*BSD News Article 34973


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From: brewer@hamlet.umd.edu (Peter Brewer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.user-friendly,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.aux,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: xargs and alias commands
Date: 26 Aug 1994 12:51:44 -0400
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 61
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <33l6j0$jii@hamlet.umd.edu>
References: <33af70$8rd@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> <33gvms$56a@wombat.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> <33jk6l$6cq@hamlet.umd.edu> <3552@jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hamlet.umd.edu

In article <3552@jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
Jim Jagielski <jim@jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>brewer@hamlet.umd.edu (Peter Brewer) writes:
>
>>In article <33gvms$56a@wombat.cssc-syd.tansu.com.au>,
>>Chris Bitmead <chrisb@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au> wrote:
>>>
>>>Who would want to use tcsh when you could be using bash/zsh/ksh? Reality
>>>check. 
>
>>Just about anyone who likes Berkeley flavors of Unix over ugly un-networked
>>extremely limited and sold to the highest bidder, (NOVELL) System V. Sorry
>>but I find most of System V less than enchanting. You still cannot do
>>may things with ksh and bash that you can with tcsh except make functions.
>
>Well... so much of it depends on what you learned on. Believe it or
>not, my background is about 55% SysV, 15% SysIII (on a PDP-11 :) ) and
>the rest BSD. No doubt about it, BSD extensions make UNIX much better,
>but I like the core of SysV better... don't know why, just do.
>-- 
>  |     Jim Jagielski      |  jim@jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov  |  V: 301 286-5964  |

Jim, Jim, I thought you of all people would know better by now?
Berkeley "extensions"? How many filesystems on your machine are configured
to use the Berkeley Fast File System as opposed to Sys V ufs? I thought so.
How often do you use TCP/IP and its friend NFS? Wasn't it MACH-Berkeley who
contrived lightweight threads and multi-threaded kernels? Was X Windows
built for Berkeley or for System V initially? Which environment got Appletalk
networking support first? (Mt Xinu et al) Okay now which environment got
Postscript, NeWS, Display Postscript first? 

Gee, what did I get from Sys 5? Terminfo... is it that much better than
termcap upon which it is based? C++ landed there first. And oh yea many
like the System V print spooler better than the Berkeley spooler unless
of course they want be able to spool files across a network to a remote
printer.

When Cray first decided to build Unicos they bought System V and then 
ended up rewriting it to be more of a Berkeley kernel. Crays do not
do well without a network to other machines. Yep ps works the system V
way as does ls but lets face it this was ALL FOR MARKETING purposes.
System V is supported by a commercial outfit and Berkeley was not?
Foolish managers did not realize that Berkeley had better support from
a University via DARPA funding. Perhaps one of the BEST uses of our
tax money in the history of the country. Then DARPA cancelled them because
they were too competitive with System V and the screams from these
corporations were loud and long. Gee, you'd think GORE, Mr. High Tech
Information Highway would rectify that or at least get DARPA to fund
the Hurd or the Mach projects. 

My experience has been for the most part Berkeley environments with System V
'extensions'. When we note how many folks are have 'frozen' at Solaris 1.1
or SunOS 4.x.x you can readily see how popular that 'flavor' is.

-- Peter

-- 
SAVE Mac Desktop Unix! Tell Apple to continue A/UX! Don't Let It Happen Again!->
  "Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
   (and nobody cares about it)."               -- Bill Joy 6/21/85
********* Peter W. Brewer        brewer@umd5.umd.edu **********************