TUHS

tuhs@tuhs.org

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6532 discussions

by Nick Downing

Hmm yes although perhaps controversially I see this as a bad feature and one area where Microsoft actually gets it right. Despite the old issues of "DLL Hell" which have largely been resolved by standardizing all DLLs and in newer code by using assemblies... you have to admit that they provide a direct, local API (indeed ABI) to every subsystem you would want to use, here I am thinking of GDI, but also lots of things that would require ioctls (CD burning, say) or domain specific languages (such as Postscript) on Linux. This makes it really easy for Windows developers to use the feature and the interface is fast and reliable. And where a domain specific language is actually NEEDED (printing to a Postscript printer on Windows, or RDP-type desktop remoting etc) it is easy to insert a proxy DLL or object or device driver that does the necessary scrambling and unscrambling. It is not so easy to go the other way as it requires extensive emulation (think of ghostscript driving my Canon non-PS printer). I wrote about this issue earlier using some examples like an "ESC [" capable terminal as opposed to a memory mapped local console, or an "AT" capable external modem as opposed to an internal "WinModem" that just exposes its D/A and A/D converters with minimal signal processing and needs the host to do the heavy lifting. Same thing applies to a graphics terminal. Of course it should be programmed at a high level by specifying shapes, etc to be drawn, regions to be blitted, clipping regions and pens etc, a font manager, and it should be possible to load bitmaps, etc, into its offscreen memory and/or create offscreen drawing buffers, if these features are used correctly by applications then it is of course trivial to add a remoting proxy driver similar to Microsoft's RDP, or indeed X Windows. But the difficulty with X Windows is that the remoting layer is always there, even though it is almost completely redundant today. This hurts performance but more importantly it requires extensive workarounds as you described, which add enormous extra complexity and in my view sharply increase the learning curve and setup costs. Having said that, Xlib does offer a decent API/ABI so if we just code to that it's not TOO bad, I would like to see the rest of it deprecated though, and vendors encouraged to implement Xlib with whatever backend seems appropriate. The ridiculous thing here is that X setup is so damn convoluted and incestuously tied in with the window, session and display managers, THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO RUN X REMOTELY ANYMORE AND HAVE A FULL FEATURED DESKTOP, I have tried many times and have had various tries at thin clients and terminal serving in my home network and it basically fell over because environments like Gnome do not support multiple sessions of the same home directory, not to mention numerous other problems that mean if you login remotely you basically just get a blank screen with a default X cursor and maybe a context menu that can run an Xterm. Bleh! In my experience you have to use a remoter like VNC and guess what that does, tricks X into thinking it's running locally and then intervenes further up in the display stack to do the actual remoting. It's a complete dog's breakfast and frankly could never compete with Windows in any realistic way. I use it because it is the least bad of the available options (no way am I having advertising in my start menu and my computer loaded with bloatware and spyware before I even open the box, and no way am I putting up with vague messages like "Something went wrong" or "Windows is making some checks to optimize your experience" or whatnot), and because my computer is so fast despite being 6yrs old that X only feels borderline sluggish, i.e. is tolerable. But so much better would be possible with a redesign. CUPS is also a dogs breakfast and hugely unreliable, Windows GDI printing just wins hands down for all the same reasons. End rant. Nick On Mar 15, 2017 5:49 AM, "Ron Natalie" <ron(a)ronnatalie.com> wrote: Nice thing about X was that it would talk to remote displays. I still remember sitting in the Pentagon demonstrating that the Suntools screen lock wasn't particularly secure. Then there was NeWS. This was Gosling's first attempt at a deployable language. However PostScript (even with Owen Densmore's class extensions), while a reasonable intermediary language is really sucky to actually develop. Java was a bit more refined. Of course, lots of things either implement X under the native window system or backdoor X with local extensions. We got around doing high frame rate image work on X via the SharedMemoryExtension and the ability to flip buffers on the retrace interval (both extensions, but commonly implemented by many servers).

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX")

by Arthur Krewat

Sorry, in this context, SunOS means 4.1.4 - not Solaris SVR4 I run Solaris myself, and love it. On 3/15/2017 11:48 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote: > Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote: > >> You make a valid point, and re-reading what I wrote, I find that I >> pushed the example too far :) >> >> The subject was originally that SunOS at it's end-of-life did not have >> the features that Linux now does, and comparing their development >> lengths brings up an interesting question. What would SunOS have become > So you believe that SunOS-5.11 is no longer alive? > > There is an Oracle based version and a OpenSolarisd based version developed by > the community. > > Jörg >

8 years, 3 months

Does this mean Linux is now "officially branded UNIX"?

by Josh Good

Hello all. I was perusing the list of officially branded UNIX systems, according to the "UNIX 03" specification and tests done by the Open Group, and I found there listed something called "Huawei EulerOS 2.0". https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/xy.htm Intriguing, ain't it? So I went to Wikipedia, to see what it has to say about such a beast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#EulerOS And I quote: "EulerOS 2.0 for the x86-64 architecture were certified as UNIX 03 compliant. The UNIX 03 conformance statement shows that the standard C compiler is from the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc), and that the system is a Linux distribution of the Red Hat family." So, Linux (some variety of it, very closely resembling Red Hat) is now a "officially branded" UNIX. I think Mr. Stallman can now say: mission accomplished. GNU *is* now UNIX. (Linux the kernel might not be a FSF project, but it certainly is under the GNU General Public License.) -- Josh Good

8 years, 3 months

Howdy Folks, and Internet Hall of Fame

by John S Quarterman

How are y'all? And greetings from the piney woods of south Georgia. If anybody wants to help get an Internet innovator into the Internet Hall of Fame, please drop me a note at jsqmobile(a)gmail.com. No rush; deadline is tomorrow. He's not a Unix person, but you'll recognize him. Hint: early ISP. -jsq

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX")

by Clem Cole

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 3:48 PM, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote: > So what I'm hearing is Linux's timeline, which includes things that were > not developed just for Linux, extends further out than SunOS does. > Mumble... the problem of course is the under those rules, SunOS goes back to research which goes back to V0.... > > > ... > All I'm saying is comparing Linux's timeline to something like SunOS has > to include everything that went into both because they both relied on > precursors. > Except for any possible legal reasons....why differentiate ? Looks like a Duck, Quacks Like Duck or from a Turing Test.... I'm mostly can not tell the difference. > > Side note: I'm a bit of a bitch when it comes to Linux - which doesn't > mean I don't think Linux is "UNIX" - it just means I think it's the > Coherent of today's UNIX ;) > I guess it doesn't matter to me that much. Some of the changes are gratuitous and annoying, which brings out my inner curmudgeon as its make its tough to type to sometimes. But the fact is, UNIX, Linux, Macos are pretty much the same thing - much more so than winders. They are way more similar than different and I can be productive with all three. To me its like ethnicity in people. It says a little about some of how you might look at something, what some of you shared positions/starting points are, but we are way more alike than different and I would rather learn from the differences than fight them or try to inflict my wishes. We are better with diversity. Clem

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] System Economics (was is Linux "officially branded UNIX")

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Clem Cole > rms had access to Masscomp b= ox we gave him fairly early on. > ... > I'm sure the MC-500 was not the first 68000 he had access. I think he > was using HW in Steve Ward's lab that the Trix guys were developing > with TI and he might have had access to an Apollo system. > ... > Noel do you remember how that went down? Sorry, no. From the end of '82 to early '84 I was out of the US, waiting for my permanent residency to come through, so I missed a chunk of events in that time period. Maybe one of the DSSR/RTS (Steve Ward, or someone) could clarify what access RMS had to their 68K machines? Noel

8 years, 3 months

X, Suntools, and the like

by Ron Natalie

Nice thing about X was that it would talk to remote displays. I still remember sitting in the Pentagon demonstrating that the Suntools screen lock wasn't particularly secure. Then there was NeWS. This was Gosling's first attempt at a deployable language. However PostScript (even with Owen Densmore's class extensions), while a reasonable intermediary language is really sucky to actually develop. Java was a bit more refined. Of course, lots of things either implement X under the native window system or backdoor X with local extensions. We got around doing high frame rate image work on X via the SharedMemoryExtension and the ability to flip buffers on the retrace interval (both extensions, but commonly implemented by many servers).

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] attachments: MIME and uuencode

by Doug McIlroy

Allowing more or less arbitrary attachments was a real convenience. But allowing such stuff to serve as the message proper was dubious at best. Not only did it require recipients to obtain special software to read some messages; it also posed a security threat. I still use mailx precisely because it will only display plain text. With active text such as HTML, it is all too easy to mistakenly brush over a phishing link. Outfits like Constant Contact do their nonprofit clients a disservice by sending stuff that I won't even peek at. And it's an annoying chore when companies I actually want to deal with send receipts and the like in (godawful) HTML only. Doug

8 years, 3 months

Re: [TUHS] attachments: MIME and uuencode (fwd)

by Dave Horsfall

I think this was supposed to go public... -- Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will suffer." ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 11:39:45 +0000 From: Steve Simon <steve(a)quintile.net> To: dave(a)horsfall.org Subject: Re: [TUHS] attachments: MIME and uuencode I still actively fight office. I wrote docx2troff and xlsx2txt. The former can extract txt or troff source from modern (DOCX / OPC) document as can the latter though, by their nature excel tables don't map well to tbl(1). These are written for plan9 and so the libraries are a bit different, but they could be ported to unix without too much pain. Shout if anyone is interested. -Steve

8 years, 3 months

Quick question: earliest Unix system with mail, uucp and bangpaths?

by Warren Toomey

As I go to bed, I wonder. Which was the earliest system that used uucp to send mail through multiple systems to a remote user? I see V7 has uucp/sdmail.c, but the comment says: This is only implemented for local system mail at this time. Ditto 32V and 3BSD. 4BSD has delivermail. Its uucp has a README which says: The ``mail'' command has been modified, so that it may only be used to send mail, when it is invoked under a name beginning with 'r'. 3BSD has the same uucp. http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=3BSD/usr/src/cmd/uucp/README Ah, but 32V's mail.c checks for 'r': http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=32V/usr/src/cmd/mail.c and so does V7: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/mail.c So I guess I've just answered my question. It also looks like delivermail from 4.1BSD could compile on V7, so it might be fun to try and bring a V7 system up on uucp+mail. But will it (delivermail?) do bang paths?! Cheers, Warren

8 years, 3 months

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TUHS