Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!david From: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: What's this machine all about? Keywords: Unix? Macintosh? X11? Message-ID: <10985@s.ms.uky.edu> Date: 29 Jan 89 04:05:21 GMT References: <958@nvuxr.UUCP> Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences Lines: 43 In article <958@nvuxr.UUCP> cmc3@nvuxr.UUCP (C Chase) writes: > >I know very little about the NeXT machine. In fact what I know can be >summed up as follows: > > 1) fancy hardware: > 68030 processor > optical disk > special purpose chips (e.g. A/D, graphic hardware) > > 2) great sound > > 3) nice monitor You're forgetting 4) a user interface that people are RAVING over 5) a fantastic deal on bundled software 6) big archival storage built in >sounds fine, but what is it really? I seem to have read somewhere that >this box runs an OS resembling Unix. Something about handling all the >standard OS calls of Unix, but not being derived from the original AT&T >code. If this is true, it sounds great, but is it really Unix? Am I >going to be able to take any standard unix code and make it go? (yeah, >I know "what do you mean by 'standard unix code'"). It runs a version of Mach. Mach is a research project being run out of Carnegie Mellon aimed towards having a Unix-y OS which can take better advantage of parallel environments. Right now it has a 4.3BSD emulation mode built in that is good enough that the Vax version of Mach can take 4.3BSD binaries directly off a 4.3 machine and run them on the Mach machine. If you want SysV compatibility you'll have to write and/or find a SysV emulator. -- <-- David Herron; an MMDF guy <-- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <-- Now I know how Zonker felt when he graduated ... <-- Stop! Wait! I didn't mean to!