From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: don@DonHopkins.com (Don Hopkins) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 17:09:39 +0200 Subject: SGI Software Usability II (IRIX 5.1 memo) In-Reply-To: <20171012145910.GL17135@mcvoy.com> References: <20171012130443.2s7xnhughyj5667s@saucer.turnde.net> <20171012140021.GK17135@mcvoy.com> <09E69ADC-17BC-4944-A3D6-BB553C6F2333@gmail.com> <20171012145910.GL17135@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <210DE044-1849-44C2-848C-76EF310F305A@gmail.com> > On 12 Oct 2017, at 16:59, Larry McVoy wrote: > > That must have been really early on because by the time I got to Sun (4.0? > Maybe 4.1?) shared libraries worked properly. Yeah, I remember that being a SunOS 3.x limitation. 4.x was a whole lot nicer! Wikipedia says: SunOS 4.0: Dec 1988: New virtual memory system, dynamic linking, automounter, System V STREAMS I/O. Sun386i support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS#History Then it all went downhill from there… ;( -Don http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/slowlaris/sunos-died.html The Day SunOS Died Lyrics by N. R. "Norm" Lunde. Apologies to Don McLean. Remember when those guys out West With their longish hair and paisley vests Were starting up, straight out of UCB? They used those Motorola chips Which at the time were really hip And looked upon the world through VME. Their first attempt ran like a pig But it was the start of something big; They called the next one the Sun-2 And though they only sold a few It soon gave birth unto the new Sun-3 which was their pride And now they're singing [chorus] "Bye, bye, SunOS 4.1.3! ATT System V has replaced BSD. You can cling to the standards of the industry But only if you pay the right fee -- Only if you pay the right fee . . ." The hardware wasn't all they sold. Their Berkeley port was solid gold And interfaced with System V, no less! They implemented all the stuff That Berkeley thought would be enough Then added RPC and NFS. It was a lot of code to cram Into just four megs of RAM. The later revs were really cool With added values like SunTools But then they took us all for fools By peddling Solaris . . . And they were singing, [chorus] They took a RISC and kindled SPARC. The difference was like light and dark. The Sun-4s were the fastest and the best. The user base was having fun Installing SunOS 4.1 But what was coming no one could have guessed. The installed base was sound And software did abound. While all the hackers laughed and played Already plans were being made To make the dubious "upgrade" To Sun's new Solaris . . . And Sun was singing, [chorus] The cartridge tapes were first to go -- The CD-ROM's a must, you know And floppy drives will soon go out the door. I tried to call and ask them why But they took away my TTY And left my modem lying on the floor. While they were on a roll They moved the damned Control. The Ethernet's now twisted pair Which no one uses anywhere. ISDN is still more rare -- The bandwidth's even less! But still they're singing [chorus] But worst of all is what they've done To software that we used to run Like dbx and even /bin/cc. Compilers now have license locks Wrapped up in OpenWindows crocks -- We even have to pay for GCC! The applications broke; /usr/local went up in smoke. The features we've depended on Before too long will all be gone But Sun, I'm sure, will carry on By peddling Solaris, Forever singing, [chorus] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: