It sounds funny now, but Microsoft once actually had the most widely installed Unix base. Its version of Unix was called Xenix and it was distributed in the 80's by many vendors. What happened to it since then? Well, Microsoft sold it to SCO and moved on to develop OS/2 with IBM and then Windows NT.
Wikipedia has some interesting tidbits of information for Xenix here.
How it looked like back in the 80's? Here is a screenshot from wikipedia.
System V release 4, the standard for Unix today was formed by merging SunOS, BSD, Xenix, and System V.
Of course, the legacy of Microsoft Xenix is still around. But where to look to see the history of Unix ? All the flavours of Unix are closed source, or are they? Thanks to open sourcing of Solaris, we can now take a look into all the real Unix code and find some gems of Copyrights that silently narrate the history of Unix development.
For example, to see how the development of Unix has passed on from the University of California at Berkeley to AT&T and Microsoft to Sun Microsystems, have a look at this tar code.
Such is the beauty of Unix. Decades older than any other present day OSs and still holding on its own in the modern world. Not only that, it manages to beat others often in their own game and still come out at other times with such innovations that are the envy of the youngsters. Even spawning dozens of clones which are cool in their own way. Ubuntu, anyone?
Me? I'm happy with my good ol' Unix. Solaris, that is. For me.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Sunday, December 10, 2006
MacOS X and Linux expert views , anyone
I must confess I haven't touched Linux for a long time now. The last time I seriously worked on it was RedHat 7.2 Linux which I used to learn MPI during my masters. I know it definitely has progressed a lot in the last few yrs. So, what are the new features added to the kernel or the distributions since then. I can't seem to remember any apart from some filesystems and lots of drivers.
Newer version of MacOS X will have X-Ray technology which is nothing but DTrace with a nice GUI on top.
If you know of some good features that are in Linux now, especially which are as revolutionary as the ones in Solaris ( see my last post) and are not available elsewhere, please leave a comment. I might try a new distro sometime soon.
Xen, I think would be a cool addition, but it is not unique for Linux. It will be very interesting to work with, though.
Newer version of MacOS X will have X-Ray technology which is nothing but DTrace with a nice GUI on top.
If you know of some good features that are in Linux now, especially which are as revolutionary as the ones in Solaris ( see my last post) and are not available elsewhere, please leave a comment. I might try a new distro sometime soon.
Xen, I think would be a cool addition, but it is not unique for Linux. It will be very interesting to work with, though.
Best Operating System for geeks?
Most wannabe geeks would say Linux, though it is just a kernel and not an OS. Some would answer Ubuntu or Gentoo depending on which is the 'in thing'. A few people would perhaps say MacOS X is the best. Windows, of course, is not the one geeks want to be associated with.
One more OS is making waves in the academia and business world and with serious geeks for the last yr or so, after it was open sourced. For all the right reasons. That is the grand daddy of all, the most popular Unix - Solaris OS. No other operating system, not even Linux can claim to have as much geeky meat as Solaris. Some of the mouth watering stuff in Solaris 10, especially for geeks include:
Zones - software virtualization feature which has no match in any other OS. I can't remember which technology in any other OS comes even close. BSD jails, perhaps.
ZFS - the ultra modern file system, again with no match. The only thing that comes close is VxFS but ZFS is free with source code in the open.
DTrace - again no match anywhere. The capability to look into each and every place into the kernel and other parts in a running system using DTrace is unparalleled. It has been winning accolades all over. SystemTap for Linux is still not complete and its design makes it unlikely to be able to compete with DTrace in the future.
BrandZ - It gives you the capability to run Linux apps on top of Solaris. For example, you can run a version of Linux like CentOS right inside a Solaris Zone. Say you want to play Quake or use Google Earth which don't have Solaris apps; just create a Zone in Solaris, install your Linux in the zone and play away with the apps which are available in Linux. How more geeky can one get!
Of course, serious business won't play games. For them there are other more serious features like:
Fault Management Architecture (FMA), Service Management Framework(SMF), etc.
Linux is a good Operating System and has the advantage of having more drivers. But in almost everything else, Solaris scores higher. Now that it is open sourced it should get people interested in creating drivers. The community and codebase of Solaris is called OpenSolaris. Looking at the number of posts and projects there, it really looks like a dynamic and vibrant group of geeks.
One more OS is making waves in the academia and business world and with serious geeks for the last yr or so, after it was open sourced. For all the right reasons. That is the grand daddy of all, the most popular Unix - Solaris OS. No other operating system, not even Linux can claim to have as much geeky meat as Solaris. Some of the mouth watering stuff in Solaris 10, especially for geeks include:
Zones - software virtualization feature which has no match in any other OS. I can't remember which technology in any other OS comes even close. BSD jails, perhaps.
ZFS - the ultra modern file system, again with no match. The only thing that comes close is VxFS but ZFS is free with source code in the open.
DTrace - again no match anywhere. The capability to look into each and every place into the kernel and other parts in a running system using DTrace is unparalleled. It has been winning accolades all over. SystemTap for Linux is still not complete and its design makes it unlikely to be able to compete with DTrace in the future.
BrandZ - It gives you the capability to run Linux apps on top of Solaris. For example, you can run a version of Linux like CentOS right inside a Solaris Zone. Say you want to play Quake or use Google Earth which don't have Solaris apps; just create a Zone in Solaris, install your Linux in the zone and play away with the apps which are available in Linux. How more geeky can one get!
Of course, serious business won't play games. For them there are other more serious features like:
Fault Management Architecture (FMA), Service Management Framework(SMF), etc.
Linux is a good Operating System and has the advantage of having more drivers. But in almost everything else, Solaris scores higher. Now that it is open sourced it should get people interested in creating drivers. The community and codebase of Solaris is called OpenSolaris. Looking at the number of posts and projects there, it really looks like a dynamic and vibrant group of geeks.
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