[geeks] And The Linux Weenies Wonder Why They Aren't Mainstream...

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Nick B. wrote:

> I'm going to have to say, If You Want A Mainframe, Buy A Mainframe.
> If you call it unix, make it at least vaguely resemble Unix,

It does, to end users. :)

But, you're right, to an administrator (and, at some level, even a
programmer), it's clearly an IBM minicomputer OS with POSIX stretched
over it.

> Oh, also, don't enable telnet and ftp by default,

Don't most commerical Unixes still do that?  I'm pretty sure at least
IRIX and Solaris and HP-UX do.

> and don't make it pure torture to install SSH.

It's torture to build the source, create a subsystem, and start it from
inittab?

> Oh yeah, we're past the 90s.  df -h and du -h should just work.

   http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/df.html
   http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/du.html

> Now not to say it's not an intresting OS, I've been having quite a bit
> of fun learning it, it's quirks and the intresting capabilites of the
> Power5 hardware.  Just don't call it "UNIX" much less "good UNIX" and
> expect me not to giggle.

I never called it a good Unix.  I said "I'd never seen an OS put
together so well."  I dropped the suspicion that AIX was Unix probably
the third or fourth time I logged in as root, and I immediately liked it
a -lot- more.  Most other Unixes don't have the ODM, the subsystem
framework, nearly as tight hardware integration[0], nearly as thorough
failure logging, nearly as decent online diagnostics, or nearly as
flexible a volume manager.

If you want Unix on power, I think you're out of luck, as there's no
NetBSD/chrp port.  Linux is probably as close as you'll get.


[0] I believe I've told the story here about when I incorrectly
     installed an adapter card in a p630.  It was an short card, and I
     managed to get one end of the card to pop up a little so that it
     wasn't fully making contact with the slot.  I brought the machine
     up, and the machine shut down midway through BIST.  I brought it up
     again, and the same thing happen.  Then I removed the adapter card,
     started the system, and it -emailed- me to tell me I'd incorrectly
     installed an adapter card in $locationCode.  You just don't get that
     attention to detail anywhere else.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke    )   "Pain and misery always hit the spot,
Elgin, TX           (     knowing you can't lose what you haven't got."
USA                  )                         --Depeche Mode, "Lilian"