Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
For me the first was always the best, IN/ix on a Wang
System in the late 80s. Then Coherent at home.
Now, Slackware and OpenBSD.
You are about 2 months from the next release of OpenBSD.
Be aware, Nvidia Video has no support, but AFAIK most
others should be OK. You just need to be aware of your
hardware. Thinkpads T4xx work great.
Is Slackware still alive? Last I heard, it was updated in 2016 at the
latest.
John McCue <jmccue@obsd2.mhome.org> writes:
For me the first was always the best, IN/ix on a WangWhat's IN/ix? I've never heard of it before.
System in the late 80s. Then Coherent at home.
Now, Slackware and OpenBSD.Is Slackware still alive? Last I heard, it was updated in 2016 at the
latest.
Also, how's OpenBSD? :)
Hard to imagine that's "best", but I wasn't there. :^)
A search for "Interactive systems IN/ix" on archive.org gave me an
error. I think the "in/ux" bit confused it. Using quotes got me a
little further, but many many bad results.
Here's an ad for Interactive Systems IN/ix software for PCs:
https://archive.org/details/sim_unix-review_1988-09_6_9/page/n19/mode/2up?q=in+ix+unix
I personally never use it. I'm posting this from a NetBSD 9.1 system. (Headless box used over ssh.)
Elijah
------
started out on A/UX
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
I've used quite a few, but Debian is my favorite.
What else have I used? FreeBSD, SunOS, Solaris, NetBSD, Ubuntu,
BSD/OS, AIX. I sort of shudder remembering compiling things for
BSD/OS. The rest all have their own soft spot for me. Except AIX.
May smit die in a black hole <grin>
There is a double-edged sword to Linux. There are a lot of cool new
things happening there (seccomp, BPF, mount namespaces, etc). But
they also add a lot of potential complexity. I'm not sure it's always
worth it.
- John
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
<snip>
I've used quite a few, but Debian is my favorite.
I never used Debian, but I always wanted to give it a try.
I suspect I would like it better than RHEL which I need to
use a work (RHEL is good, but its direction is a bit
concerning to me)
BSD/OS. The rest all have their own soft spot for me. Except AIX.
May smit die in a black hole <grin>
:), At work, I support a proprietary package on AIX and that
sometimes involves compiling and development. I have noticed
AIX development is quite similar to the BSDs.
On 2021-09-02, John McCue <jmccue@obsd2.mhome.org> wrote:
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
<snip>
I've used quite a few, but Debian is my favorite.
I never used Debian, but I always wanted to give it a try.
I suspect I would like it better than RHEL which I need to
use a work (RHEL is good, but its direction is a bit
concerning to me)
If you're using RHEL, Debian may be one of the closer cousins, philosophically.
It prizes "stability", not just in the sense of "it doesn't crash", but also in
the sense of "if you don't want the system to change out from under you for a year or two, we've got you covered". RHEL takes this even farther, of course.
BSD/OS. The rest all have their own soft spot for me. Except AIX.
May smit die in a black hole <grin>
:), At work, I support a proprietary package on AIX and that
sometimes involves compiling and development. I have noticed
AIX development is quite similar to the BSDs.
OK, so AIX story time. Why do I loathe AIX?
So I was working for a manufacturing company. I had been using Linux/Unix for
years, but never AIX. They were migrating off an AS/400 and quite literally bought AIX because Linux was too cheap. Like, they had been used to paying $200,000 for server hardware and were deeply mistrustful that the already-overpriced $20,000 Linux box the vendor quoted would be sufficient. So
cue sparkle in vendor's eyes. "Oh, we could sell you AIX!" $90,000 later, they
had.
It was AIX 5.1L. It wasn't quite sure if it was a 64-bit OS, a 32-bit OS, or a
31-bit one. Ints were one bit smaller than I expected, for some reason I can't
remember now (to differentiate them from pointers maybe?) So you had 1GB file
size limits in different places.
So AIX had its own package management system, and also came with a CD that was
the "Linux environment for AIX" with a penguin on it and everything. Except it
had nothing to do with Linux. It was just open source stuff compiled for AIX -
but get this, installed with RPM compiled for AIX (if memory serves). So weird.
But that is how you'd get ssh.
So then I tried to get Haskell stuff to compile, and I discovered that both IBM
ld and GNU ld were broken in different horrendous ways. Most difficult port I've ever done.
Then there was the day we had a drive in the RAID fail. Should have been easy,
right? Orange lamp goes on, you make a service ticket, drive gets swapped, lamp
goes off. Hah, no.
So first IBM wants to know the FRU or part number or something for the drive. Of course they have like 5 part numbers for every part, and the one they want isn't one that we know. Somewhere it is buried in smit, apparently. But nobody, not them, not the manual, not Google, knows where. Several escalations
later, we had some senior level AIX tech figure out what part number we needed.
Tech arrives, does the 5-minute drive swap thing, and prepares to leave. I observe:
1) The RAID is quite manifestly not rebuilding;
2) The orange trouble lamp is still on.
Tech accelerates his departure, saying "I just swap the drives. You'll have to
call support."
"Is the drive even working?"
"Of course it is. It's new!"
"How do you know, when the lamp is still on?"
"Uh, I just know. Sign here."
So then ensued several more hours of figuring out how to make a stupid RAID rebuild. Yes the answer was somewhere in smit. No it wasn't obvious, and also
required multiple escalations to solve.
As an effort to put "all the things in one easy to use place", well smit utterly
failed. "zpool replace" is so much easier.
And the sad part was that, it generally seemed, smit was just a thin menu around
underlying more Unixy commands. Except there was zero tribal knowledge in AIX-land (even at IBM) about the underlying commands, because "you use smit for
that".
I am on OpenBSD because I could not get NetBSD working
on a spare T-Pad. But it is rather nice so I stuck
with it.
I've been thinking about getting a Thinkpad for a while.
I heard that support for OpenBSD and other BSD operating
systems is great on some models.
--bpv
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
On 2021-09-02, John McCue <jmccue@obsd2.mhome.org> wrote:<snip>
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:
<snip>have noticed AIX development is quite similar to the BSDs.
OK, so AIX story time. Why do I loathe AIX?
Somewhere it is buried in smit, apparently. But...
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.Now, OpenBSD.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
On 2021-08-30, Bryce Vandegrift <bpv@disroot.org> wrote:
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 22:00:39 -0400
Bryce Vandegrift <bpv@disroot.org> wrote:
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very
similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
OpenBSD. Funnily enough, I got into the BSD path when I was using Void
Linux. I still use it from time to time, whenever I needed special "Linux-only" support. But for the most part, OpenBSD does everything
for me.
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2021 22:00:39 -0400
From: Bryce Vandegrift <bpv@disroot.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: What's Your Favorite Unix Version?
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
Definitely late to the party (2 years later...) but when it comes to Unix history, my favorite is 4.4BSD, the last one from the CSRG. I have all 5 O'Reilly/USENIX books published on the OS, including the System Manager's Manual.
In recent/modern Unix? I like NetBSD, as SDF introduced me to it. It feels very traditional to me.
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:12:08 -0000 (UTC)
From: Dennis Grevenstein <dennis.grevenstein@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: What's Your Favorite Unix Version?
Molly A. McCollum <mam@sdf.org> wrote:
Definitely late to the party (2 years later...) but when it comes to Unix
history, my favorite is 4.4BSD, the last one from the CSRG. I have all 5
O'Reilly/USENIX books published on the OS, including the System Manager's
Manual.
In recent/modern Unix? I like NetBSD, as SDF introduced me to it. It feels >> very traditional to me.
Really?
Can you tell me how to increase maximum VM beyond 64MB in 4.4BSD pmax?
This is truly not a joke. I've got 4.4BSD on a DECstation 5000/200
and it won't use more than 64MB of VM and will run out of memory
even though there is enough swap space available.
regards,
Dennis
--
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
On 02, page 22-23, I was able to find a fair amount of mentions about
virtual memory -- you might be able to look there for some advice. Let me know if you succeed in figuring this out. Also, the Github files I linked
are under the same repository, which has more chapters from multiple of
the books. Check it out.
Just wondering what everyone's favorite Unix version/distro is.
(Also includes Unix-like and other variants).
Currently, my favorite is Void Linux because it strikes a balance
between minimalism and usability. For what I've seen, it operates very similarly to BSD. Speaking of BSD, I'm thinking about switching to
OpenBSD as I am hearing a lot of good things about it.
--bpv
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