Hacker News Reader

Comment by steeleduncan | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, I think a more representative title would be "How long will UNIX survive?". macOS is the only widespread version of UNIX left, and as it converges with iOS and loses its command line ecosystem, it will be the effective end for UNIX.

Ignoring the parallel universe of Mainframe computing, server UNIX has been replaced almost completely by server linux. The Free/Open/Net BSDs are knocking around both desktop and server spheres, but they are not common. Desktop macOS is the only recognisable strain of UNIX you are likely to encounter.

I agree with the point made by the OP of course, and I've swapped my MacBook to Ubuntu for this reason.

View on HN

IIRC PS4 relies upon (Free?)BSD, because of the permissive license, and there are probably other widely-used devices that do the same, so I'd imagine lots of people have a BSD or two in their home and don't even know it.

pfSense is FreeBSD. Not terribly popular, but I still come across it every so often.

That's less of a surprise, IMO -- pf is a BSD utility and was originally developed for OpenBSD. It's right in the front of the name so there's no question what you're getting (as opposed to OSX, where there is a base there, but no one would know it unless they're Unixy types).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_(firewall)

Well there’s nothing stopping you or me from picking a BSD and donating to the project monthly. It’s not the same as install base but probably way more important to them.

At this point the endpoint sphere is in transition. Someone could take a BSD and launch the next big thing on it if they had the right killer app. Netflix is a good example of this, or which ever consoles have ran BSD, too. I’d love to make my own startup with embedded or modded *bsd as well someday.

How many devs do you think will continue buying macs once the Unix CLI has gone?

If this happens, give me a call, and I'll help you build torches and sharpen pitchforks.

But until then, killing off your developer community is just about the stupidest thing you can do. Yes, it happens anyway (see also: Steve Ballmer), but what does worrying about it really get you, except worked up?

By what reasoning is macOS "Unix", but GNU/Linux isn't?

By certification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#macO...

FWIW, I think "Unix" as a philosophy exists (even mainly exists) outside the spec certification, but this is how you get there.

Huawei has EulerOS (which is based on CentOS) that is certified.

Inspur has K-UX, however, I have never used it, so can't comment on it other then knowing it runs a Linux kernel.

GNU's Not Unix!

Because GNU is not Unix

I think it's been for a while that "unix" == "linux". How many people install gnu tools on their macs using homebrew?

Unix goes far beyond installing GNU tools on your mac.

I think we all can agree here that most of us care about "UNIX user experience". The shell, the tools we can combine, APIs, man pages at my fingertips, etc. As far as I'm concerned there can be NT kernel beneath that doing all the work, I couldn't care less.

How is OSX more unix-like than Linux?

Because macOS is literally certified BSD UNIX.

How about in practical terms?

It’s POSIX-compliant short bugs which have unfortunately started cropping up more often as Apple reduces their focus in actually matching SUS.

"BSD UNIX" bears little code in common with original Bell/AT&T "UNIX" due to the USL v. BSD lawsuit[1] anyway. The closest living relative of AT&T UNIX still in use at all is probably Solaris and it's successors.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....

I'm not sure Solaris really counts as "living" any more. AIX seems healthier, notwithstanding the tradition distaste for it in a lot of the Unix world.

Both Solaris and AIX crawl on, particularly in the banking sector where there are decades old applications that still need a platform to run on. A bank I worked for 7-8 years ago had a project running to refresh the hardware platform for both for the next 10-15 years.

IBM of course has the resources to prop up AIX as long as it has customers that depend on it, whereas Solaris is now pretty much dependent on the community. At least it is based off of SVR4 and not SVR3 (like AIX), has source code available, and runs on x86. Not sure that will be enough for it to survive into the future though.

IIRC, Linux has also deviated from the Single UNIX Specification/POSIX in some respects that would make it fail certification even if they tried.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com