The author lost me at “Linux is Unix.” I kept reading and it didn’t get any better. 🥺
ah yes, Liux
Blah blah blah blah blah…
tl;dr the author never actually gets to the point stated in the title about what the “problem” is with the direction of Linux and/or how knowing the history of UNIX would allegedly solve this. The author mainly goes off on a tangent listing out every UNIX and POSIX system in their history of UNIX.
If I understand correctly, the author sort of backs into the argument that, because certain Chinese distros like Huawei EulerOS and Inspur K/UX were UNIX-certified by Open Group, Linux therefore is a UNIX and not merely UNIX-like. The author seems to be indirectly implying that all of Linux therefore needs to be made fully UNIX-compatible at a native level and not just via translation layers.
Towards the end, the author points out that Wayland doesn’t comply with UNIX principles because the graphics stack does not follow the “everything is a file” principle, despite previously admitting that basically no graphics stack, like X11 or MacOS’s graphics stack, has ever done this.
Help me out if I am missing something, but all of this fails to articulate why any of this is a “problem” which will lead to some kind of dead-end for Linux or why making all parts of Linux UNIX-compatible would be helpful or preferable. The author seems to assume out of hand that making systems UNIX-compatible is an end unto itself.
Seriously, I don’t understand the point of the article, if there is one.
It seemed more like a confused enumeration of systems which are POSIX conform and in the end it talks about Wayland.
Is the point that Wayland breaks compatibility with X11/X.org and is mostly a Linux thingy? (AFAIK FreeBSD is working on a Wayland port, but no one else.)
Anyway, I am a happy Wayland user for several years now, although I am of course unhappy about the split with the *BSDs, OTOH most 'NIX software nowadays uses so many Linux APIs, that Wayland is IMHO no big game changer when talking about portability anyway.
FreeBSD isn’t working on a Wayland port, that’s already happened. The Plasma Wayland session has supported it for quite a while… KDE even runs a CI job on FreeBSD for every merge request, where kwin_wayland autotests are run.
Considering the amount of complaints we got when something broke recently though (which is to say, none), it doesn’t look like it has a lot of users
Good to know that FreeBSD pulls Wayland off! :-)
It is a pity, that FreeBSD is not more utilized for desktops.
Is anyone even running anything besides maybe FreeBSD on desktops? Most advantages of BSD over Linux seem to be relevant for servers, but not really for typical desktop usage.
Additionally, apps use toolkits anyway, which provides backends for Wayland and X11. If at some point X really isn’t viable anymore, people will put in the work and port Wayland from FreeBSD to other BSDs.
In my impression OpenBSD is used at least as much as FreeBSD on the desktop, if not even more.
Nowadays I agree with your point, that for the ‘typical desktop usage’ the BSDs are not very viable (I try from time to time and always have to give up, because of missing hardware support or missing software.).
Still, IMHO it is a great loss that the BSDs are not really an alternative on the desktop for most users. BSDs are extremely good engineered, when hardware is supported, it just works™, the base system is clean and has great documentation.
“Nobody wants to work anymore” energy from yet another dude
deleted by creator
For those unaware, your thesis concept is also known as BLUF: Bottom-Line Up Front. Take a moment after you’ve finished your masterpiece to summarise it at the top in one sentence, or two at most.
A tl;dr at the end of a post also works, but only for those who think to check for it. But either option works.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But it hides most of the real Unix directory tree, its /etc is relatively empty, it doesn’t have an X server – it’s an optional extra.
So taking that list of general characteristics, and adding a less visible one – that it’s programmed mainly in C or something C-like – and requiring that the OS looks like Unix and nothing else, meaning there’s no other native layer underneath, then the family is bigger.
The original microkernel, CMU Mach, led to a whole bunch of Unix OSes, including the Open Group’s OSF/1 and DEC Tru64, as well as MkLinux and famously the GNU HURD.
The only one that isn’t a historical curiosity or a tiny neglected niche is Apple’s macOS family, including iOS, iPadOS and so on.
QNX is a commercial microkernel Unix-like OS, and it’s used in billions of embedded devices … although the only time you might have played with it was Blackberry 10.
A host machine, plus dumb text terminals on serial connections, with no graphics and no networking – even so, high-end kit for the 1970s.
The original article contains 1,892 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
We got shoveled systems like the worst shit sandwich.
Anything supporting the Unix principle of design needs to address that cancer.
