Unix Archive

"UnixLite is a lightweight UNIX/Linux compatible operating system written in c++; it is open source and released under the GNU General Public License. The complete operating system is made up of a kernel and applications; just like Linux, UnixLite is only the kernel. The kernel itself is written from scratch and the biggest part is written in c++; however, the library used by UnixLite comes from uClibc and applicaitons running on UnixLite come from the GNU project."

The numbers in the Unix market may be flat, but Hewlett-Packard sees a bright future for its HP-UX operating system. The company this fall will release HP-UX 11i v3 - the first major revamp of the OS in three years - with enhancements in its virtualization and automation capabilities, according to Don Jenkins, vice president of HP's Business Critical Servers unit.

"CUPS 1.2.0 is the first stable feature release in the 1.2.x series and includes over 90 new features and changes since CUPS 1.1.23, including a greatly improved web interface and 'plug-and-print' support for many local and network printers. For a complete list of changes and new features, please consult the 'What's New in CUPS 1.2' document."

Scale-with-rails compares Solaris Express to FreeBSD and then goes on to demonstrate the power of the Sun Niagara based T2000.

"Be nice to your computers and examine some general guidelines for tuning server performance. A computer is like an employee who does tasks for you - it's a good idea to keep from overburdening them. One way to keep this from happening is to carefully tune the processes that run on it. The UNIX nice command is useful for doing just that."

"Peer into the behavior of an application with truss. When an application doesn't work as expected, you typically look at application and system logs as a first recourse. But when logs don't help, UNIX provides a powerful set of tools that you can use to trace the application while it runs. Armed with these traces and a bit of knowledge about UNIX, you can easily solve your application problems."

After receiving several comments to his November 2005 article on hating UNIX, David Chisnall offers his responses and further insight on his continuing disdain.

"One of the most novel and differentiating features of a UNIX system is its command line. With just a few keystrokes, including a bit of 'glue', you can use the command line to combine a finite set of UNIX utilities into innumerable, impromptu data transforms."

"UNIX and Windows data-center market share remain neck-and-neck, according to most analysts, but many in IT perceive UNIX and Linux innovation as slowing to a crawl. We interviewed representatives from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems who were eager to challenge that perception by highlighting areas in which their UNIX OSs are breaking new ground."

"There are key utilities, command line chains, and scripts that are used to simplify different processes. Some of these tools come with the operating system, but a majority of the Unix tricks come through years of experience and a desire to ease the system administrator's life. The focus of this article is on getting the most from the available tools and insight across a range of different UNIX environments."

"Is Unix dead? My answer is no, it's not dead. As a matter of fact, I think I hear it laughing on its way to the bank. Fewer Unix systems are being shipped, but they're commanding a higher premium than ever. Unix still represents a $2 billion market, the largest operating-system market by far. Despite Windows Server recent gains, it still represents about $1.6 billion , when you're looking at operating system-only revenues. And Linux in terms of revenues represents one-tenth of what the good, gray Unixes combined represent. Granted the future belongs to Linux, but as a $2 billion market, is Unix dead?"

"UWIN or Unix for WINdows, is developed and released by AT&T Laboratories and David Korn - the creator of Korn shell. UWin basically consists of a set of tools and libraries which helps application developers compile and run Unix applications natively on windows. The tools include a complete shell (Korn Shell) for Windows which is bundled with all the command line tools you find in Linux/Unix."

Umeet Meeting 05 arrived to the sixth edition of the conference. The conference will take place online (IRC, WWW) on December, 9-20. We would like to welcome this time to everybody who wants to join us together with friends we met at previous editions. Registration and attendance is free. Speakers like Aaron Seigo (KDE), Rodrigo Moya (GNOME), Marcus Brinkman (GNU/Hurd), Rik Van Riel (Redhat), Alejandro Sánchez Acosta (GNU), Michael Meeks (OpenOffice), César Lopez Nataren (Mono), and other important hackers will be talking about the free software desktop, security and operating systems.

UNIX was a terrific workhorse for its time, but eventually the old nag needs to be put out to pasture. David Chisnall argues that it's time to retire UNIX in favor of modern systems with a lot more horsepower. "UNIX has a lot of strengths, but like any other design it's starting to show its age. Some of the points listed in this article apply less to some UNIX-like systems, some apply more."