Figured I'd make another one of these.
Tell about your experiences with some of these.
What feature from what unix is your favorite?
What feature from a more obscure unix do you wish Loonix and *BSD had?
What feature from Loonix and *BSD do you wish they didn't have?
>Solaris
killed by Oracle
>Linux
good kernel, miserable userspace, killed by GNU
>Hurd
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAH
>macOS
darwin doesn't work in vacuum, there is nearly no freebsd, stop these stupid memes
>OpenBSD
be asperger project leader, loose userbase, can afford to make aggressive changes in system
also got stucked on Unix concepts that got obsolete in last decades
>FreeBSD
despice being used in production, ship shit... ikd how they do it but it somehow works
>killed by Oracle
revived by the community
wiki.illumos.org
>miserable userspace, killed by GNU
how?
>HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAH
Yeah it's a joke. Kinda would have been interesting to see what it would have been like if it had gone somewhere, but that's obviously not happening.
>darwin doesn't work in vacuum
There's been attempts, but I don't think any of them were successful.
>there is nearly no freebsd
Well the man pages certainly are.
"BSD General Commands Manual"
>stucked on Unix concepts that got obsolete in last decades
like what?
>ikd
wew
>>miserable userspace, killed by GNU
>how?
X11, gcc, glibc, crappy incompatible package managers, dynamic linking
>BSD General Commands Manual
indeed, it uses BSD coreutils. Not enough to claim that macOS is FreeBSD
>like what?
no namespaces, BSD sockets, filesystem in kernel, posix libc, block devices and ioctl, overusing syscalls, no /proc and similar filesystem-based kernel interfaces
>ikd
my life is a failure
>X11
Well It's all we got, even on most other unices. Wayland's coming up, but I'm not sure if that's better or worse. Also not sure what this has to do with GNU. X11 is maintained by X.org and FreeDesktop.
>gcc
I've heard from a few places that Clang is better. true?
>glibc
If other libcs are so good, why do things break when you use them? Seems like musl/uclibc are lacking in some way.
>crappy incompatible package managers
So you'd prefer every distro to use the same one?
Makes sense, although would be difficult to get everyone to agree on one.
>dynamic linking
explan
>Not enough to claim that macOS is FreeBSD
Oh don't get me wrong. I wasn't. I'm well aware that they're completely different in kernel, GUI, and, well, a lot of things. However, the command-line utilities are all FreeBSD.
>Makes sense, although would be difficult to get everyone to agree on one.
Not really actually. Turns out all you have to do is tell people to stick to one and stop being autistic. Too bad the latter request is exceptionally difficult given context.
Related to this, what do you think of projects such as flatpak?
flatpak.org
also, I agree. Autism will never die.
bump
I'm just going to type this from the viewpoint of a /win/tard, mostly focusing on WIMP interface comfiness, so bear with me (or skip the post entirely if it offends you)
I think the best age of OSes was around 2003
> Windows 2000 professional
> OS X 10.2 jaguar
> redhat linux 9 with KDE 3.1
> experimental solaris 9 x86, which supported KDE 3 and CDE
from school, Solaris on SPARC with CDE was a really well-integrated experience, kind of like OS X. it was costly niche that got killed off by free-as-in-no-pay linux on cheap x86 hardware.
OS X (also from school) was comfy until later bloated versions that decided to go flat.
I've been re-experimenting with linux mint and FreeBSD when MATE came out and the feel of it seems all right, but I haven't had much time to delve into them. they feel a bit slower, not because of bloat, but they seem to lack optimizations, probably from lack of resources, time, support (both drivers and industry), developers, etc. this fragmentation of linux (in particular in userland) feels like wasteful scattered efforts, instead of everyone focusing on a common goal (like they do on the kernel or the few popular distros and flavors). the BSDs, due to an even greater lack of resources, have resorted to porting many GNU userland utilities rather than developing them from the ground up. and niche projects like trinity or Q4OS are doomed from the start due to lack of interest. unity (literal definition, not the DE), even under proprietary/commercial dictatorship, can sometimes produce some good.
nah it's all good.
Pretty cool that you got to experience a lot of these OSes at that time. I didn't have that experience. For me, I started with WinXP on a memepad, moved on to OS X years later when that finally died, and currently am a half macfag, half freetard. (using GNU/Linux in VMs on a MacOS host. Would prefer using only GNU/Linux, but circumstances are a bitch).
I've heard another user say he fondly remembered CDE. You can actually still download and use it on GNU/Linux and BSD systems today if you want a little nostalgia trip.
I have also heard others share your same sentiment about fragmentation. It makes sense that unification would make for a better experience, although that I guess is the cost of freedom. You're not exactly going to be able to stop someone from creating their own thing if they really want to do it.
Perhaps this is where Wayland could fit in. One complain i've seen about it is that it shifts the workload from the developers of the protocol and libraries to the developers of the DEs, meaning that smaller projects might have a hard time implementing everything. That however might shrink the number of independent projects overall, increasing unity a bit.
However, unity is not always desirable. GNOME seems to be becoming the most pushed and popular DE, especially on Wayland, and everyone on here seems to think it's a bloated flatshit dumpster fire. Unity is good, but that unity could potentially get focused on a shitty idea.
bimp
bump + uwu
last bump
Why are people still hung up on this? Unix is dead. BSD is a way for corporations to use Linux without having to respect the GPL. It's not complicated.
>Unix is dead
>next sentence is about Unices that are still being actively developed
as you're seeing with windows, a bit on macs, and soon with linux, having a single species in an ecosystem is a recipe for disaster. it's only a matter of time before an architecture-specific fatal flaw is exploited with little or no possible mitigation, or too late to cover the damage (wannacry seems like the tip of the iceberg, wait for wormable killer pokes)
having a variety of organisms (here OSes and kernels) in an ecosystem provides balance and in the event of an aforementioned disaster, will decrease contagion, and will leave more survivors.
Mac is a device
Linux is a kernel
Windows is malware
Thanks for reading
Why can't all linux distributions just use apt? Why can't they all come with a default non-shit and functional gui?
>Linux is a kernel
Eat a dick
>Wayland
Didn't care about it much, can't comment.
>GCC vs Clang
gcc is bad because they pushed a lot of non-standard extensions to C/C++ and discontinued nearly anything, which breaks compatibility with strictly specification-based compilers. Clang tries for compatibility with gcc extensions so it's usable in real life.
>dynamic linking
regardless of anyones opinion on if it's good or bad, there is no way back because libraries are not built toward static linking anymore and would produce massive binaries. The argument that it saves memory is only valid because so many foundational libraries are now bloat that would produce massive binaries (including glibc).
>many package managers
They all solve signing differently, file structure differently, source and local packages differently, dependencies differently, deb packages are usable in multiple systems.
>Why can't all linux distributions just use apt?
we had this discussion earlier. It's because it would be hard to get everyone to agree on it.
Also, if everything just used apt, we wouldn't have stuff like portage.
>Why can't they all come with a default non-shit and functional gui?
Various reasons have been brought up. Some say it's because of fragmentation, some say it's because of X Windows system being shit, some say it's lack of attention due to lack of marketshare in the first place.
>Windows is malware
true
>how?
nigger have you even used GNU software in earnest? how about tried to develop for it? the people who do so are simultaneously miracleworkers and problem causers. there needs to be a new userspace project designed from the ground up. the biggest mistake was letting in trannies.
>nigger
wew
>have you even used GNU software in earnest
yes. all the time.
>how about tried to develop for it
can't say I have. I'm not a programmer
>the people who do so are simultaneously miracleworkers and problem causers
interesting. want to expand on that?
>there needs to be a new userspace project designed from the ground up
I honestly wouldn't be opposed to that, although I wouldn't appreciate it if it was just used to sneak cuck-licensed shit into the lower-level components of the OS.
On that note, what do you think of Busybox? Seems pretty nice to me.
>the biggest mistake was letting in trannies
I know about the libreboot issue, although that has been resolved now. Are there other issues with this that I haven't heard about?
>On that note, what do you think of Busybox? Seems pretty nice to me.
idk about the licensing, but i never liked busybox, as it includes ash as it's userspace shell, and i always have to install _something_ to get the required features, and i end up not using most of the included utilities. it would be better to just install the coreutils
>idk about the licensing
was just pointing it out as something licensed copyleft like the coreutils, but way more minimal.
>it would be better to just install the coreutils
ah so you want a new userspace that has all the same exact functionality of the coreutils but...
what? what are you asking for?
bump
wait did you just claim that having a POSIX compliant libc is a bad thing?
you must like plan 9
>If other libcs are so good, why do things break when you use them? Seems like musl/uclibc are lacking in some way.
that's a retarded argument considering glibc and everything GNU goes out of its way to be incompatible with everything (on purpose, i might add).
Indeed I do. But when specs dictate inconsistent argument order and decides on bad error handling approach, that boils my blood.
EEE tactic used by GNU, what a world to live in
yes, this is why i laugh whenever GNU supports keep going "muh EEE" every time MS supports free software
apt is fucking shit, but yes, there should be a universal package manager
>GNU goes out of its way to be incompatible with everything
Interesting. Everything seems to work with Glibc though. I wonder why others are having a hard time?
Uh, gnu is not before linux, you can use linux without gnu.Linux should be the main option and have other userland options listed along the linux timeline, one of them being gnu
What?
Are you reading from top to bottom, or left to right?
If you're trying to read this top to bottom, that's not how it works. The vertical order has no meaning
If you're reading it from left to right, realize that it's chronological. the GNU project started in 1983, and Linux came out in 1991.
it's timeline, not decision tree
What should that "universal package manager" be? Let's talk about this.
A lot of people on here seem to hate apt for some reason. I don't know why, but it doesn't appear to be well-liked.
Maybe the RPM family then, with yum/dnf? Those are used by RHEL and CentOS: two very stable enterprise distros. that zypper thing from OpenPEPE can also be used. I wonder, if we're going this route, which one we should focus on? I mean, we are limiting ourselves to one, so we have to pick from one of yum, dnf, and zypper.
Of course there's also pacman from Arch/Manjaro/Parabola/others. These systems come with support for stuff like the AUR. I've heard stories of breakages, but I don't know if that should be attributed to pacman itself, or the fact that these distros are rolling release. If all distros used pacman, this instability would not be present. Yet another option to keep in mind.
This would not be complete without mentioning Gentoo's Portage: a source-based package management system.
So what's it gonna be? Which one should every single distribution use?
because programmers use GNUisms without knowing
...
this
and this stuff is bad apparently?
Not quite a unix, but Plan 9 is still the best unix-related operating system. I heard a rumor that a Sup Forums-created Plan 9 variant distribution is finally going to release a live/install cd soon, too.
some programs relay on GCC specific features / bugs
>Sup Forums created simething
lel, just use 9front
Inferno for Raspberry Pi poped out today on hackernews
bitbucket.org
inferno is just a demo for bell labs' answer to the JVM
>>gcc
>I've heard from a few places that Clang is better. true?
gcc still produces better binaries in most cases
clang's got more mainstream mindshare and catching up quickly though
ah so other libcs haven't implemented these things, making the programs fail to compile?
Inferno is cool, glad people are still working with it, although I don't rpi. Anything to keep plan9 mindshare though.
The new variant is based on 9front hg tip but adds additional features, and wasn't really created "by" Sup Forums, just by someone who used to be on this board and post a lot of Plan 9 stuff. He gave me a link to a beta of the live/install cd, its pretty cool.
well, yeah. other libc haven't/won't implement GCC-specific bugs or non-standard extensions. ofc, other libc may have also bugs or their implementations of somefunction might not follow the spec. But it's a fact that musl is very good libc and glibc has a lot of legacy baggage (like X11).
>bugs
>"GNU C provides several language features not found in ISO standard C"
>several language features
>language features
>features
anyone wanna answer this one?
Would split it to package manager as software and package format. Honestly it's not that big deal to install it with different but native managers on various distros, it's awkward to distribute deb package, apt package, rpm package, aur package, portage package, flatpak and idk what else. Universal package format is what's needed.
package should contain obviously binaries, possibly docs and manpages, metadata with dependency specs and some signing method. I'm personally against signing with GPG because package verification should be in minimal systems and live cds and GnuPG is 32MB big and only small portion of its capabilities is used. But if there is some solid library or subset that can verify PGP signatures than why not. Ed25519 signatures are also comfy. This can be either in standalone signature file or tar header data.
Regarding source packages imho BSD-like port system that can generate package is a good approach.
Ah so making the package format standardized? That makes a lot of sense, and is something I think could work. Would making package format some kinda ISO standard or whatever be a good idea?
bump
you mean dpkg
>What feature from what unix is your favorite?
systemd from GNU/Linux. systemd-nspawn is fucking amazing.
Certainly
why? why do you not like features?
They're non-standard and lock you to GCC.
Well clearly the others are just worse then.
If they were so good, they'd implement this functionality, or come up with their own to make people want to use them.
(i'm part trolling, part playing devil's advocate here)
Also, let's get some opinions on this:
Should software package formats be an ISO standard, or something to that effect in order to increase unity in software distribution and package management systems, or is that a retarded idea?
bimp
>unices thread
>no trace of the greatest
oh my pike
Sometimes they appear in new C standard with slightly different syntax, but GCC still preserves compatibility with the extension and preserve unportable code.
what? plan9? inferno? these anons were talking about it.
Plan 9 isn't Unix, please don't dishonor its name.
There's no mention of IRIX though
Oh yeah, well we have XFS from that, and you can get a clone of their 3D file manager here:
fsv.sourceforge.net
So that's cool I guess. I don't really know much else about SGI/IRIX though.
Technically it is
Rob Pike is a saint, I wish I was as cool as him.
plan9 was intended to be the successor to unix
Redox is a pretty comfy Unix-like OS.
I gave it a shot in a VM. Very rough right now, but who knows? It might end up going somewhere. I'm impressed with what they have so far, given how young the project is.
The microkernel thing also intrigues me. We don't see that too often.