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From: steve@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Steve DeJarnett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc,comp.os.misc,comp.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: The NeXT machine has been announced! (was long)
Message-ID: <4713@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 19 Oct 88 00:41:04 GMT
References: <360@elan.UUCP> <2070@cloud9.UUCP> <6483@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <530@sactoh0.UUCP>
Reply-To: steve@polyslo.UUCP (Steve DeJarnett)
Organization: Lab Rat Rumpus Room -- Cal Poly SLO
Lines: 29

In article <530@sactoh0.UUCP> sjrudek@sactoh0.UUCP (Steve J. Rudek) writes:
>I keep hearing that MACH is *derived* from UNIX -- and, in one
>previous message, that the new release of the OS will be free from
>AT&T licensing.  This, to me, raises the obvious question: is MACH
>a *complete* UNIX clone?  Does it include basically *all* the utility
>programs that come pretty much standard with AT&T/BSD UNIX?  Just
>how (a) buggy and (b) compatible can we expect it to be?  There
>are LOTS of UNIX clones already out there (e.g., Coherent, Idris,
>Minix) but there are significant reasons why most of us prefer the
>real thing.

	Mach (as it stands now) is the 4.3BSD release of Unix with the 
concepts that Mach provides (multiple threads of execution, and others I
can't seem to remember right now) woven into it.  The idea (for the 
future -- maybe with the next release) is (or was last time I checked)
to remove the particular OS kernel from Mach (in this case 4.3BSD) and
make Mach just be a small, compact system that supports Operating System
kernels as pseudo user processes, and you could boot different kernels 
and (possibly) file systems and run them under Mach.  This could lead to
people being able to up 4.3, play some games, read news, etc., then shut 
down 4.3, boot up VMS, and start working on some report just as your boss 
walks back in to see what you're working on.  

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