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Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner [The Register]
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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What an odd article. First, the author goes to great lengths to assert that “Linux IS UNIX” with pretty circumstantial evidence at best. Then, I guess to hide the fact the his point has not proved, he goes through the history of UNIX, I guess to re-enforce that Linux is just a small piece of the UNIX universe? Then, he chastises people working on Linux for not staying true to the UNIX philosophy and original design principles.
Questions like “are you sure this is a UNIX tool?” do not land with the weight he hopes as the answer os almost certainly “No. This is not a “UNIX” tool. It is not trying to be. Linux is not UNIX.”
The article seems to be mostly a complaint that Linux is not staying true enough to UNIX. The author does not really establish why that is a problem though.
There is an implication I guess that the point of POSIX and then we UNIX certification was to bring compatibility to the universe of diverging and incompatible Unices. While I agree that fragmentation works against commercial success, this is not a very strong point. Not only was the UNIX universe ( with its coherent design philosophy and open specifications ) completely dominated by Windows in the market but they were also completely displaced by Linux ( without the UNIX certification ).
Big companies found in Linux a platform that they could collaborate on. In practice, Linux is less fragmented and more ubiquitous than UNiX ever was before Linux. Critically, Linux has been able to evolve beyond the UNIX certification.
Linux does follow standards. There is POSIX of course. There is the LSB. There is freedesktop.org. There are others. There is also only one kernel.
Linux remains too fragmented on the desktop to displace Windows. To address that, a standard set of Linux standards are emerging: including Wayland, pipewire, and Flatpak.
Wayland is an evolution of the Linux desktop. It is a standard. There is a specification. There is a lot of collaboration around its evolution.
As for “other” systems, I would argue that compatibility with Linux will be more useful to them than compatibility with “UNIX”. I would expect other systems to adopt Wayland in time. It is already supported on systems like Haiku. FreeBSD is working on it as well.
This is my real problem with this (and also broadly pointing the finger to the "Unix philosophy" whenever a project like systemd or Wayland exists, ignoring that the large, complex, multifaceted, and monolithic Linux kernel itself flies in the face of that philosophy). Linux may have originally been built to be Unix-like but has become its own thing that shares a few similarities with Unix.