From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: usotsuki@buric.co (Steve Nickolas) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2017 15:52:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! In-Reply-To: <20170914193010.mlx4jkqcxcqfwe4c@thunk.org> References: <201709100944.v8A9iPeb024293@freefriends.org> <20170914161121.sx7eqzsqklzcncdb@matica.foolinux.mooo.com> <20170914193010.mlx4jkqcxcqfwe4c@thunk.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 14 Sep 2017, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 12:15:32PM -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote: >>> Maybe some are deluded like that. But the more typical case (and I saw >>> this personally not just on "the Internet") are those who actively and >>> consciously disdain Unix, and want Penguin kernel based systems to move >>> to a completely new and different userland, free from any links to Unix >>> history. >>> >>> And we should stop assuming they're kidding when they say so openly. >>> >> >> Isn't that pretty much just Lennart Poettering and his fan club? > > It's mostly Lennart Poettering and his fan club, but it's also > important to remember that Unix was not perfect. > > For years, I've been ranting about the telldir/seekdir interface, for > which JFS has three b-trees that have to be updated for every > directory operation --- one of which was added *just* because of > telldir/seekdir. Other file systems make other design choices or go > through other bits of hell just because of telldir/seekdir, but > assuming a 32-bit cookie which must survive potentially indefinitely, > with the readdir "will return file names exactly zero or one times" > guarantees required by POSIX, is rather hellish. > > Or, say the atime update requirement, which can be a performance > killer, and for which the default on Linux violates Posix, and so I > suppose it technically isn't allowed to use the Unix trademark anyway. > > I'm sure the Plan 9 folks could come up with other Unix shortcomings. :-) > > - Ted > I never managed to pull it off, but I tried creating a full live Linux environment based on musl, clang, Heirloom Toolchest and OpenBSD/NetBSD sources. The idea was that I wanted to make a "Real Unix" that happened to have Linux as its kernel. (It also would have run the CDE as its default desktop.) One thing I did come up with was, if I were to pull it off, it would be a Linux distribution that rightfully could NOT be called, by any means, "GNU/Linux" - and some heads would explode. (I still want to do it, but I remain at a loss as to execution.) -uso.