That's very simplified :)
Writing portable Unix software is quite an undertaking as there are many
little differences in APIs, even though the systems tend to operate in much
the same way. I've even had problems with shell scripts, although GNU
utilities help a lot if they're installed.
Agreed. Happily, the GNU-utils have become the de-facto standard
(and in general most feature-rich and easy-to-use) for making a
unix(-like) OS go. I helped clean up VT's ECE UNIX lab a few years back.
It's amazing how functional and less irritating Sun machines become once
you install a full suite of GNU-utils on it. Archaic UNIX platforms are
all tantalizingly similar, but when you sit down and try to *use* one you
realize they're all slightly different.... just enough to be annoying.
Same with MacOSX. I used NeXT machines in undergrad, but
primarily from the GUI. Now that I've played wit MacOSX a little bit, I
see that under the hood little has changed. It's still a crusty,
old-school UNIX under the hood.
-Cory
--
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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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