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There is of course "The Unix-Hater's Handbook", which is long, and now pretty old. I've only skimmed it now and then.
Alternatives to unix include whatever they renamed Mac OS X to (which has a unix background) or Windows (which now has a Linux layer, among other problems). Slim pickings?
A somewhat more legitimate concern may be the excessive mass of Linux in the operating system world,
> A glance at this year's OSDI program shows that Operating Systems are a small niche topic for this conference, not even meriting their own full session. This is unfortunate because good OS design has always been driven by the underlying hardware, and right now that hardware is almost unrecognizable from ten years ago, let alone from the 1960s when Unix was written. This change is receiving considerable attention in the architecture and security communities, for example, but in contrast, so-called OS researchers are mostly in denial. Even the little publishable OS work that is not based on Linux still assumes the same simplistic hardware model (essentially a multiprocessor VAX) that bears little resemblance to modern reality. In this talk, I'll speculate on how we came to this unfortunate state of affairs, and what might be done to fix it. In particular, I'll argue for re-engaging with what computer hardware really is today and give two suggestions (among many) about how the OS research community can usefully do this, and exploit what is actually a tremendous opportunity.
but complaints of this sort are not new. Rob Pike wrote "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" around the time Wired magazine predicted humanity would establish a colony on Mars in 2020. Much of what Pike complains about remains relevant.
Since then there have been new mobile phone operating systems. Whether this is a plus or a minus is open for debate; I've never owned a smartphone, and the one I had at the previous job was a great source of unpaid overtime. There are various other niche operating systems, but then you will likely also need something for the modern web...unless you join a monastery? But they would likely have either no computers or regular computers.
Meanwhile,
talks about implementing USB for "the three operating systems we care about". And why would you waste time on anything more niche? And also various other problems with unix, along the way...
Maybe modern systems are the result of a PDP-11 having a ravishing love affair with kerbal space program?
tags #unix
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