Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-ncis!lll-lcc!ames!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Do OS's slow down with age?
Message-ID: <9373@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 14 Jan 89 13:13:23 GMT
References: <209@imspw6.UUCP> <12872@steinmetz.ge.com> <370@siswat.UUCP> <1472@cps3xx.UUCP> <12938@steinmetz.ge.com> <2862@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <9360@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2880@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 36

In article <2880@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) writes:
>I guess I should put more smiley faces in the stuff I post.  I was just trying
>to point out that there are about a zillion different "uNiX's" and, as far as
>I can tell, all of them are incompatible with all of the others in some way or
>other.  I really don't want to start another OS war.

The basics of UNIX are pretty much the same on all variants.
This should get even better as 4.4BSD and UNIX System V Release
4.n implement conformance to the ANSI C and IEEE POSIX standards.

Most of my applications port unchanged among several radically
different UNIX implementations, including:
	Sun-3/50M workstations
	SGI 4D workstations
	PDP-11/70 (now defunct at BRL)
	VAX-11/780
	Gould PN/90x0
	Alliant FX/8
	Cray X/MP
	Cray-2
Some of these are 4BSD-based and some System V-based.  On the
4BSD-based systems, the first step is to port my UNIX System V
emulation, because there are just too many #ifdefs needed in
the applications otherwise.  As I pointed out before, Xenix is
now merged with System V so my applications probably work on
those systems also, and, based on previous experience, would
probably work unchanged on numerous other UNIX implementations,
including:
	Accel
	AT&T 3Bx
	Pyramid
	Sequent
and probably systems I haven't had direct experience with.

In this context, developing VMS-dependent applications would
be utterly laughable.