Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!tness7!tness1!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga UNIX Message-ID: <2176@sugar.UUCP> Date: 25 Jun 88 13:52:16 GMT References: <1985@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <4079@cbmvax.UUCP> <6811@cup.portal.com> Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX Lines: 33 In article <6811@cup.portal.com>, DMasterson@cup.portal.com writes: > Let's try to bring this topic back to the original question (at least I think > it was the original question -- its been so long off the topic, I forgot). I > think the question at hand is what it would take to implement Unix (or A VAR- > IATION THEREOF) on an Amiga (not a souped-up Amiga). Well, you can't implement enough of UNIX to make it worthwhile, because you don't have any way of implementing the "fork()" system call without causing a huge performance penalty. Now, people counter that most programs follow a fork() with an exec(). I guess most do, but many interesting programs I know of do things like "if(fork()) exit();", or "if(fork()) { do something strange and bizzarre to file descriptors and signals and maybe even do some I/O then exec(); }", or "if(fork()) server(); else client();", and so on. > In that question, has > anyone heard of/seen Amix by Lamplighter Software (I think). Its been > advertised in Amazing Computing, but, thus far, I haven't heard anyone say > anything about it. I called them. They promised to send more info. I haven't gotten anything from them. I guess I could call again, come Monday. They claimed (over the phone) that it's a nearly complete UNIX environment and it runs under AmigaDOS. I think I managed to rule out a utility set like MKS Toolkit and the MKS shell on the IBM-PC, but won't swear to it. I am reminded of the responses I got when I asked substantially the same questions of a company that was advertising UNIX for the Atari ST. They claimed that it was substantially UNIX, but not that it ran under TOS. As far as I know it never shipped. -- -- `-_-' Peter (have you hugged your wolf today?) da Silva. -- U Mail to ...!uunet!sugar!peter, flames to /dev/null. -- "A foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds".