Comment by wolfgke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wolfgke | Hacker News Reader

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> Linux and DOS/Windows have far more in common with each other than mainframe OSes, despite their huge differences, because they evolved from mini/microcomputers and UNIX.

Surely Linux and the Windows NT line (don't confuse the Windows 9x line, which evolved indirectly from DOS with the Windows NT line) have much more in common with each other than mainframe OSes, but Windows did not evolve from UNIX:

The Windows 9x line evolved indirectly from DOS (cf. [1]). DOS was inspired a lot by CP/M.

The Windows NT line is a spiritual succesor to VMS (cf. [2]). The kernels of both operating systems were designed by Dave Cutler, who did not like UNIX (cf. [3]). Indeed, Windows NT has I/O Completion Port (IOCP, [4]) as an - in my opinion - better I/O system than the UNIX process input/output model.

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20071224-00/?p=...

[2] https://www.itprotoday.com/management-mobility/windows-nt-an...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dave_Cutler&oldid...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Input/output_comp...

> The Windows 9x line evolved indirectly from DOS

Not sure what you believe to be 'indirect' about that relationship. That Windows codebase started out running on DOS and ultimately wound up so closely coupled that they shipped together in the same box as the same product.

> Windows did not evolve from UNIX:

Windows, through its DOS lineage, does indeed have some roots in the Unix tradition. (This should be unsurprising, since Microsoft was one of the more successful Unix licensees in the early 80's.)

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/06/24/wh...

To put Cutler's dislike of Unix into perspective, DOS (and Windows) had close to a decade of development prior to his involvement. (DOS shipped in 81, Cutler got involved in ~88, his first product shipped in ~93, and the old DOS-based Windows wasn't fully deprecated until 2001-1.)

DOS commands and hierarchical file paths were based on DEC’s TOPS-10, via CP/M, both of which Cutler would have been familiar with.

DOS was at best a mongrel mash-up. It no more evolved from Unix than AmigaOS did.

> DOS commands and hierarchical file paths were based on DEC’s TOPS-10, via CP/M, both of which Cutler would have been familiar with.

I'm sure he was, but DOS got pathnames in March of 83 and Cutler didn't join until 6 years later.

MS/PC/DR-DOS was also inspired by Unix. It's where the handle-based API, the hierarchical directory structure, and indeed ioctl, came from that appeared in MS/PC-DOS version 2.

On top of it, the Linux ecosystem has evolved in cloud space to be more like VMS with things like metering, more security restrictions, clustering, and so on. The "unnecessary" stuff that was integrated with VMS ground up got bolted onto Linux's later.

Solaris has event ports which are equivalent to Windows IOCP. So not all *NIX systems are deficient in that regard :)

> Solaris has event ports which are equivalent to Windows IOCP. So not all *NIX systems are deficient in that regard :)

I know, but IOCP badly fits into the "UNIX philosophy", i.e. in this case how input/output is "typically" organized under UNIX.

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