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From: Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: UNIX systems (Was: Re: fdm, paredit and systemd)
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 03:10:31 -0300
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D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> On Sat, 8 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>
>> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>>
>>> On Fri, 7 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> Yeah---there's a fine line between incrementing language and sticking
>>>>>> with the previous, well-established vocabulary.  That's particularly
>>>>>> important for hackers because they have an imense amount of vocabulary
>>>>>> to manage and great fluency is essential to their day-to-day operations.
>>>>>
>>>>> Another example from hell for me is powershell. I've never seen such long
>>>>> command! Microsoft powershell gurus must really enjoy typing!
>>>>
>>>> Besides, it's yet another shell.  Even if it were really great...  Have
>>>> you seen Plan9's rc?  It's a very neat shell.  But it's not Bourne's sh.
>>>> It's hard to overcome the inertia of a large body moving at high speed.
>>>
>>> Never seen. How does it differ from plain old bash?
>>
>> The thing I recall was that rc had a native list data structure.  I
>> don't recall much more than that; the feeling was that it was neat,
>> tidy, more concise, more elegant.  It felt closer to a general-purpose
>> programming language, while still supporting the loved Bourne syntax.
>
> It's a shame it died. =( Wasn't the idea to refine the good, old, Unix
> ideas, and improve on lessons learned?

I wouldn't say it died.  I believe Plan 9 is doing pretty well, but I
don't think they're trying to compete with popular systems.  It's a
research system, I'd say.  OpenBSD is a research system, even though
it's totally usable.  In fact, it's the one I like to use.

> To take the idea of everything as a file, to the extreme?

I think Plan 9 is the most UNIX system ever.  I think it takes
everything-is-a-file to as far as it has been.

> I often fantasize if I will see another OS revolution like Linux in my
> lifetime. That would be awesome!

I feel the revolution is not Linux per se.  Surely Linux is sound---no
doubt there.  But it's also quite clear that Richard Stallman had the
*whole* idea in mind easily before Linux.  Without Linux, for example,
the GNU project could have taken the FreeBSD kernel and made a complete
system out of it.  In fact, they did.  So, the revolution OS is not
quite Linux.  Even because Linux did not bring anything really new back
in the 90s.

Perhaps the novelty of the GNU project was that it was Free Software.

What I think it's hard to do even today is to think of an operating
system for microcomputers that's really different from UNIX.  It's UNIX
that's the revolution.  And now it's stuck in system developers' mind so
much that I think they hard time coming up with something new.