undefined | Better HN

0 pointspjmlp9y ago0 comments

Not everyone agree those were the good old days.

For me the good old days were the time spend with Amiga 500, discovering the world of Smalltalk, Oberon and all Xerox PARC research and other pioneers.

I got into UNIX via Xenix, and used almost every commercial flavour of it, but don't consider it the good old days.

The fact that POSIX is stuck in a PDP-11 world, is a proof that no big in the industry, with power to drive POSIX forward, is seeing as a relevant OS API for anything besides writing daemons and CLI applications accessible via SSH.

0 comments

gaius9y ago

It's not really proof of that tho', it's proof that they see advantages in less portability between Unix variants, which is not entirely the same thing. There's nothing in it for Red Hat or Canonical shareholders if you decide to run FreeBSD instead, so why would they support the standard?

ZenoArrow9y ago

Red Hat and Canonical rely on third party software to boost their software ecosystem, that's why it's in their interest to support POSIX standards.

gaius9y ago

Yes and no. They both have the resources (money, engineers) to do alot in-house, and the market share that vendors will support them specifically. They can't not do this, they are under the same commercial pressure as other OS vendors.

If you want proof, just look at the systemd fiasco. Red Hat's way or the highway.

1 more reply

ktRolster9y ago

Yeah, I feel like there was a golden age between 1975 and 1985, and then things got stale.

Things started picking up around Linux time, though that age of goodness started getting stale around 2006 (maybe because linux started to get commercialized? Or maybe because everyone started getting interested in handheld devices for their 'fun' programming?)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointspjmlp9y ago0 comments

Not everyone agree those were the good old days.

For me the good old days were the time spend with Amiga 500, discovering the world of Smalltalk, Oberon and all Xerox PARC research and other pioneers.

I got into UNIX via Xenix, and used almost every commercial flavour of it, but don't consider it the good old days.

0 comments

gaius9y ago

ZenoArrow9y ago

Red Hat and Canonical rely on third party software to boost their software ecosystem, that's why it's in their interest to support POSIX standards.

gaius9y ago

If you want proof, just look at the systemd fiasco. Red Hat's way or the highway.

1 more reply

ktRolster9y ago

Yeah, I feel like there was a golden age between 1975 and 1985, and then things got stale.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse