4 Apr
2021
4 Apr
'21
3:48 a.m.
On 3 Apr 2021, at 12:51, Dave Horsfall
<dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
...
SunOS 4.1 was the best *ix I have ever used (and
I've used lots over the decades);
I used to tell people the same thing: my memory of it was very positive. And then I booted
up my 4.1.1 tape on my 3/260 and .. it was very ordinary.
The headers were missing a bunch of declarations, the tools didn’t have a lot of the
options I’ve since come to rely on: it felt half-done and oddly amateurish compared to a
recent Linux or BSD.
I was surprised. I tried Ultrix 4.4, Irix 5.3, and NeXT 3.3 (which I had more or less at
hand) and they were all pretty awful.
The world has moved on, and my bar is a lot higher now. I don’t doubt SunOS was great at
the time but it’s absolutely obsolete now.
d