[BLU/Officers] BLU talk on State of the UNIX Family"?
John Abreau
jabr at blu.org
Sat Dec 3 19:49:19 EST 2022
I looked through the calendar for non-Linux UNIX topics. Here's what i
found:
2016-12-21 | Dan Stoltz - Windows Containers, WSL (Windows Subsystem for
Linux)
2009-04-15 | Clem Cole - UNIX, Linux, and BSD: A Look Back (again)
2008-04-16 | Robert Getschmann - Overview of FreeBSD
2004-12-15 | Robert Getschmann - What's New with BSD
2003-08-20 | Michael Oh - Mac OS X Server and Apple's Xserver platform
2002-08-21 | P.A.M. Borys and Peter R. Wood - Introduction to Apple MacOS X
2002-07-17 | Daoud Shariff - Introduction to IBM AIX
2001-09-19 | Clem Cole - The History of UNIX: How We Got Where We Are
1999-10-20 | Robert Getschmann - Overview of FreeBSD
1998-07-15 | Ted Kochanski - Lucent Inferno - Update on Bell Labs Network
OSes
1996-07-17 | Thomas Bushnell - GNU HURD: The Latest News
1996-04-17 | Jon "maddog" Hall - Linux and Commercial UNIX: Adversaries or
Bedfellows?
WSL is still Linux-adjacent, so that probably shouldn't count, even though
the host is Windows.
So, other than WSL, the most recent non-Linux UNIX topic was BSD in 2009.
Thirteen years ago.
On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 7:20 PM Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 9:36 AM John Abreau <jabr at blu.org> wrote:
>
>> It's been a long time since we last had a talk involving non-Linux
>> topics.
>>
>
> BSD lives.
> Commercial Unix continues.
>
>
>
>> It might be interesting to have a meeting regarding the state of UNIX in
>> today's world. I imagine many traditional UNIXes may be moribund at this
>> point, but a historical overview might be interesting.
>>
>> 1. What traditional UNIXes are still in active use and/or being actively
>> developed?
>>
>
> *UNIX liveness* (*initially from same Wikipedia SVG
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unix_systems#/media/File:Unix_history-simple.svg>
> as below*;* updated from individual Wikipedia pages*)
>
> - *✓ **System V* R4 descent
> - *✓ **AIX* 7.3 (IBM; proprietary; Dec 2021) Long term support,
> slow update cycle?
> - *✓ **HP-UX* 11i+ v3 ( proprietary; May 2022)
> - *✓ **Oracle Solaris* 11.4 SRU51 (ex Sun; proprietary; Oracle, Nov
> 2022)
> *OpenSolaris* dead long since at Oracle ex-Sun;
> living OpenSolaris forks (FLOSS):
> *✓*illumos/OpenIndiana (Dec 2021),
> *½*SchilliX?, SmartOS (2020),
> *✓*OmniOScd (2022),
> others might be alive-ish also?
>
> - *✓ **BSD* (with Sys V + Gnu mixins; FLOSS)
> - *✓ *OpenBSD 7.2 (Oct 2022)
> - *✓ *NetBSD 9.3 (Aug 2022)
> - *✓ *DragonFly BSD 6.2.2 (June 2022)
> - *✓ *FreeBSD 13.1 (2022)
> - *✓ *MacOS (OSX) 13.0 (*mix of open source and proprietary,
> proprietary result*) (Oct 2022)
> ("Ventura" ; mostly FreeBSD userland + Darwin 22.1.0 kernel, + some
> OpenBSD network bits)
>
> 2. "Whatever happened to the <n> operating system", where <n> is one of
>> { BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Darwin, HURD, AT&T Plan9, SGI Unix,
>> ... }
>>
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unix_systems#/media/File:Unix_history-simple.svg
> shows quite a few as live (listed above) and
> a number of lines of descent as having
> *ended: Minix, *(*academic kernelized IX-ish OS that inspired
> non-kernelized Linux*)
> *OpenServer (**Xenix lineage*
> *), UnixWare (*aka* Unix sVr5)*;
> *OSF/1 (*incl* DEC/HP Tru64) *
> *SGI'*s was *IRIX,*
> *Cray UNICOS* (orig. "CX-OS", UNIX, later Linux; disc.)
>
>
> Others -
>
> - *MACH kernel: *CMU developed.
> - *OSF Mach - **OSF/1 *Unix ported to Mach. Last seen as HP Tru64,
> 2012.
> - *NeXTSTEP *(BSD+Mach) - long gone. Even OpenStep OS on Mach gone.
> (GnuStep continues the API etc, but not as OS).
> - *OS/2 Warp PPC (Mach) "Workplace OS" *- never shipped
> - *✓ Darwin* (Mach XNU, *non-free*) (kernel): Lives. See *MacOS* under
> live.
> - *GNU Hurd & GNU Mach (*Mach microkernel+ Gnu Hurd services*)*:
> Schrödinger's Cat or Monty Python Parrot status!
>
> *Unclear if there is Hurd development; Hurd is not promoted by FSF/GNU
> currently. There is supposedly a Gnu Hurd NG project in design to try again
> at GNU soup-to-nuts again.*
> 4 of 6 official distributions officially discontinued, including
> one of the showcases,
> Gentoo Hurd;
> Arch Hurd (not officially discontinued but is ^*rolling^* release
> last updated 2019, so *de facto* ceased without even a wimper -
> *but that was 8 years after it was pronounced deceased the first
> time, so paritial points for trying*?) ;
> so seems only
> *✓ Debian GNU/Hurd* ( Aug 2021 release; dev build in Dec 2022)
> continues - *may be one guy tho*?
> (*but is not among the Gnu/Linux variants purist enough for FSF/GNU
> endorsement, presumably due to "optionally free" components included?*
> )
>
> - *Plan 9:* AT&T/Bell's final P9 2015 Fourth Edition release was *post
> facto * open sourced.
> - *½ **Plan9Legacy* is a patched edition of Fourth's legacy FLOSS
> code, so *somewhat* live (on life support? zombie?).
> - *½ Plan 9 from User Space* (aka plan9port, p9p, 9fans) is the
> good parts of Plan 9 userspace ported to traditional *n*x, so somewhat live
> (12 threads on mailing list in 11 months, as many as 5 replies!),
>
> * nearly fossilized; and abandons the kernel/filesystem/IO breakthroughs,
> so no longer an OS.*
> - *½* 9P protocol (9P2000) reportedly available on Linux (as a
> better NFS)?
> *But that's a plugin not an OS*
>
> Other POSIX userspace projects (for Windows)
>
> - GNU Cygwin (*still live*?)
> - MKS Toolkit
> - WSL (MS's 3d try?)
> - ??
>
>
> Any thoughts on where we might find either a speaker to give an general
>> overview, or perhaps separate speakers for each OS?
>>
>
> My AIX guys at IBM have moved on in the last decade, i don't have any
> current AIX contacts.
> Similarly my HP-UX, Oracle Solaris (it hurts to type that) contacts will
> have been up or out in 9 years.
>
>
>
--
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0x920063C6
PGP-Key-Fingerprint A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23 C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
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