Please wait...
I have never really looked into BGP. ( never needed to ) But clearly at the scale they are, there are risks and they didnt plan ahead.
Did I mention that I got my GOG version of the Gold Box SSI AD&D games installed and running on my Pi400+?
They say they support Linux on certain Gog titles - but their installer only supports AMD/Intel Linux distros. But most of the titles that they say support Mac/Win/Linux are DosBox games. They wrap everything in a package and then launch it in DosBox on whichever platform.
So I figured out how to install DosBox on Raspberry OS, then copied over the installed package from the GOG directory - and it works... pretty damn well - too.
They should really make an ARM package that would support Pi... that has to be a huge untapped potential market for them. Tons of people with $115 computers who are craving commercial gaming experiences - and they're just leaving that money on the table.
The cross platform DOSBox titles tend to be bargain titles too. All 6 SSI titles are in a bundle for $9.99. That is months of gameplay for $10. Sure, it is gameplay like it was 1999... but if all you've got is a Pi... you're probably OK with your titles being a little dated.
it just occurred to me that `nautilus` (the gnome file manager) is so named because it's a *shell.*
so then why do we also have `gnome-shell`...
And now another exciting episode of "WHERE ARE THEY NOW?!"
Remember the Unix Wars? All the big commercial Unix companies fighting for business, refusing to standardize, and getting their asses handed to them by Microsoft who just waltzed right up the middle with a crappy OS that ran on cheap commodity hardware? It sure is great that Linus (not RMS) saved us all with a true Unix OS that runs on the same hardware. There is no doubt that Linux has won the day. Commercial Unix is almost completely dead now except for specialized workloads that are difficult to migrate, and even Windows Server is a niche OS for running what's left of Microsoft's server applications (and even those are moving to their cloud service so it's not relevent).
So let's see where our old friends are now.
HP/UX
Ah yes, everyone's favorite, typically pronounced "H Pukes". HPE bet the farm on Itanium, obsolescing their PA-RISC architecture and moving to IA-64, and of course they lost big. The end of Itanium meant the end of the HP-9000 "Integrity" servers. According to all published roadmaps, HP/UX will meet its final end-of-life on 2025-Dec-31. Can't say I'll miss it.
ULTRIX --> OSF/1 --> DIGITAL UNIX --> TRU64 UNIX
This one fared even worse, getting destroyed by HPE after the merger. It's long gone at this point, being mentioned only because it was once huge and ran on the vendor's own architecture. Support ended on 2012-Dec-31.
SOLARIS/SPARC
Sun was the king of Unix, no doubt about it. No one expected much more progress after the Oracle acquisition, and Oracle did not disappoint, cutting about 2,500 Solaris and Sparc engineers in 2017. They've promised to offer "support" until 2034, but it's clear nothing else is happening in this space. OpenSolaris afficionados are bravely sallying forth with the "IllumOS" fork, for whatever that's worth. If you want to be really sad, take a look at the "Oracle Hardware" site to see some crappy end-of-the-line models. If anything, Fujitsu's Sparc offerings might be the only future of this platform.
AIX
You can actually find IBM integrators claiming that "IBM AIX won the Unix Wars," and if you only count commercial Unix running on proprietary architectures, this is technically true. IBM POWER is still being actively developed, and Big Blue has promised to continue developing and supporting AIX until at least 2030. The decision to merge the OS/400 and RS/6000 lines to have a single platform for running three different operating systems put them into a decent position. I've never been a big fan of AIX or AS/400 but at least they're giving it a good effort and this platform will be around for a while yet.
SGI/IRIX
Oh boy. Some people loved these things, especially after the fsn file manager appeared in Jurassic Park. They were definitely ahead of their time, but support ended on 2013-Dec-31. They ran on a bunch of different architectures, but if you had to call one its "native" architecture, that would be MIPS -- which lived on as an embedded architecture until March 2021. Interestingly, MIPS current owner (Wave Technology) has joined the RISC-V foundation and future processor designs will be based on that architecture.
DG/UX
I know, this one died early, but I had my hands on it back in the day. I can't find an end of support date, but the last release of the operating system was 20 years ago. I always thought the Eclipse and AViiON computers were very cool. For those of you who don't know, Data General built the Clariion storage system to go with these machines, and that became a big part of EMC's midrange storage portfolio when they acquired Data General in 1999.
A/UX , NeXTstep , Mac OS X
Despite strong backing by one of the world's largest technology companies, this environment utterly failed in the server space and has been relegated to an also-ran in the desktop space. :)
Ok, maybe that last one was an unnecessary jab, but I have a reputation to maintain. What's your take? Did I miss any important ones? Will PD post a ten-page screed about how bad things are inside Intel? Or better yet, share your war stories. Thank you and good night!
Linux is 'UNIX like', It was never really certified, nor could it be.
*BSD is still around, tons of FreeBSD in servers that no one ever sees, but the other 2 main ones are not to be discounted either. My understanding is OpenBSD is in a lot of embedded networking equipment. I cant say that is true or not first hand however. NetBSD, lots of IoT type of devices.
Minix, well, its on nearly every Intel board made in the last 15 or 20 years. ( "Intel management engine" )
2021-12-13 18:35 from IGnatius T Foobar
Subject: Where are they now?!
And now another exciting episode of "WHERE ARE THEY NOW?!"
Remember the Unix Wars? All the big commercial Unix companies
I think you forgot Xenix, the Unix Microsoft tried to sell as a pro alternative to DOS. It was not targetting the niches you seem most familiar with and most people ignores Xenix was a thing, so I am not surprised if you ignore its existence :)
2021-12-13 18:56 from Nurb432
Subject: Re: Where are they now?!
Linux is 'UNIX like', It was never really certified, nor could it be.
*BSD is still around, tons of FreeBSD in servers that no one ever
sees, but the other 2 main ones are not to be discounted either. My
understanding is OpenBSD is in a lot of embedded networking
equipment. I cant say that is true or not first hand however.
NetBSD, lots of IoT type of devices.
Minix, well, its on nearly every Intel board made in the last 15 or
20 years. ( "Intel management engine" )
I think Ignatius' point was about Unix which was built to be commercial from the bottom up.
AT&T Unix was commercial. Early BSDs were just a package of addons for early Unix. At some point there were commercial BSDs but I think everything after BSD386 has been a foundational or non-profit project.
My little retrospective was focused on commercial unix systems running on proprietary architectures. I deliberately left out systems which run on commodity hardware, because as we all know, that is what took over. Linux may be the undisputed king, but BSD counts too, because it's basically part of the same ecosystem.
I've never forgotten about Xenix. It was, after all, the best operating system Microsoft ever published. I ran it right here for the first six years of this system's existence -- two years on Altos hardware and some years later on PC hardware. Head over to my blog (Skeptic Tank), fifth post in, check out my praise for Xenix followed by scorn for them abandoning it. Xenix was to be *the* successor to MS-DOS before they decided to change direction and copy the Macintosh.
If i remember right, Xenix was just a re-branded/licenced sco unix and no in-house code.
OR did i get that backward? Its been a while and i like to forget Microsoft..
My little retrospective was focused on commercial unix systems running on proprietary architectures. I deliberately left out systems which run on commodity hardware, because as we all know, that is what took over. Linux may be the undisputed king, but BSD counts too, because it's basically part of the same ecosystem.
I've never forgotten about Xenix. It was, after all, the best operating system Microsoft ever published. I ran it right here for the first six years of this system's existence -- two years on Altos hardware and some years later on PC hardware. Head over to my blog (Skeptic Tank), fifth post in, check out my praise for Xenix followed by scorn for them abandoning it. Xenix was to be *the* successor to MS-DOS before they decided to change direction and copy the Macintosh.
In the early days, AT&T would license the Unix code but not the name, which is why every vendor had their own name. Microsoft was one of many Unix licensees, and they called their version "Xenix". It was their port of Unix System III, and they actually did quite a lot with it beyond simply making it work on x86. It had semaphores and shared memory and a bunch of other things that didn't appear in AT&T's code until System V. SCO was a Microsoft partner that did some development and distribution of Xenix, which was a weird relationship because after going off in the "copy Mac" direction, Microsoft wanted to keep SCO close enough to compete with commercial Unix if they needed to, but far enough to compete with it themselves.
They eventually parted ways in 1997. SCO became a direct licensee of Unix from AT&T, and it was around that time that AT&T began allowing its licensees to call their finished products "Unix". SCO upgraded their code base to System V and their offering changed its name from "SCO Xenix" to "SCO Unix".
Of course we all know what happened later on. Doug Michels and Microsoft turned the declining SCO into a company whose only remaining purpose was to try to destroy or capture Linux using lawsuits. By this time, the company calling itself "SCO Group" was actually the former Caldera.
There were actually a couple of other versions of Unix for commodity x86 machines in those early days, such as PC/IX from Interactive Systems, Microport System V (which I ran for a while), and Coherent from Mark Williams Software (which was truly awful). SCO Xenix was still considered the gold standard until Linux came out. FreeBSD would likely have prevented the need for Linux to exist but for AT&T trying to lawsuit them out of existence.
yes the downfall i remember, the pre-downfall i was an OS/2 guy.. so didnt pay that much attention but remember bits and pieces.
And i agree, that freaking lawsuit ruined everything. Delayed adoption, and let Linus do his thing off Tanenbaum's back. had a head start, in effect, while the BSD people were scrambling to make up for lost code.
What I do believe however, is that with the development of ubiquitous high speed Internet access and so many people writing free and open source software, we would eventually have ended up in basically the same place, regardless of whether Linux or BSD supplied the kernel. The rest of the system would be the same: the GNU development tools, the MIT X Window System, everything from Apache and others, etc. Most of the same people would have been involved.
Most of the same companies would have been on the scene. "Teh Klowd" would end up looking mostly the same. And the clueless pundits would be arguing about "the year of the BSD desktop" year after year while the desktop itself faded ino irrelevance.
As I pointed out in my blog article over a decade ago, the only thing that could have changed the course of history would have been IBM and Microsoft moving forward with Xenix instead of OS/2 and Windows.
Internet is just a fad anyway.
Man, i missed that boat. So stupid. I saw the rise from 8088s with LEDs and switches to MacoOS and OS/2.. from 150 baud acoustic modems to Ethernet over TV coax ( tho it was internal.. not availble for consumers it was the same basic tech that came out to home 'cable internet' customers years later ) BBS to 'AOL"... and a 100 other tech-beginnings... and actually helped with the massive company data communications with IBM's network. But i was too freaking stupid to see down the road, and we were never even close to topping out. Even tho I was watching the foundation being built. Moron.
Just before home broadband started happening, mother offered to bankroll a dial up ISP if i wanted to. "nah, i dont want to risk your money, no one is really going to care about this internet thing its just a fad and for techies"
Kick myself every day. Would not be "here" today if i wasn't an idiot.
If you were lucky, you might have been bought out by someone like Earthlink during the consolidation. If you were *really* lucky you might have done some web hosting and got bought out by one of the mid tier hosting companies who needed a data center in your geo. But most of them simply folded when dialup became obsolete. In the long picture, dialup was a flash in the pan.
Basic connectivity is now a commodity.
You can spend all day obsessing with coulda-shoulda-woulda but it isn't productive.
Look on the bright side: the PC industry lost every major battle it fought in the 21st century. Since it's December 31 let's dwell on this until I finish my coffee. At the turn of the century, things looked bleak: a hellish landscape where the traditional PC was ubiquitous and was poised to take over every segment of the computing landscape: servers, supercomputing, infrastructure, you name it. Two decades later, there is still a PC on every desk (or on every lap) but it's strictly an endpoint device, one of many different kinds.
Unix-like systems have absolutely dominated the Internet, the server landscape, mobile computing, and "the cloud" (in whatever form you care to define that).
"Wintel" is in deep retreat.
Things are often better than they seem. Let's raise a toast to the good tech.
"here" was meaning more about my current career and living situation. Not "here" as in here with you all.
And yes, i would have been bought out by Comcast at some point there is no doubt ( they gobbled up everyone else around here at one point ), but with the cash and or stock options from the purchase, i would have retired, moved further out into the country, and would not be working.. ( at least not for someone else )
Sure, i might have got hit by a bus due to the different path in life, but in general it would have been at least less stressful.