[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Kevin Bowling]

What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:
1) Free
2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
3) Historical

Me:
1) FreeBSD - I find it to generally be the least annoying desktop and
laptop experience with admittedly careful selection of hardware to
ensure compatibility.  It's ideal to me for commercial appliances and
servers due to the license, tight coupling of kernel and base, and
features like ZFS, jails, and pluggable TCP stacks.  Linux distros
lost their luster for me once systemd was integrated into Debian, and
that kind of culture seems to be prevailing up and down the stack in a
way that I'd prefer to be an outside observer of Linux and not
dependent on it for now.

2) AIX - I often see people disparage AIX but I like it.  I learned a
lot in my teens about C, build systems, compilers, and lots of
libraries trying to port random software to it for auto-didactic
reasons.  It definitely doesn't feel like any other UNIX.  It probably
supports high core count and NUMA better than any other system except
Linux, it had advanced virtualization with LPARs and containers with
WPARs before most and hot patchable kernel, fully pagable kernel, lots
of rigorous kernel engineering there that didn't get a lot of fanfare.
SMIT is kind of cool as a TUI and spits out commands that you can
learn through repetition and use at the CLI or scripting.  I think it
probably peaked in the early 2000s, but the memory management, volume
management, and file systems all seemed pretty forward thinking up
until then.  I don't think SMP performance was a strong suite until it
was pretty much a relegated niche though.

3) IRIX - it just screams '90s cool like an acrylic sweater.  Soft
real time, immense graphics support, pro audio and video features,
lots of interesting commercial software, NUMA, supercomputers.  I
enjoy tinkering on this still, but a lot of that is due to the neat
hardware.

Regards,
Kevin

[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 07:58:59PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:
> 1) Free
> 2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
> macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
> 3) Historical

SunOS 4.1.3  Oh, man, how I wish that all of Unix today were based
on that.  If you like FreeBSD you would love that kernel.  It's BSD
for sure but then carefully moved forward into an excellent VM system,
a virtualized the file system with the vnode stuff, it cared about
the right picture.  And all the bugs fixed.

I've worked in lots of other kernel source bases.  They all sucked in
comparison.  Including Solaris, fuck that shit, Bryan will yell at me
but Solaris sucked.  Yeah, they made it useful with all the work they
did but it was never "home" and I think that even the people that worked
on it get that.  Or not, it was never home for me.

SunOS had so much love and so much carefulness poured into it.  And I
can't claim any credit, it was the people who came before me, Rusty, Rob,
Joe, Steve, those guys did the work that made me see the architecture
that they left for me to see.

Guy Harris worked on it, he left right around the time I joined, I think
he went to Auspex (sp?) but he would come back and pound on the door
to building 5 at around 6 or 7pm.  Pope or I would go down and let him
in and he'd find a machine and look at the source and start screaming
about why haven't they fixed this bug?  And he'd just fix it.  He didn't
work here and he fixed bugs.  I get it, it took me years after I left 
Sun to stop saying "we" when we were talking about Sun.

The level of love, as measured by the amount of time we all spent to make
it better, was over the top.  And it was because of the super stars who
showed us what an OS could be.

Today?  Favorite?   Grumble.  It's sort of shitty.  Linux is the obvious
winner but is it what I like?  It's what I run.  Have to give it credit.
It is pretty good.  I'd prefer to be running a SunOS derived OS.

[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Kevin Bowling]

I have the requisite hardware and media so I will give it a shake so I
can talk with you about it some time.

Auspex.. I have a story there believe it or not.  Tore one apart at an
electronic junkyard I worked at part time in my teens.  But I got it
booted up enough to test everything and sell as they wanted.  The
hardware was very cool.  I didn't know enough back then to evaluate
the software.  I murdered a ton of interesting computers there sadly.
Still searching for salvation :D

Regards,

On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 8:28 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 07:58:59PM -0700, Kevin Bowling wrote:
>> What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:
>> 1) Free
>> 2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
>> macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
>> 3) Historical
>
> SunOS 4.1.3  Oh, man, how I wish that all of Unix today were based
> on that.  If you like FreeBSD you would love that kernel.  It's BSD
> for sure but then carefully moved forward into an excellent VM system,
> a virtualized the file system with the vnode stuff, it cared about
> the right picture.  And all the bugs fixed.
>
> I've worked in lots of other kernel source bases.  They all sucked in
> comparison.  Including Solaris, fuck that shit, Bryan will yell at me
> but Solaris sucked.  Yeah, they made it useful with all the work they
> did but it was never "home" and I think that even the people that worked
> on it get that.  Or not, it was never home for me.
>
> SunOS had so much love and so much carefulness poured into it.  And I
> can't claim any credit, it was the people who came before me, Rusty, Rob,
> Joe, Steve, those guys did the work that made me see the architecture
> that they left for me to see.
>
> Guy Harris worked on it, he left right around the time I joined, I think
> he went to Auspex (sp?) but he would come back and pound on the door
> to building 5 at around 6 or 7pm.  Pope or I would go down and let him
> in and he'd find a machine and look at the source and start screaming
> about why haven't they fixed this bug?  And he'd just fix it.  He didn't
> work here and he fixed bugs.  I get it, it took me years after I left
> Sun to stop saying "we" when we were talking about Sun.
>
> The level of love, as measured by the amount of time we all spent to make
> it better, was over the top.  And it was because of the super stars who
> showed us what an OS could be.
>
> Today?  Favorite?   Grumble.  It's sort of shitty.  Linux is the obvious
> winner but is it what I like?  It's what I run.  Have to give it credit.
> It is pretty good.  I'd prefer to be running a SunOS derived OS.

Re: [TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Mutiny]

'From: Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com>Sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:59:27I've worked in lots of other kernel source bases.  They all sucked incomparison.  Including Solaris, fuck that shit, Bryan will yell at mebut Solaris sucked.  ...'As far as I remember Sunos-4 Kernel became AT&T Sys5r4 kernel and made it into Sunos5 which became Solaris.
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[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Larry McVoy]

> As far as I remember Sunos-4 Kernel became AT&T Sys5r4 kernel and
> made it into Sunos5 which became Solaris.

Nope, Sun got SVR4 dumped on them and then we moved some of the stuff 
from SunOS over.  But a lot, most of it, got dropped.  They are entirely
different kernels.

Don't get me wrong, there is some good stuff in Solaris, but I never
loved it.  I loved the SunOS kernel.

[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Arthur Krewat]

Isn't this a rehash of my recent thread? :)

On 9/28/2017 11:28 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> SunOS 4.1.3
Historically, yes. I was forced kicking and screaming into Solaris back 
in the 90's, because all the CAD/CAM software I administered moved to 
Solaris, while Sun themselves moved to Solaris on their new SMP systems 
like the SparcServer-1000 and even the 670 was more useful with Solaris.

Currently? Solaris - it's NEVER let me down in commercial or personal 
use. Sure, I hit a bug or two here or there, maybe a controller that it 
didn't like, but running PeopleSoft on it, Oracle database, whatever 
else I specialize in, it's been great.

Like I said, I was forced kicking and screaming into Solaris - however, 
once I got used to it, and having used SVR4.2 for a home BBS/USENET/UUCP 
system modem front-end in the early 90's, I quickly grew to like it.

NUMA? Solaris does it very well, probably because of the huge SPARC 
systems carrying over to the Intel world.

I used to run FreeBSD at home, for firewall, and general file server 
usage. Why? Because I was in love with SunOS at the time ;)

[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Michael Parson]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:
> 1) Free
> 2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
> macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
> 3) Historical

Compared to many here, I'm barely a beginner, I'm in my 40s, got my
intorduction to Unix in the early 90s with SunOS 4.something while in
college.

1) Free:
I was then introduced to Linux by a friend of mine, back in the
pre-Slackware days even, some 0.9x kernel.  The first kernel I compiled
myself was 0.96.

Like Larry said, Linux is mostly what I use as my desktop Linux.  It
works well enough on my Thinkpad.  I run NetBSD on my VPS for bl.org,
and I do prefer working in NetBSD, just that trying to get 'Desktop'
like work done on it is harder, as these days, it's all developed on
Linux and ported to others.

2) Commercial platform
In the 90s, it was SunOS 4, though I actually started to like working
in Solaris around 2.5.1.  It started to stabilize and the jobs I was
working at started buying hardware that would run it well.  (Solaris
2.4 on SS1 and SS2 was not fun).  I've not had a lot of experience with
other commercial offerings.  While I was with IBM, I was exposed to AIX
(of course), other jobs had HP/UX, and I even logged into an IRIX box
once, though that was in a DC across the country from me and was used as
a fileserver.

Since Oracle bought Sun, I've given up on Solaris, which really doesn't
leave many options for Commercial Unixy platforms.  I do use an iMac at
home and a MacBook Pro for work, but even there, I spend most of my time
in xterms spawned form XQuartz logged into remote Linux systems.

3) Historical
I like playing with historical systems.  I've recently started playing
with Amiga UNIX (Commodore's port of SysVr4 to 68030) under FS-UAE.
Maybe someday I'll get it running on the Amiga 3000 that is currently
gathering dust.  I also have a Mac Quardra 950 out in the garage that
some day I want to get A/UX running on.  Then there is the HP 9000
715/80 and the RISC NextSTEP media waiting for some round tuits.  I've
recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under qemu-sparc
that I want to try as well.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

Favorite UNIX

[Ian Zimmerman]

On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:

> I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
> qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.

Can you share a pointer to those with us?

-- 
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
Do obvious transformation on domain to reply privately _only_ on Usenet.

Favorite UNIX

[Michael Parson]

On 2017-09-30 12:53, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:
> 
>> I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
>> qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.
> 
> Can you share a pointer to those with us?

Sure:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4

Oops, 4.1.4, not .3. :)

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

Favorite UNIX

[Arthur Krewat]

Good stuff, I gotta try this. That Wiki reminded me that for the longest 
time, I was running "xv" on Solaris only because of the compatibility 
package for SunOS. I don't think I ever compiled it natively for Solaris.



On 9/30/2017 2:34 PM, Michael Parson wrote:
>
> On 2017-09-30 12:53, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
>> On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:
>>
>>> I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
>>> qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.
>>
>> Can you share a pointer to those with us?
>
> Sure:
>
> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4
>
> Oops, 4.1.4, not .3. :)
>

Favorite UNIX

[Larry McVoy]

On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 01:34:14PM -0500, Michael Parson wrote:
> 
> On 2017-09-30 12:53, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> >On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:
> >
> >>I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
> >>qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.
> >
> >Can you share a pointer to those with us?
> 
> Sure:
> 
> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4
> 
> Oops, 4.1.4, not .3. :)

If it runs 4.1.4 it will run 4.1.3 (which was my favorite release, lot
of Larry love in there, a lot of other people's love in there, lots of
late night hacking by people who cared).

Favorite UNIX

[Dave Horsfall]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:

> If it runs 4.1.4 it will run 4.1.3 (which was my favorite release, lot 
> of Larry love in there, a lot of other people's love in there, lots of 
> late night hacking by people who cared).

Agreed; it was my favourite SunOS.  Never got to use 4.1.4, as $BOSS 
decided to switch to Slowaris instead (that's where the applications 
were).

-- 
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU)  "Those who don't understand security will suffer."

Favorite UNIX

[Larry McVoy]

On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 11:51:30AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> >If it runs 4.1.4 it will run 4.1.3 (which was my favorite release, lot of
> >Larry love in there, a lot of other people's love in there, lots of late
> >night hacking by people who cared).
> 
> Agreed; it was my favourite SunOS.  Never got to use 4.1.4, as $BOSS decided
> to switch to Slowaris instead (that's where the applications were).

I think 4.1.4 had Greg Limes herculean effort to make the VM system
scale on multiprocessors.  So it might be worth a look.

Yeah, at that time everyone was pushed to Solaris.  Here's another Larry
story for ya.

I created this weird ass NFS server that was a cluster.  I sort of
cheated but sort of did not.  It ran really fast, it used one of the
first ethernet switches (a modified Kalpana, the mods were VLANs, I
thought I invented that but apparently somebody beat me to it).  I did
the development on my beloved SunOS 4.x but Scooter insisted that it
ship with Solaris.

So I'm at the Moscone center, some tech/geek thing, I'm pitching this
product.  It was a technical pitch, I'm an engineer, so it was mostly
geeks in the room.

There is some dude in the room who keeps railing on Solaris.  I'm trying
to be a good soldier and say that Solaris is the future, yada yada.
This guy keeps going on and on about how much Solaris sucks and couldn't
he have this system with SunOS.

I finally lose it, like really lose it, and say "I know, I know, Solaris
sucks, you should see what this system does with SunOS, I fucking hate
Solaris".

It was all captured on tape.  My boss, Ken Okin, VP of all server hardware
at Sun, said "Find that tape and destroy it".  So I did.

Fun times?  I guess?  Welcome to the real world, it's not all about what
the geeks want.  When it is, wallow in that, it doesn't happen that often.

--lm

Favorite UNIX

[Cory Smelosky]

On Sat, Sep 30, 2017, at 18:10, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 11:51:30AM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > 
> > >If it runs 4.1.4 it will run 4.1.3 (which was my favorite release, lot of
> > >Larry love in there, a lot of other people's love in there, lots of late
> > >night hacking by people who cared).
> > 
> > Agreed; it was my favourite SunOS.  Never got to use 4.1.4, as $BOSS decided
> > to switch to Slowaris instead (that's where the applications were).
> 
> I think 4.1.4 had Greg Limes herculean effort to make the VM system
> scale on multiprocessors.  So it might be worth a look.
> 

I have source for 4.1.4 scurried away...but I don't think I have 4.1.3.

> Yeah, at that time everyone was pushed to Solaris.  Here's another Larry
> story for ya.
> 
> I created this weird ass NFS server that was a cluster.  I sort of
> cheated but sort of did not.  It ran really fast, it used one of the
> first ethernet switches (a modified Kalpana, the mods were VLANs, I
> thought I invented that but apparently somebody beat me to it).  I did
> the development on my beloved SunOS 4.x but Scooter insisted that it
> ship with Solaris.

How'd you do VLANs on that?

> 
> So I'm at the Moscone center, some tech/geek thing, I'm pitching this
> product.  It was a technical pitch, I'm an engineer, so it was mostly
> geeks in the room.
> 
> There is some dude in the room who keeps railing on Solaris.  I'm trying
> to be a good soldier and say that Solaris is the future, yada yada.
> This guy keeps going on and on about how much Solaris sucks and couldn't
> he have this system with SunOS.

I'd love to run SunOS on modern hardware...;)

I need to fix my IPX/IPC...

> 
> I finally lose it, like really lose it, and say "I know, I know, Solaris
> sucks, you should see what this system does with SunOS, I fucking hate
> Solaris".
> 
> It was all captured on tape.  My boss, Ken Okin, VP of all server
> hardware
> at Sun, said "Find that tape and destroy it".  So I did.
> 
> Fun times?  I guess?  Welcome to the real world, it's not all about what
> the geeks want.  When it is, wallow in that, it doesn't happen that
> often.
> 
> --lm


-- 
  Cory Smelosky
  b4 at gewt.net

Favorite UNIX

[Arthur Krewat]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 857 bytes --]

On 9/30/2017 9:10 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> I think 4.1.4 had Greg Limes herculean effort to make the VM system
> scale on multiprocessors.  So it might be worth a look.
>
>
This? From 4.1.4:

/*      @(#)vm_mp.c     1.1     94/10/31        */

/*
  * Copyright (c) 1986 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  */

/*
  * VM - multiprocessor/ing support.
  *
  * Currently the kmon_enter() / kmon_exit() pair implements a
  * simple monitor for objects protected by the appropriate lock.
  * The kcv_wait() / kcv_broadcast pait implements a simple
  * condition variable which can be used for `sleeping'
  * and `waking' inside a monitor if some resource is
  * is needed which is not available.
  *
  * XXX - this code is written knowing about the semantics
  * of sleep/wakeup and UNIX scheduling on a uniprocessor machine.
  */

Favorite UNIX

[Don Hopkins]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3737 bytes --]


> I finally lose it, like really lose it, and say "I know, I know, Solaris
> sucks, you should see what this system does with SunOS, I fucking hate
> Solaris".
> 
> It was all captured on tape.  My boss, Ken Okin, VP of all server hardware
> at Sun, said "Find that tape and destroy it".  So I did.
> 
> Fun times?  I guess?  Welcome to the real world, it's not all about what
> the geeks want.  When it is, wallow in that, it doesn't happen that often.
> 
> --lm

Solaris: so bad I left the company.

Hey does anybody remember what ever happened to Steve MacKay? 

(I don’t mean what I did to him, because I remember that, just what happened to him afterwards! ;-) 

-Don

The Worst Job in the World

Subject: The Worst Job in the World 
From: Michael Tiemann <tiemann@cygnus.com>

I have a friend who has to have the worst job in the world: he is a Unix system administrator. But it's worse than that, as I will soon tell.
Being a Unix system administrator is like being a tech in a biological warfare laboratory, except that none of the substances are labeled consistently, any of the compounds are just as likely to kill you by themselves as they are when mixed with one another, and it is never clear what distinction is made between a catastrophic failure in the lab and a successful test in the field.

But I don't want to tell you about biological warfare, I want to tell you about what makes my friend's job so terrible. First, some context.

The training for Unix system administration is a frightening process. When machines start dying, users start screaming, and everything grinds to a halt, the novice feels the cold fingers of terror clutching about his heart.

 
    #!/bin/sh
    # this doesn't work, but no time to fix it -- hope nothing crashes
    progname=$0
 

But if one stays the course, one might some day achieve the dubious satisfaction of being able to mutter "at least I know why it broke!".
 
    #!/bin/sh
    # This works...I wonder if it will get me laid
    progname="`echo $0 | sed 's:^\./\./:\./:'`"
 

But there are many who must dwell in this miasma both day and night. What makes my friend's job so ugly is that he doesn't only work with just any strain of Unix -- he works with Solaris. And he doesn't just deal with just any braindead users -- his users are the executives at Sun Microsystems.
Let me tell you about Sun Microsystems. At Sun, there's a long history of executives playing pranks on one another. For April Fools, these rowdies would play tricks like putting a golf course (complete with putting green) in Scott McNealy's office, or floating Bill Joy's Ferrari in one of the landscaped ponds. Things have come a long way since then. Now every day is April Fools, and my friend doesn't like it one bit.

VP: "Admin!! What the fuck is this thing running on my machine?"

Admin: "It's Solaris, sir."

VP: "Get it off of my machine at once!"

Admin: "But sir, Ed Zander told me that you should be running Solaris now."

VP: "Zander, huh? I'll fix him. Is he running Solaris?"

Admin: "No sir."

VP: "Why not?"

Admin: "If he ran Solaris, he wouldn't be able to get any work done."

VP: "Very well, restore my machine to SunOS, and put this Solaris crap on Zander's machine."

Admin: "But sir..."

VP: "That's an order! And tell him Scott gave you the directive himself!"

Admin: "Yes, sir."

Zander: "Admin!! What the fuck is this thing running on my machine?"
Admin: "It's Solaris, sir."

Zander: "Get it off of my machine at once!"

Admin: "But sir, Scott McNealy told me that you should be running Solaris now."

Zander: "McNealy, huh? I'll fix him. Is he running Solaris?"

...

The only thing worse that being a Unix system administrator is doing the job for ungrateful users.

Favorite UNIX

[Michael Parson]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Michael Parson wrote:
> On 2017-09-30 12:53, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
>> On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:
>> 
>>> I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
>>> qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.
>> 
>> Can you share a pointer to those with us?
>
> Sure:
>
> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4
>
> Oops, 4.1.4, not .3. :)

Found some more info about qemu-system-sparc, turns out, you don't even
need an 'ss5.bin' file, and CG3 graphics seem to work.  Aparently the
built-in stuff works well enough to boot and install the OS.

I'm using a real SS5 rom image and -vga cg3 to have a graphical head.

Now to see if I can find any pre-compiled software archives anywhere.

I tried NextStep too.  The media boots, but it eventually hangs and
never lets me install.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

Favorite UNIX

[Kevin Bowling]

This one is kind of wild, it emulates a SparcStation 5 on an FPGA
http://temlib.org.  The screenshots show SunOS 4.1.4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYL42WQfgGI

On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 8:05 PM, Michael Parson <mparson at bl.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Sep 2017, Michael Parson wrote:
>>
>> On 2017-09-30 12:53, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
>>>> qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.
>>>
>>>
>>> Can you share a pointer to those with us?
>>
>>
>> Sure:
>>
>> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4
>>
>> Oops, 4.1.4, not .3. :)
>
>
> Found some more info about qemu-system-sparc, turns out, you don't even
> need an 'ss5.bin' file, and CG3 graphics seem to work.  Aparently the
> built-in stuff works well enough to boot and install the OS.
>
> I'm using a real SS5 rom image and -vga cg3 to have a graphical head.
>
> Now to see if I can find any pre-compiled software archives anywhere.
>
> I tried NextStep too.  The media boots, but it eventually hangs and
> never lets me install.
>
>
> --
> Michael Parson
> Pflugerville, TX
> KF5LGQ

Favorite UNIX

[Michael Parson]

On Sun, 1 Oct 2017, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> Date: Sun, 01 Oct 2017 09:13:28 -0600
> Michael Parson <mparson at bl.org> wrote:
>
>> On 2017-09-30 12:53, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
>>> On 2017-09-30 10:40, Michael Parson wrote:
>>>
>>>> I've recently found instructions for installing SunOS 4.1.3 under
>>>> qemu-sparc that I want to try as well.
>>>
>>> Can you share a pointer to those with us?
>>
>> Sure:
>>
>> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4
>>
>> Oops, 4.1.4, not .3. :)
>
> So then the next question is where can one find install media (or
> image thereof...)

I bought a boxed copy of 'Solaris 1.1.2' off e-bay many moon ago,
though I've been told it can be found with the google search term of
'winworldpc'.

-- 
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ

[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Michael Kerpan]

On Sep 28, 2017 11:02 PM, "Kevin Bowling" <kevin.bowling at kev009.com> wrote:

What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:
1) Free
2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
3) Historical

1. FreeBSD is best of breed, these days. It's logical, stuff tends to just
work, and it just feels right.

2. I don't have much experience with modern commercial Unix. A few of my
friends really like macOS (formerly OS X, nee NeXTSTEP), but it's
artificially locked to Apple hardware so I've never really tried it.
Frankly, I do most of my daily computing on Windows, which works fine for
video games, word processing, web browsing, graphics work, and hosting VMs
to run FreeBSD in.

3. NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP is still really cool. The kernel is a mess and the
whole PostScript as primary display was less than ideal for graphics
performance, but it was cool and nobody's done a graphical UI as well since.

Mike
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[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[Derrik Walker v2.0]

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On 09/28/2017 10:58 PM, Kevin Bowling wrote:
> What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:
> 1) Free
> 2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
> macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
> 3) Historical
1) Linux - not the greatest, by far, but it gets the job done and pays 
the bills ( in my case, anyway ). And it still has good long term 
viability, as of 2017, anyway.

2) Solaris - Sun finally got it right starting with Solaris 7, and it 
just got better from there.  I ran it for many, many years on my Home 
Ultra 5.
Really sad to see what Oracle did to it! I use to have boss say that 
Solaris was the UNIX geek's UNIX, he might be right ( altho these days 
that's probably BSD ).

3) Irix - Not the best UNIX, but damn, those workstations it ran on WERE 
the best.  I miss my Indigo R4K/Elan almost as much as I do my Ultra 5 
with Solaris 9 on it!

-- 
-- Derrik

Derrik Walker v2.0, RHCE
dwalker at doomd.net

"Those UNIX guys, they think weird!" -- John C. Dvorak


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[TUHS] Favorite UNIX

[George Michaelson]

My favourite remains V7 on a pdp11. Not because of any specious
reductionism, but because it was a dawning experience, and because of
the 'learn' package which I found very good, subsequently stripped
because of licence restrictions. I had the care of one in Leeds uni in
'82 and loved it. Far more than the Norsk Data mini, perhaps less
usefully than the 780s with 4.1 but still. It was a joy.

I freely admit I did next to nothing of substance (maintenance coding
an X.25 comms package for JANET was the high spot, on a compiler with
a very low #define expansion limit which hit us badly) but somehow, it
remains my favourite.

I also admired the ease with which people I knew could do things with
it. 32V was (AFAIK) a logical outcome.

On Sun, Oct 1, 2017 at 9:37 AM, Derrik Walker v2.0 <dwalker at doomd.net> wrote:
> On 09/28/2017 10:58 PM, Kevin Bowling wrote:
>>
>> What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or
>> more:
>> 1) Free
>> 2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
>> macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
>> 3) Historical
>
> 1) Linux - not the greatest, by far, but it gets the job done and pays the
> bills ( in my case, anyway ). And it still has good long term viability, as
> of 2017, anyway.
>
> 2) Solaris - Sun finally got it right starting with Solaris 7, and it just
> got better from there.  I ran it for many, many years on my Home Ultra 5.
> Really sad to see what Oracle did to it! I use to have boss say that Solaris
> was the UNIX geek's UNIX, he might be right ( altho these days that's
> probably BSD ).
>
> 3) Irix - Not the best UNIX, but damn, those workstations it ran on WERE the
> best.  I miss my Indigo R4K/Elan almost as much as I do my Ultra 5 with
> Solaris 9 on it!
>
> --
> -- Derrik
>
> Derrik Walker v2.0, RHCE
> dwalker at doomd.net
>
> "Those UNIX guys, they think weird!" -- John C. Dvorak
>
>

Favorite UNIX

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Don Hopkins
    
    > Solaris: so bad I left the company.

Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?

I guess the Sun management didn't understand that was the case? Or were they
so hot for the AT+T linkup that they were willing to live with it?

	Noel

Favorite UNIX

[Larry McVoy]

On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 01:51:06PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Don Hopkins
>     
>     > Solaris: so bad I left the company.
> 
> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?

Because SunOS had years of polish.  It was a nicer starting point (BSD
had all the fun stuff, AT&T was sort of a stuffed shirt's Unix, BSD was
Unix for hackers) and the engineers who polished it did so because they
loved it.  Lots of us stayed late into the night working on that OS and
it showed.  It was fun times, McNealy knew we were working on it and he'd
come over to the kernel team's building and egg us on.  He'd get up on
the conference table and preach to us how it was going to rule the world.

> I guess the Sun management didn't understand that was the case? Or were they
> so hot for the AT+T linkup that they were willing to live with it?

No, the deal was that Sun needed money and AT&T bought $200M of Sun stock
at 35% over market.  In exchange, Sun agreed to take SVR4 and make it
popular.   At&T wanted SVR4 to be the next SunOS.

But that was a kick in the nuts to us engineers.  The sytem v source base
was crap compared to sunos, a huge step backwards.

So my crowd pretty much all left in disgust.  There was a lot of heartache
over it.  None of us knew about the business deal at the time, in fact I
think a lot of management didn't know.

I pushed for a free version of SunOS 4.x.  I removed the STREAMS code and
the drivers because that wasn't free; put back the BSD tty drivers and
I had an unencumbered source base.  I demo-ed it.  My boss, Ken Okin,
VP of server hardware, paid me to argue for that for 6 months (which is
why I say I don't think management knew about the deal; Ken was a senior
dude, he wouldn't have sent me off if he knew for sure I was going to 
fail).

I wrote a paper arguing for this:

http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lm/papers/freeos.pdf

but it never happened.  We'd all be running SunOS today if they had done
that.

Instead, they repeated the SunOS journey.  Bryan and crew polished that
turd for years and got it sort of reasonable.  Some people grew to like
it, I never did.  Too system v-ish for my tastes.  You have to install
the GNU tools to have a reasonable tool chain, they never fixed the
default tools.  That's crazy, why ship them and maintain them if you
aren't using them?  Solaris has always felt weird to me, but they went
for it and got it better.  Only to have it tossed away again.  Yuck.

Favorite UNIX

[Don Hopkins]

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> On 1 Oct 2017, at 20:05, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 01:51:06PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> From: Don Hopkins
>> 
>>> Solaris: so bad I left the company.
>> 
>> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
> 
> Because SunOS had years of polish.  It was a nicer starting point (BSD
> had all the fun stuff, AT&T was sort of a stuffed shirt's Unix, BSD was
> Unix for hackers) and the engineers who polished it did so because they
> loved it.  Lots of us stayed late into the night working on that OS and
> it showed.  It was fun times, McNealy knew we were working on it and he'd
> come over to the kernel team's building and egg us on.  He'd get up on
> the conference table and preach to us how it was going to rule the world.

I’m with you there, and fought some similar futile battles about NeWS (but it was good practice for later more successfully convincing EA to free SimCity). 

I’d totally given up working on NeWS and for Sun before I graduated, but James Gosling promised me that Sun had turned over a new leaf, Scott McNealy was 100% behind it, and they would make NeWS free. 

What actually happened a slap in the face: Sun released the OpenWindows source code for “free” (as in beer, not speech), at only $995 media cost (and no you can’t put it on your ftp server). So it was “free” as in bullshit, actually. 

-Don



> 
> From: hopkins (Don Hopkins)
> Subject: Sun's inconsistent and misleading use of the word "FREE"
> Date: 29 November 1990 at 18:10:55 GMT+1
> To: rjg, smitad, rogern, tomj
> Cc: rxb, chan, dianam at corp, cathybg at corp, messino at corp, scott at corp, edz at corp, hopkins
> 
> I have been hoping for Sun to make Open Windows free since it was
> called SunDew, and during that time, I've made it perform many
> indescribable acts (both on and off stage), worked with quite a few
> companies trying to make it a success, and drained much much more of
> my energy into it than I ever knew I had to give.
> 
> With horror, I have been following the messages on the network in the
> aftermath of the OWPS "free for $1000" disaster...  The big problem
> was not the $1000.  It was the word "free".
> 
> In short: If you were a slave, what how would you feel if your master
> announced you could go "free", but he really meant he was selling you
> down the river for a media cost of only $1000?
> 
> The OWPS 2.0 press release used the word "Free" exactly three times,
> in two *COMPLETELY* different ways: Twice to describe the cost of the
> OWPS source code and license (but not the media, therefor it can't be
> freely distributed by MIT on the X11R4 tape, or the Free Software
> Foundation).  And once to describe the XView toolkit -- which really
> is *truely* free, in the same sense that we have been asking Sun to
> make NeWS free for years.
> 
> Free #1:
>  Sun Microsystems announced today that the source code for its
>  OpenWindows(TM) application development environment will now be
>  available free of charge (cost of media only -- $995).
> 
> This use of the word "free" is quite fair and well qualified (you
> could try to weasel out by saying "free of charge" meant no static
> electricity).  The problem is that there is no way to get OWPS 2.0
> without the media.  So why use the word free if there is no way you
> can get it without paying money? In the first paragraph of the press
> release, you get peoples hopes up, then dash them with a slimy
> marketing maneuver typical of a used car ad. But at least you did not
> string them along for long.
> 
> Free #2:
>  "Offering free source code for the industry's most advanced,
>  comprehensive window environment demonstrates our ongoing commitment to
>  open systems," said Ed Zander, vice president of marketing at Sun.
> 
> I agree that Open Windows is the best window system on Earth, and that
> making it possible for anyone to get it for free would demonstrate a
> *lot* of good things about Sun, and pay off enormously, in both the
> short and the long run.  But it's not available to everyone, and it's
> not free, so Sun hasn't demonstrated anything positive at all. You say
> it's free, but you actually have to pay to get it, if you even qualify
> at all.  That's the worst thing you could possibly say.  If you had
> come right out and said it was "only" $1000 to "some" people, and
> never used the word free, this might not have been a disaster.
> 
> Free #3:
>  The OLIT toolkit -- based on AT&T's OPEN LOOK toolkit (XT+) --
>  implements the OPEN LOOK look and feel and supports MIT Intrinsics.
>  The XView toolkit is also offered free on the X11 R4 tape available
>  from MIT. 
> 
> *THAT* was the big mistake. You used the *exact* same word, "free", to
> refer to XView. Not only that, but you said "also offered free on the
> X11R4 tape available from MIT." What does that word "also" in that
> sentence mean? It must be referring to something else that's free, and
> what could that be?  There is no doubt that the press release tries to
> compare the "freeness" of XView with the "freeness" of Open Windows,
> and then has the nerve to go on and say that XView is available on the
> X11R4 tape from MIT!  There is no other reasonable interpretation.
> The implication is that OLPS is "free" in the same sense that enables
> MIT to give XView away on the X11R4 tape.  And according to what I
> have been told, that is *NOT* the case.
> 
> It is *great* that XView is free, and Sun definitely means for it to
> be widely available, easy to get, and freely distributable, as
> evidenced by our quick and positive response to the problem raised by
> Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation with the wording of
> the XView legal notice.  (If we didn't clarify the notice, FSF could
> not have given away copies of XView, and MIT would have to *remove*
> XView from the X11R4 tape.)
> 
> For years, we (customers, software developers, and employees) have
> been asking Sun to make Open Windows available for free, in such a way
> that it could be distributed on the X11R4 tape or through other public
> channels, but that has not happened yet. Our concern is *not* that we
> just don't want to pay money for it!! The most important thing is that
> we can make changes to the source code, and give copies of it to
> anyone who wants it, using any media or distribution channel we want.
> But we can't, so it doesn't matter how cheap it is. Even if you didn't
> charge for media, it wouldn't really be the kind of "free" it needs to
> be. It must be unrestricted, like XView.
> 
> Were it not for the use of the word "also", it would have only been a
> "very deceptive" press release. But because of that "also", in
> combination with the inconsistent and misleading use of the word
> "free", and the gratuitous reference to the X11R4 tape, I have to say
> that it was an *EXTREMELY DECEPTIVE* press release.
> 
> The worst part is that the most horrible bit of misdirection takes
> place at the *end* of the press release, once the reader has waded
> through the obviously slimy marketing maneuvers at the top of the
> press release and figured out that Sun is trying to fool him. At this
> point, the reference to the fact that XView is distributed on the
> X11R4 tape is a slap in the face!
> 
> OWPS 2.0 is *not* free to go on X11R4 tape.  Or at least, that's what
> you've told me, and I am very sorry about it.  So why did you mention
> the fact that XView was on the X11R4 tape?  It is highly commendable
> that Sun has actually given XView away for free.  And it really paid
> off.  If we hadn't, Motif would have creamed us.  The same argument,
> that freedom catalyzes success, applies to Open Windows as well, but
> unbelievably, there are still people at Sun who just haven't figured
> it out yet.  But even though they won't give Open Windows away for
> free, they still want to *SAY* they give Open Windows away for free.
> 
> This is why the customers, software developers, and employees are
> pissed off.  Many of the most important ones will be at Sun Users
> Group, all next week!  There is an Open Windows "birds of a feather"
> meeting Tuesday night, 5:45-7:00.  I am almost afraid to show my face.
> I really really hope you have an explanation for what happened
> together by then.  It's going to go over like a lead brick if nobody
> from Sun can give any answers.  The worse thing in the world you could
> do would be to repeat the same old marketing hype. Do *not* try to
> explain to people that Open Windows is "free". Avoid that word like
> the plague, unless you *really* mean it.
> 
> 	-Don
> 
> PS: Enclosed is the press release:
> 
> SunFLASH Vol 23 #12					       November 1990 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>           Package Includes Window System and Toolkits
> 
> MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- November 13, 1990 -- Sun Microsystems
> announced today that the source code for its OpenWindows(TM)
> application development environment will now be available free of
> charge (cost of media only -- $995).  This means that hardware and
> software developers will now have a cost-effective way to incorporate
> OpenWindows -- including the easy-to-use OPEN LOOK(R) graphical user
> interface -- into applications developed or ported to many platforms
>> from different vendors.
> 
> The package includes code for the X11/NeWs(TM) Window System, OPEN LOOK
> toolkits, and OpenFonts(TM) with its TypeScaler(TM) technology.  Before
> today, only OpenWindows binaries were available from Sun.
> 
> "Offering free source code for the industry's most advanced,
> comprehensive window environment demonstrates our ongoing commitment to
> open systems," said Ed Zander, vice president of marketing at Sun.
> 
>                     Advanced Imaging Model
> 
> The X11/NeWS Window System that is part of the source package combines
> a fully compliant X implementation with Sun's NeWS(R) technology, which
> offers the most advanced PostScript(R) imaging model available today.
> NeWS lets developers work with interactive, on-screen PostScript
> graphics -- particularly useful for commercial applications such as
> desktop publishing and multimedia.
> 
> Also part of the source code package is OpenFonts -- Sun's
> nonproprietary font technology, which includes 57 scalable fonts.
> 
>             OPEN LOOK Toolkits Provide Portability
> 
> The keys to OpenWindows' portability are two OPEN LOOK toolkits,
> XView(TM) and the OPEN LOOK Intrinsics Toolkit (OLIT). XView is Sun's
> X-based toolkit that gives developers an easy way to design new
> applications with the OPEN LOOK graphical user interface, as well as to
> migrate the 2,800 existing kernel-based SunView(TM) applications to the
> networked window environment of OPEN LOOK and X.
> 
> The OLIT toolkit -- based on AT&T's OPEN LOOK toolkit (XT+) --
> implements the OPEN LOOK look and feel and supports MIT Intrinsics.
> The XView toolkit is also offered free on the X11 R4 tape available
>> from MIT. OpenWindows is a standard part of the industry's leading
> UNIX(R) operating system, UNIX System V Release 4 from AT&T.
> 
> Since OPEN LOOK toolkits will be available for a range of platforms,
> developers can standardize on a single graphical interface.  Toolkits
>> from Sun and other vendors are available now or will be offered within
> three months for UNIX workstations from Digital Equipment Corp.,
> Hewlett-Packard and IBM, for VAX/VMS systems from Digital.
> 
>                          Availability
> 
> OpenWindows source code will be available January 1, 1991 on magnetic
> tape for $995 (which includes the cost of media and documentation)
> through Sun distributors.  The source license is included at no cost.
> There are no royalties for distributing applications developed with
> OpenWindows.  Hardware vendors will pay nominal royalties for systems
> they resell that run the OpenWindows environment.
> 
> Sun Microsystems, Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., is a
> leading worldwide supplier of network-based distributed computing
> systems, including professional workstations, servers and UNIX
> operating system and productivity software.
> 
> ###
> 
> OpenWindows, XView, X11/NeWS, OpenFonts and TypeScaler are trademarks
> and NeWS is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. OPEN LOOK
> and UNIX are registered trademarks of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
> PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc. All other
> products or services mentioned in this document are identified by the
> trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or
> organizations.
> 
> 
> FOR MORE INFORMATION:
> Cathleen Beall Garfield  (415) 336-6536 
> Diana Murray OpenWindows Licensing Manager (415) 336-1567
> 
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 

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Favorite UNIX

[jason-tuhs]

>>    > Solaris: so bad I left the company.

>> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?

> But that was a kick in the nuts to us engineers.  The sytem v source 
> base was crap compared to sunos, a huge step backwards.
>
> So my crowd pretty much all left in disgust.  There was a lot of 
> heartache over it.  None of us knew about the business deal at the time, 
> in fact I think a lot of management didn't know.
> [...]
> Instead, they repeated the SunOS journey.  Bryan and crew polished that 
> turd for years and got it sort of reasonable. [...] but they went for it 
> and got it better.  Only to have it tossed away again.  Yuck.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's a pretty good talk that gives the 
two-minute version of what Larry has described, and then picks up the 
story from there and runs with it over the next twentyish years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc


  -Jason

Favorite UNIX

[Kevin Bowling]

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Bryan’s talks are unparalleled entertainment, but it’s hard for me not to
laugh at some of this with the benefit of more time passage.

There’s a lot of clean code worthy of inspection in Illumos, but I think
it’s bordering on the threshold of a historical project.  Key subsystems
like the VM and network stack have seen little development since 2009.  Sun
was a giant benevolent benefactor and nobody’s filled the void of working
on general infrastructure.

My gut feeling is Sun’s early ‘90s choices were inevitable death wish.
I’ve had the unsettling thoughts lately that Sun after this era was a
brilliant marketing company more so than anything else.

On Monday, October 2, 2017, <jason-tuhs at shalott.net> wrote:

>
>    > Solaris: so bad I left the company.
>>>
>>
> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
>>>
>>
> But that was a kick in the nuts to us engineers.  The sytem v source base
>> was crap compared to sunos, a huge step backwards.
>>
>> So my crowd pretty much all left in disgust.  There was a lot of
>> heartache over it.  None of us knew about the business deal at the time, in
>> fact I think a lot of management didn't know.
>> [...]
>> Instead, they repeated the SunOS journey.  Bryan and crew polished that
>> turd for years and got it sort of reasonable. [...] but they went for it
>> and got it better.  Only to have it tossed away again.  Yuck.
>>
>
> For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's a pretty good talk that gives the
> two-minute version of what Larry has described, and then picks up the story
> from there and runs with it over the next twentyish years:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
>
>
>  -Jason
>
>
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Favorite UNIX

[Warner Losh]

Good talk. Best quote...

"Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison."

Warner

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 2:44 AM, <jason-tuhs at shalott.net> wrote:

>
>    > Solaris: so bad I left the company.
>>>
>>
> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
>>>
>>
> But that was a kick in the nuts to us engineers.  The sytem v source base
>> was crap compared to sunos, a huge step backwards.
>>
>> So my crowd pretty much all left in disgust.  There was a lot of
>> heartache over it.  None of us knew about the business deal at the time, in
>> fact I think a lot of management didn't know.
>> [...]
>> Instead, they repeated the SunOS journey.  Bryan and crew polished that
>> turd for years and got it sort of reasonable. [...] but they went for it
>> and got it better.  Only to have it tossed away again.  Yuck.
>>
>
> For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's a pretty good talk that gives the
> two-minute version of what Larry has described, and then picks up the story
> from there and runs with it over the next twentyish years:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
>
>
>  -Jason
>
>
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Favorite UNIX

[Don Hopkins]

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> 
> On 1 Oct 2017, at 19:51, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> From: Don Hopkins
> 
>> Solaris: so bad I left the company.
> 
> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
> 
> I guess the Sun management didn't understand that was the case? Or were they
> so hot for the AT+T linkup that they were willing to live with it?
> 
> 	Noel


[I recently posted this to the hacker news discussion about the death of solaris…]

Remember the poster they were giving out at Usenix with a picture of the BSD Tie Fighter blowing up the AT&T Death Star, and the mathematical formulation "4.x > V for all values of x from zero to infinity”?

It just didn't make sense that Sun kicked AT&T's ass with BSD Unix, and then capitulated to them by switching over to SVR4.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there was some business reason, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars

-Don

Favorite UNIX

[Steve Mynott]

On 1 October 2017 at 18:51, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:

> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?

Probably because it was so much more buggy on release and people were
more used to BSD and didn't like change and the fact that greedy Sun
had removed the compiler. Solaris 2.3 had core dumps from base
binaries everywhere where SunOS 4.1.3 seemed quite stable.

I ended up admin'ing Solaris 2.5 which seemed mostly fixed but it had
taken 2 or 3 years to become usable. There was a lot of Sun wierdness
like not working with DNS by default and I tended to remove most of
the Sun packages and replace by the GNU ones and qmail.

By the time releases were renumbered to 7 and 8 etc. the writing was
on the wall for Solaris.  That PC under the desk running linux ran
several times faster, had all the extended GNU utilities installed by
default, was much cheaper hardware and open source software compiled
without patching.  I was always a linux advocate in a London based ISP
and many co-workers were still Sun bigots. I particularly remember
them laughing at a version of linux which returned negative ping
times! I also remember the awful flexlm(?) licence server for the
official Sun CC and having to shout out to co-workers in the office
"anyone compiling? I need to". I don't think that lasted long and
drove us quickly to GCC on Solaris.

After a while that PC under the desk became a rack mount server in the
data centre and displaced Solaris.  In many jobs over the last decade
I've seen the odd Solaris server which hadn't been replaced and noone
(apart from me!) wanted to touch. There were lots of gotchas for linux
users. I remember someone crashing Solaris at the BBC with the
"killall" command and everyone filling up /tmp and running out of
swap! But they became less and less in number. The decent techs zfs,
dtrace (mostly) appeared in FreeBSD anyway.  Oracle's licensing fees
were so expensive even banks dropped Solaris.

When I recently fired up one of the open source Solaris clones under a
VM it seemed even wierder than I remember with some bizarre XML based
startup rc system. I didn't have much desire to experiment further.
Firing up BSD 4.3 and SunOS 4.1.4 I was surprised how timeless they
seemed and how close to modern BSDs they were.   I still couldn't
remember how to get SunOS 4 DNS working of course!

Given modern linux developments such as systemd I hope I'll be using
BSD more in the future! Maybe BSD won in the long term ;-)

-- 
4096R/EA75174B Steve Mynott <steve.mynott at gmail.com>

Favorite UNIX

[Jon Steinhart]

Steve Mynott writes:
> On 1 October 2017 at 18:51, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
> 
> Probably because it was so much more buggy on release and people were
> more used to BSD and didn't like change and the fact that greedy Sun
> had removed the compiler. Solaris 2.3 had core dumps from base
> binaries everywhere where SunOS 4.1.3 seemed quite stable.

I think that the root cause is AT&T USL.  When UNIX went from research
to "product" different people worked on it.  And those people seemed to
lack the artistry, vision, and craftsmanship of the original developers.
AT&T pushed their SVR4 crud hard onto the rest of the world.  Meanwhile,
the folks at Berkeley produced code more in the original tradition
possibly because of Ken taking a sabbatical year to teach there.  SunOS
was the result of the pipeline between Berkeley and Sun.

Solaris was the result of Sun abandoning the Berkeley branch for the USL
branch.

Favorite UNIX

[Don Hopkins]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1262 bytes --]

The term I heard to describe Unix USL was “Turkey Farm”. And there was something about “Stewing in their own juices for too long”. Sounds delicious! 

-Don


> On 1 Oct 2017, at 23:21, Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> wrote:
> 
> Steve Mynott writes:
>> On 1 October 2017 at 18:51, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
>> 
>> Probably because it was so much more buggy on release and people were
>> more used to BSD and didn't like change and the fact that greedy Sun
>> had removed the compiler. Solaris 2.3 had core dumps from base
>> binaries everywhere where SunOS 4.1.3 seemed quite stable.
> 
> I think that the root cause is AT&T USL.  When UNIX went from research
> to "product" different people worked on it.  And those people seemed to
> lack the artistry, vision, and craftsmanship of the original developers.
> AT&T pushed their SVR4 crud hard onto the rest of the world.  Meanwhile,
> the folks at Berkeley produced code more in the original tradition
> possibly because of Ken taking a sabbatical year to teach there.  SunOS
> was the result of the pipeline between Berkeley and Sun.
> 
> Solaris was the result of Sun abandoning the Berkeley branch for the USL
> branch.

Favorite UNIX

[Larry McVoy]

On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 02:21:20PM -0700, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Steve Mynott writes:
> > On 1 October 2017 at 18:51, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > Why was Solaris so much worse than SunOS?
> > 
> > Probably because it was so much more buggy on release and people were
> > more used to BSD and didn't like change and the fact that greedy Sun
> > had removed the compiler. Solaris 2.3 had core dumps from base
> > binaries everywhere where SunOS 4.1.3 seemed quite stable.
> 
> I think that the root cause is AT&T USL.  When UNIX went from research
> to "product" different people worked on it.  And those people seemed to
> lack the artistry, vision, and craftsmanship of the original developers.
> AT&T pushed their SVR4 crud hard onto the rest of the world.  Meanwhile,
> the folks at Berkeley produced code more in the original tradition
> possibly because of Ken taking a sabbatical year to teach there.  SunOS
> was the result of the pipeline between Berkeley and Sun.
> 
> Solaris was the result of Sun abandoning the Berkeley branch for the USL
> branch.

+1 couldn't have put it better.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

Favorite UNIX

[Will Senn]

On Sep 28, 2017 11:02 PM, "Kevin Bowling" <kevin.bowling at kev009.com> wrote:

What is your favorite UNIX.  Three possible categories, choose one or more:

1) Free
2) Forced to use a commercial platform.  I guess that could include
macOS and z/OS with some vivid imagination, maybe even NT.
3) Historical

1. FreeBSD. It's super stable and tends to be logical. The documentation is great once you get over the learning curve. Debian is a close second for the same reasons. Mint with KDE Plasma 5 is beautiful and user friendly.

2. I used Sun OS with a CDE-like interface back in the day and that was ok. Mac OS X 10.5-10.12 are great.

3. I enjoy the research versions of unix and other OSes that are available for the SimH PDP 11 emulator.

Will
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