From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Aug 18 13:39:11 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (zoom1-228.telepath.com [216.14.1.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 982EA37B424 for ; Fri, 18 Aug 2000 13:39:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 76451 invoked by uid 100); 18 Aug 2000 20:38:30 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14749.40646.311975.30537@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 15:38:30 -0500 (CDT) To: "Kevin Oberman" Cc: "James A Wilde" , questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sun OS (Was: BSD Inquiry...) In-Reply-To: <200008181644.e7IGiuU23126@ptavv.es.net> References: <002801c00905$504109e0$8208a8c0@iqunlimited.net> <200008181644.e7IGiuU23126@ptavv.es.net> X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Kevin Oberman writes: > > From: "James A Wilde" > > Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 13:13:19 +0200 > > > Linux isn't based on Unix source code. It's a rewrite from scratch > > > based on the SysV manuals. So the flavor is a lot like SysV (or > > > Solaris). On the other hand, there's no centralized source for Linux > > > code outside the kernel, so you never know... > > ...and presumably then Posix is SysV-like cos I know Linus has said that the > > Linux kernel aims to be Posix compatible. > Just to avoid confusing many, many people, Posix is NOT an operating > system. It is a standard for code portability and specifies things > like utilities and libraries. It, in no way, specifies an OS. VMS was > Posix and I think Windows NT might well be. Some of the things Posix specifies are system calls. However, since the goal is code portability, whether what you're discussing is a system call or a library call is moot. This is why VMS can be Posix compliant. And why Windows NT can do it, thought I believe it requires an add-on. > Posix has a few dumb things in it, but it is a good concept and it's > generally a good idea to comply. (Posix regular expressions being a > significant exception, IMHO.) I'm one of the people who believe that if Unix vendors had managed to get behind a standard in the '80s, rather than all of them doing their own extensions, the world would be a much different - and better - place. So I concur!