Alt text: meme with the ‘Always has been’ format Linux, MacOS, OpenBSD and ChromeOS logos on top of the Earth The first astronaut says ‘Wait, it’s all Unix?’ A Windows logo, on top of the second astronaut. The second astronaut says ‘Always has been’ and points a gun to the first astronaut.
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I always assumed that a lot of this boils down to semantics and trademark law.
OpenIndiana is a direct code-line descendant of Unix System V through OpenSolaris via Solaris. Thank you for that, Sun Microsystems. I understand (but haven’t looked) that a lot of code these days is simply ported over from BSD or Linux. If you compare the source code to an old copy of the Lions book, you’re probably not going to see any line-by-line overlap. Thank goodness - we shouldn’t be literally running old operating systems from the '80s. I don’t think that OpenIndiana is Unix-certified by the Open Group (Trademark).
The BSDs started out as a sort of ‘Ship of Theseus’ rebuild of an academic-licensed copy of Unix around the time that AT&T was getting litigious and corporate Unixes (Unices?) were starting to Balkanize.
GNU/Linux started out as a work-alike (functions the same but with totally different code) inspired by MINIX, which in turn was an education-licensed Unix work-alike designed to show basic operating system principles to students. I think that one or more linux-based operating systems have obtained UNIX certification from the Open Group, just like Apple did for MacOS (paying money and passing some tests). It doesn’t seem like any of them are still paying to keep up the certification. Does it matter if they did at one point?
Going back to proprietary corporate Unixes, I believe that IBM AIX and HP-UX still exist as products. They started out as UNIX and have been developed continuously since then. They are both Certified Unix. By now, their codebases probably diverge substantially both from one another and from all of the Unix-likes. IBM also has a mainframe OS with a fascinating history that has nothing to do with UNIX. It is Certified Unix because it passes the right tests and IBM paid for certification. It is not UNIX code and doesn’t descend from UNIX code.
Simple as.
Regarding the true Unix, there was also Unixware, which was AT&T’s effort to move Unix to PCs (with Novell). It later passed on to SCO before they were sold, restructured, renamed and rebranded and subsequently became lunatics, In the end it seems like they offloaded it so some other company that’s just letting it die.
It was a good system. Not super fun, but industrial strength server stuff that was really reliable. Bit of a shame.
But of course, Linux was just simpler for everyone, it just doesn’t make sense to keep a million proprietary systems.
I agree.
A part of me misses the days of dual-using a rock solid professional server OS for business and a cobbled-together similar OS for home computers and older hardware.
Cobbled-together became good enough. Then it became better in some cases. Then it became better in most cases. Now I haven’t bothered with a non-Linux for over half a decade.
BSD kernel and is hardware driver policies are still very interesting to use and mess with. I run OPNsense on a device that has recently completely replaced my residential router and it’s fun to realize how complex everything is magically working together on a system that looks and feels familiar but is literally completely alien outside of GNU applications and package manager.
When I played around with FreeBSD I was fascinated by Securelevels and file flags. I don’t have any real use for that functionality on the systems that I run, but I probably would’ve thought of something by now if it was a Linux feature.
Im using freebsd on my nas because it has better zfs support than linux does. Or at least was the case as of a couple years ago.
Originally i just threw a few extra drives into my old Arch machine, but i noticed my package upgrades were being held back because zfs on linux (or whatever they called it) was dependant on older kernels or something. I cant remember the exact details.
I owe myself a fresh install of freebsd on decent, well-supported hardware sometime. I end up shoving it on niche, constrained or old hardware to see if I can get better results than linux. One day, I’ll give it a real rundown on modern hardware.
No, it’s not unix. None of the systems in the meme are actually unix.
Linux is unix-like, made initially by 1 guy who just so happened to base it around another unix-like OS and has quite literally nothing to do with unix
BSD has no original AT&T unix code and while it does work in similar ways, it is still not unix
Windows is windows… The closest thing it has ever gotten to unix is the Windows Services for UNIX, which literally only existed so that M$ could claim POSIX compliance and get a lot of government money…
spoiler
I sound like a fcking loser omg
it’s a unix system i know this
Always has been.
MacOS was not Unix based until OSX (10). MacOS 9 and prior were based on the classic Macintosh kernel.
“macOS” is not the same as “Mac OS”!
“Mac OS X” was rebranded to “macOS” (or rather, “macOS” is the successor to “Mac OS X”, but really just is the same but newer, the “upgrade” was just like any other update between Mac OS X versions afaik), and “Mac OS 9” does not belong to “macOS”.
IIRC Mac OS X was changed to OS X before it was changed to macOS. Not that it matters here
Edit: 10.0 to 10.7 were Mac OS X, 10.8 to 10.11 was OS X, 10.12 and later macOS.
Dove into that some time ago.
NeXTSTEP was made by Steve Jobs after quitting Apple, awesome Software anr Unix based, but the hardware was overprices.
Then Mac bought NeXTSTEP back and made their first good MacOS on the Unix base, which is what they use to this day.
Afaik they also use the same Kernel and and some more in all devices.
Un*x. All those projects hate Unix because AT&T started the sue against BSD that broke apart the status quo of open software at that time. Since then all free software is not unix. All of them are POSIX tho.
Linux is unix-like, and not from the same family really. ChromeOS is based on linux, so similarly unix-like. Mac is Darwin, which is actually unix. Also all BSDs are unix
BSD is also unix-like. Quoting OpenBSD, “[OpenBSD] produces a FREE , multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system.”
The OG Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) is a direct descendant of Unix. I personally wouldn’t qualify this particular version as a “Unix-like”.
Yeah, reading these comments, it looks like they are not legally able to call it unix, despite having direct lineage. Linux however is a complete re-write, making it more obviously not proper unix by most definitions.
That’s because UNIX is a trademark and OS vendors will have to pay fees to opengroup.org in order to call their OS Unix.
Nice to know, I’ve always thought BSD is actually UNIX.
The BSD variants are descendants of UNIX developed by the University of California at Berkeley, with UNIX source code from Bell Labs. However, the BSD code base has evolved since then, replacing all the AT&T code. Since the BSD variants are not certified as compliant with the Single UNIX Specification, they are referred to as “UNIX-like” rather than “UNIX”.
UNIX™ is a trademark name (Think of e.g. IBM AIX, HP-UX, SunOS). Linux and BSD are Unix alike. I believe that Apple has made an effort to be entitled to call an OS of theirs UNIX, not sure whether it’s Darwin or something else.
UNIX is trademarked by ‘The Open Group’, Unix is not. 🙃
To make things more confusing, according to German Wikipedia, Unix is used for Unix-like OSes which are not officially UNIX-certified. 😵💫
The weird thing about macOS is, that while it is certified UNIX, its XNU kernel literally stands for “X is Not Unix”
everything is a file, except when it’s not.
More like file descriptor. File path is like address system, but it’s not how you get all file descriptors. For example: sockets (there is bash’s fake /dev/{tcp,udp}), epoll, timer, event, inotify.
In UNIX systems event systems have a list of filedescriptors with a callback for each. You could have your event loop an epoll fd itself and nest it in another.
Everything is represented by a file, doesn’t mean you can open it with a text editor.
Half of those are Unix-like. Don’t forget what GNU stands for (literally, not philosophically)!
To be fair, iirc, macOS is certified UNIX despite having the XNU kernel which stands for X is Not UNIX.
I was going with Linux and ChromeOS being the not-Unix half, and MacOS and FreeBSD being the Unix half. It’s all semantics really though!
Certified? Are you saying it’s POSIX?
Ew. I need to wash myself.
Yes, they payed for it.
Indeed. “GNU’s Not Unix!”
Windows was this close to be Unix. Windows was POSIX.1-compliant, and Windows Service for UNIX was also a thing.
That is Windows NT personalities. It was originally able to run OS/2 stuff too. Doesn’t really make NT a UNIX. Note: They used this stuff for WSLv1, but it was slow and had same issue as WINE. Swapping underlying implementation brings out bugs of the software above.
I’m more of a “if it swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck” kind of guy.
That is a low bar for duckdom.
duckdom
I never thought I’d find a duck with a whip attractive, but here we are…
Two of those things are not Unix.
windows??? and the United States.
The astronauts and windows?
Linux and ChromeOS
ChromeOS is Linux based and Linux is a Unix clone.
And neither of the are Unix.
“Unix clone”
“Not Unix”
Nah, Windows is the weird one.
And it should be Unix-like.
