Oh, please, please, COME ON Ubuntu development people!

[Jared Greenwald]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21 April 2011 17:57, Jared Greenwald <greenwaldjared at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 21 April 2011 16:33, Mike McGinn <mikemcginn at mcginnweb.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Thursday, April 21, 2011 11:18:58 Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 2011-04-21 at 12:04 +0200, Joep L. Blom wrote:
>>>>> > The story is then that Olson was so pissed off that he put the PDP-11
>>>>> > within 9 months in the market and when you opened the 2 boxes you didn't
>>>>> > find much difference.
>>>>> > I assume other computer veterans on this list can give better details on
>>>>> > this.
>>>>> > Any way on this site > http://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11
>>>>> > the PDP11-20 is said to be set into the market in 1970 and ran several
>>>>> > OS. Unix (DEC name: Ultrix) was one of them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ultrix did not appear until after the AT&T breakup in the early 80s.
>>>>> Ultrix was a derivative of the BSD Unix work and ran on the VAX
>>>>> hardware. I think you could get a PDP-11 version, but I am not sure
>>>>> about that.  In the 70s Unix was put out under various research
>>>>> "Editions".  The last one from AT&T before the commercial System 3 was
>>>>> Edition 7.  I still have a paper manual for Edition 7 lying around the
>>>>> house somewhere.  Remarkably, the basic OS API and filesystem
>>>>> permissions and structure is very similar to any modern Unix or Linux
>>>>> system.  Any competent sysadmin or programmer familiar with Linux would
>>>>> feel right at home on Edition 7.
>>>>
>>>> My first exposure to Ultrix was on the Alpha hardware. The later changed the
>>>> name to "Digital Unix". It was not a bad system to develop on. Most of the
>>>> places that I knew of with VAXes ran VMS, including the big physics labs.
>>>
>>> I think your memories are a bit confused.
>>>
>>> Ultrix never ran on Alpha. Ultrix ran only on VAXes, VAXstations and
>>> DEC's MIPS-powered DECstations.
>>>
>>> The Unix for Alpha was originally called OSF/1. Version 3.1 was
>>> renamed Digital UNIX. Version 4 was renamed again, sadly, to the
>>> horrible, twee "Tru64 UNIX."
>>>
>>> Released versions only ever ran on Alpha. It was developed on MIPS but
>>> that version was never released, and after Compaw bought DEC and then
>>> HP bought Compaq, Tru64 was ported to Itanium, but again, never
>>> released; HP simply killed the product and laid off the developers.
>>>
>>> This is why proprietary Unix was a bad thing, kids. Too much infighting.
>>
>> The only thing that HP wanted to port from Tru64 was the clustering
>> product - TruClusters.  I could go into a long story as to why that
>> failed, but it wasn't for technical reasons which only illustrates
>> your point.
>
> AIUI, HP also wanted AdvFS and the Tru64 Logical Storage Manager.
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/02/hp_ends_tru64/
>
> AdvFS got open-sourced, but it's not attracted much interest AFAIK:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdvFS
> http://advfs.sourceforge.net/
>
> LSM was the homegrown DEC equivalent of the licenced-in Veritas
> storage manager, as also used in Windows 2000 Server and later:
> http://h30097.www3.hp.com/tiplsm.html
> The Linux equivalent is LVM.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux)

Ah yes, completely forgot about those.  But to be fair those were the
parts of Tru64 that TruClusters were dependent on.  The cluster file
system that TruClusters used was heavily integrated with AdvFS.

Funny thing is that a good handful of the AvdFS, CFS and LVM
developers ended up at Oracle working on a clustered file system and
dynamic block device (Oracle ACFS & Oracle ADVM).  Even more amusing
is that the actual HP building where Tru64/TruCluster was being worked
on is literally right next to the Oracle building where those new
teams are.

>
> It's a real shame. OSF/1 was the last survivor of the OSF's project to
> create a new, advanced Unix with some of the old cruft removed. It was
> based on the same Mach kernel as NEXTstep, OPENstep, Mac OS X, Apple
> iOS and MkLinux.
>
> HP/UX is an old-time Unix which has been doing its own thing since the
> days of Unix System III.
>
> Still, Linux will probably eventually supplant all of them. :¬)