*BSD News Article 33575


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From: rmk@rmkhome.com (Rick Kelly)
Subject: Re: Usefulness of BSD/Linux Source Knowledge (was BSD vs. LINUX)
Organization: The Man With Ten Cats
References: <30jqp1$ees@grex.cyberspace.org> <1994Jul21.182603.15882@belvedere.sbay.org> <2NsBkiCqLiLU068yn@cs.odu.edu> <30pn0a$9rf@hermes.unt.edu> <CtEuyA.En1@world.std.com> <1994Jul24.185248.5906@escape.widomaker.com> <cln.775305310@dynamo> <1994Jul29.041113.7319@escape.widomaker.com>
Message-ID: <9407311534.44@rmkhome.com>
Reply-To: rmk@rmkhome.com (Rick Kelly)
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 20:34:46 GMT
Lines: 96

Shannon Hendrix (shendrix@escape.widomaker.com) wrote:
: matthew green (mrg@mame.mu.OZ.AU) wrote:
: : shendrix@escape.widomaker.com (Shannon Hendrix) writes:

: : as i've pointed out before, netbsd and freebsd (and 4.4,
: : for that matter), -also- follow posix carefully.  and as

: And as I've pointed out I never said BSD didn't have it.

: : jtc rightly pointed out, none of them have been tested,
: : though, so none can _claim_ posix conformance.

: Oh they've been tested... by programmers everywhere.  I write compliant
: programs and the port trivially compared to before I started reading
: POSIX guidlines.  Of course, habit is still the winner but I'm gradually
: making the shift to POSIX code and it's making things much smoother.  So
: while I might not be able to claim conformance 100% I certainly know
: it's working for me.

You are a rarity in the industry.  I haven't looked at a POSIX book in
years.  There are a lot of companies where development is only now,
begrudgingly, changing over to ANSI C.

: : sunos 5 is not svr4.2 - it is svr4.0

: Minor bauble on my part, and on Sun's since that's what their reps
: told me 2 days ago.  The local office has been known to be less than
: accurate so I'll accept what you say.

There is a certain significance here.  Sun has bought a permanent source
license from Novell for SVR4.0.  So while Novell has gone on to SVR4.2,
Sun is now free to stray in any direction that they want.

: : as much as sun hate it, sunos4 is still alive and kicking,
: : currently.  sadly though, it won't last.

: Yep, we'll be running it on our 4/xxx machines till they croak I guess
: since Solaris is so slow on them.  Networking really takes a hit... I
: supposed it's STREAMS based in solaris 2.x?  Hopefully the SS10's are
: fast enough so the extra overhead of Solaris 2.x isn't all that bad.
: And, we probably could just run 4.1.3 on them but Sun says they'll
: ship with Solaris 2.x.  They pretty much won't discuss getting 4.1.3.
: Secondly, for various reasons we'll pretty much have to run Solaris
: anyway.

You must have a bad relationship with Sun.

We are currently buying Classic, Sparc 20, and Sparc 1000 boxes that show
up with a Solaris 1.1.1_U1 Release B (4.1.3) CD-ROM.

: : posix doesn't get your that much, really.  it is very
: : very restrictive to write _purely_ posix code.  (if

: Yes, but not that bad.  Actually, writing good C is one of the best
: ways to make code portable.  A lot of the POSIX books spend a lot of
: time discussing that as much as POSIX conformance.

: : you want to discuss this further, take it to email,
: : or to some other group - it does not belong here).

: : why is bsd dead?  there are _several_ commercial bsd
: : unixes available, but no linux ones.  i don't see why
: : you think bsd is dead.

: I mean dead in the sense that UNIX vendors are moving away from it
: and it's not likely that future systems will be running BSD.  They'll
: ship with SysV UNIX.  Many already are.  Of course, I'm sure BSD
: will get ported to them if people find the time but it won't be from
: the vendors and thus most of the machines will be running SysV.

So then BSDI is out of business?

: : you claim that bsd is dead, above, and then state here
: : that it is `getting a lot of the stuff from SysV' in it.

: So?  That's not contradictory.  Atari ST's are getting a lot of UNIX
: code running on them.  Atari is still dead and so is Amiga (and lot's
: of UNIX code is still being ported to Amigas).

The Amiga had a port of SVR4.

: : i wish at&t would die, and take svr4 with it.  it's
: : really sad that svr4 is the ``industry standard.''

: I agree.  But since I've got to start using SysV pretty soon at work I'm
: just focusing on being glad I get to program in UNIX at work and not
: Windows or some other crap.  At least I can get my favorite BSD and GNU
: software running under SysV after a little effort.

This all depends on the particular SYSV platform that you're working
on.


-- 

Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  rmk@bedford.progress.com