[TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX")

Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com
Wed Mar 15 01:56:31 AEST 2017


SunOS wasn't multi threaded.  Linux seems to have done that pretty well
without getting all bloated (unlike early Solaris releases, I can't
speak to the later ones). 

Linux is just more mature, has had more people working on it (which is
both a good and a bad thing).  And didn't have Sun's stick in the mud
approach to compat that made things like /proc in Solaris way way way
less useful than Linux' /proc.

So it's really hard to say.

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 11:51:47AM -0400, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> But how far along are we on the Linux timeline, and how far along was Sun on
> the SunOS timeline before they stopped developing it?
> 
> It's been 23 or so years since my first exposure to Linux.
> 
> SunOS started at 1.0 in 1983, and last release was just before 1995. 12
> years in total. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunOS
> 
> Now, of course, I understand SunOS is based on BSD so there is a lot more
> work invested in SunOS before Sun even started on it which adds another 10
> years (maybe less) to the SunOS development timeline. But in reality, how
> much of Linux was based on previous works?
> 
> Just a thought experiment, nothing more.
> 
> 
> On 3/14/2017 11:38 AM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> >As someone who dedicated a bunch of his life to Unix, it pains me to say
> >it but Linux is better than a lot of the Unix systems from back in the
> >day.  I loved SunOS but I wouldn't trade today's Linux for SunOS and I
> >don't think there are very many people who would disagree.
> >
> >It got better than "good enough".
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 



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