Comment by pjmlp
1 day ago
I would have not bothered with Linux if Windows NT had a proper UNIX subsystem.
I needed a way to avoid going to campus and fight for a DG/UX terminal.
It had nothing to do with FOSS fighting.
1 day ago
I would have not bothered with Linux if Windows NT had a proper UNIX subsystem.
I needed a way to avoid going to campus and fight for a DG/UX terminal.
It had nothing to do with FOSS fighting.
> if Windows NT had a proper UNIX subsystem
They actually did, but they made the mistake of packaging only the bare basics with it, and hiding it away as much as they could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX
The American government added some obscure law that forced POSIX compatibility on operating systems for certain grants, so Microsoft made their business OS POSIX-compliant.
In theory, nothing stopped you from downloading and installing up-to-date versions of common UNIX tools. Had Microsoft had the necessary foresight, they could've killed deverlopers' dependency on tools like Cygwin and Git Bash and Linux entirely for many pieces of software, but they were too busy trying to make Win32 the standard ABI.
Funnily enough, Win32 became the standard for proprietary software on Linux (thanks to Wine+Proton) while many Unix/Linux-based tools became the norm for development, even on Windows (git, Qt). How different things could've been!
Not really, Windows Services for UNIX was released in 1999, I am talking about Windows NT 3.51, released in 1995, which only supported POSIX.1, badly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
When Windows Services for UNIX came to be, it was already too late to matter, it wasn't really from Microsoft, and came with its own set of problems.
I am speaking from when Linux was still in baby steps, and basic stuff like ELF had just been added with the kernel version 1.0.9, in 1995.
Things could be even more different, had Microsoft kept Xenix, which was my introduction to UNIX, and one of Bill Gates darlings, actually.
https://www.theregister.com/2002/03/20/bills_vision_for_the_...
"The Future of Xenix"
https://archive.org/details/Unix_World_Vol02_10.pdf/page/n21...
> Win32 became the standard for proprietary software on Linux
This isn't even possible at all. You have software and standards. There's no single set of software nor a single set of standards. Saying something or somesuch is "the" standard is plain false.