against you.
Right.
>
> Unix-flavour would be an accurate description, and you are correct that
it
> is not that similar to many other flavours of Unix, which has practical
> implications, which you are wise to note. But clone it is not.
>
Hmmm... I hate picky semantics' nazism. But I guess I can phrase myself
better. When I say something is a UNIX, I don't mean it got the UNIX
trademark for the UNIX class of operating systems. I just mean it
resembles
Linux, the BSDs, Solaris, etc. As you know UNIX flavours come in all
shapes
and sizes, and have different philosophies and different ways of doing
things. But they all share a common paradigm.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish shlomif@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.shlomifish.org/
If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
-- An Israeli Linuxer
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