Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!mtunx!mtune!codas!peora!ge-dab!ge-rtp!edison!toylnd!dca
From: dca@toylnd.UUCP (David C. Albrecht)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Why UNIX?
Message-ID: <209@toylnd.UUCP>
Date: 30 Apr 88 02:23:50 GMT
References: <908@sandino.quintus.UUCP>
Organization: Dave & Anne in Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 74

In article <908@sandino.quintus.UUCP>, pds@quintus.UUCP (Peter Schachte) writes:
> I don't want to start a flame war; I mean this question quite literally.
> Why would anyone want UNIX running on their Amiga?
> 
> ... Compares points of Amigados to Unix ...
>
> And I guess I wouldn't be willing to lose all the good
> things I have in AmigaDOS now just for UNIX compatibility.
> 
> It seems better to me for CA to add to AmigaDOS the parts of UNIX that
> we want and don't have, rather than to create an incompatible OS.

It is a reasonable question.  There are several reasons why I want Unix.

1)  It is the closest thing to a standard OS (across architectures and
    brand names) there is.  Not only multi-tasking also multi-user.
    Real file protections, real user protections.  
2)  Large amounts of public domain software available, much of it of
    interest to software developers.
3)  Mail/News across Usenet with a complement of mailers, news readers,
    etc..
4)  Many useful development tools (yacc, lex, awk, sccs, diff, sed...)
    that are standard across the unix world.
5)  Generalized terminal interface (termcap, curses).  While it is certainly
    not as nice as a bit mapped display it makes talking to your
    system across a modem a more useful enterprise.
6)  One process going wild usually doesn't bring down the machine.

I could probably think of more but these will do for now.
Basically, unix is bridge between larger, more powerful machines (in some
respects) to my home machine.  I can bring programs from the VAX at work
and with little or no effort get them to work on my AT&T 3b1 at home.
Amigados is restricted to people with Amigas.

It is very difficult (I won't speculate on whether it is possible) to integrate
many aspects of Unix into the Amigados environment.
a) With the scatter load and intermixing of multi-process data the Unix fork
   operation is difficult to achieve under Amigados.
b) No resource tracking makes process killing rather difficult.
c) The sharing of data between processes and the lack of process protection
   from the beginning means than installation of such protection will probably
   break an undetermined number of existing applications.
d) Without protection you can't get the immunity of machine integrity from
   the misbehavior of one process.
e) Besides making process protection more fraught with danger data sharing also
   compounds the resource tracking problem.
f) I doubt that Amigados has the concept of owner, group, system in the file
   ownership bits that unix has.
g) The kind of reach around behavior of scanning or altering system lists is a
   big no-no under a protected system like Unix.  Blitter ownership, copper
   lists, input chain handlers, become more tenuous entities under Unix.
h) At the very least such applications as drop shadow would have to run as
   superuser.

Without an equivalent Unix library and file system interface porting all
the applications of Unix to the Amiga becomes a pain in the butt.

Many unix utilities have been ported to the Amiga but it still far
from unix.  Consider me irrational if you like but when developing
software that isn't specifically using some aspect of the Amiga I
head for my 3b1 instead of the 2000.

Certainly, it would be ideal to integrate the Unix and Amigados environments
so that you could run Amiga tasks on top of unix.  This is much more
difficult to do than a straight port, however, and you could end up with
a hacked Amiga environment and hacked Unix environment or both.
As a first phase I would be happy just to be able to boot the machine one
way and get Amigados, boot it another and get Unix.
I too, however, would hope that Commodore will try like Apple did to
integrate the two environments at some point.  I suspect, however, it
is much easier to put Amigados on top of Unix than it is to put Unix on
top of Amigados.

David Albrecht