Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!deccrl!news.crl.dec.com!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: SVR4 vs OSF/1 (Was Re: A3000UX competition) Message-ID: Date: 11 Dec 90 01:53:53 GMT References: <2346@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <1990Dec7.201504.11469@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <599@amix.commodore.com> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 47 In-Reply-To: ford@amix.commodore.com's message of 9 Dec 90 01:31:27 GMT In article <599@amix.commodore.com> ford@amix.commodore.com (Mike "Ford" Ditto) writes: >OSF1 has all those things. VR4 may have one, but it's not required to >meet the SVID. What does that mean? That OS features aren't important unless they're in the SVID? I don't think any real user gives a flying fart about the SVID. Actually, it means that you can't depend on an OS feature (in SVR4) unless it's in the SVID. After all, someone may not implement it. Besides, SVR4 has all of "those things" that you mentioned (I'm stretching a bit on "application-controlled hooks in the input stream", which sounds like a window-system function, not an O.S. one). Nope, it's not a window-system function, though it can be used for that. It can also be used to add protocol layers to a network connection. Streams gives you the ability to take a data filtering module and add it to any open connection that support streams. OSF1 lets you do that for modules that weren't compiled into the kernel. As for SVR4 having all those things, that'd sure surprise me. let's see: user-mountable & dismountable file systems: the ability to take a device driver off of tape, put it on disk, then mount it and use it. Notice that the system didn't reboot while this was going on. You can take the driver out if you decide you don't want it, or want to install a different version for testing. And SVR4 has a message passing kernel? They threw out the monolithic monitor that's been the heart of AT&T (and BSD) Unix for the last 20 years? Posix threads - that's now part of the SVID, so I can depend on them being on every SVR4 system? The ability to reconfigure disk devices, the virtual memory manager (even adding new ones), adding new file system, adding the ability to load a new type of object file - all while the system is running, without rebooting it - that's all in SVR4? And they still call it "System V"????