RE: why linux?

I know the win32 api, I am trying to learn posix on the as400 but find it a
bit of a challenge reading some of the documentation, and all I know re
Linux is that it is rewritten POSIX.  So, there is a lot I dont know.

That said, before people jump on the Linux wagon, I think they should be
aware that the WIN32 kernel of windows started as POSIX and then was
improved greatly by the smart people at Microsoft.  Unicode, a whole suite
of thread syncronization objects and functions, good stack walking debug
features.  And documentation that is suprisingly easy to read and
comprehend. Its pretty impressive.

A simple feature comparison.  In WIN32 a mutex name can be up to MAX_PATH
length.  I think that is 400 characters.  On POSIX on the 400, I think the
max length of the name is 16 characters counting the null term. Now I dont
know how things are done in POSIX, but in WIN32 when I have to assign a name
that will never clash with another on the system, I create a guid ( 16
bytes ) and convert the hex to character ( 32 characters ).  Then as I need
more names that are offshoots of the base name, I just add on a few more
characters. Works out pretty well.  Not minding being proved wrong, I dont
know how that is done in POSIX/LINUX.

Based on the little I know, it looks like microsoft took posix and improved
on it.  IBM has taken it and just dropped it on the as400 as is.  And Linux,
guided by one fellow named Linus, has been preoccupied with rewriting it and
has also not improved on it.

Which platform do you want to move forward on?

-Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Wills, Mike N. (TC)
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 9:34 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: why linux?


Haven't you seen recent articles about M$ and patching in relation to the
"Trusted Computing" initiative. They are now going to be pro-active in
patching! Meaning (basically) instead of getting a bug report and fixing it,
they are going to look for bugs themselves and fix them. <sarcasm> This is a
entirely new concept. Fixing bugs that customers didn't see. Wow, I should
try that if M$ does it, it must be good! </sarcasm>. This is what you are
spending millions of dollars on every year while being locked into a
contract? And you don't expect better? If OS/400 crashed every day, wouldn't
you call IBM and complain?

My problem isn't Windows, it is a good product. My problem is that they pull
this sort of stuff every day. They make it sound like they have spaghetti
code. They can do better and should.