Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 5, 2012 2:16 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: Trying to see the big picture by jmorris42
Parent article: The plumbing layer as the new kernel

Linux is "the ultimate expression of the UNIX Way?" Are you sure?

That title would be appropriate for Minix, Mach or the Hurd, not a giant, monolithic kernel whose development is steered by sheer pragmatism.

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Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 5, 2012 9:51 UTC (Sat) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (5 responses)

UNIX had a monolithic kernel, so micro kernels are not that UNIXish.

Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 8, 2012 16:07 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (4 responses)

And that, right there, is why this supposed unix philosophy is so silly.

To quote Rob Pike on doing one thing and doing it well, "those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl."

Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 8, 2012 17:14 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (3 responses)

Even Rob Pike can be wrong, and the proof is the amount of times you use Perl vs. one job tools like ls, grep, head or sort, each and every day.

Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 8, 2012 17:51 UTC (Tue) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link] (1 responses)

I use ls, grep, head, sort almost daily (ls definitely daily, to browse the file system), whereas I do not write perl scripts daily or execute self-written perl scripts.

Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 8, 2012 17:53 UTC (Tue) by juliank (guest, #45896) [Link]

And that's really not the only thing where Rob Pike is wrong. There are other things, such as static vs dynamic linking, and him wanting the static one.

Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 9, 2012 18:09 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

You're comparing apples to oranges. Nobody said Perl made a better command line environment. How often do you use ls, grep, sort, etc to serve web pages?

Point is, the Unix Philosophy clan tends to dismiss tightly integrated things as bad designs. It's clear the world has room for both.

Trying to see the big picture

Posted May 5, 2012 10:02 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Plan 9. Unix done right – by the people who wrote it in the first place! None of that microkernel rubbish.