Why didn't they base Linux on DOS/Windows architecture and they based it on UNIX instead, why would anyone use UNIX isn't that really dum
Imagine we could have a Windows-compatible system by now, fully free and open source, and instead we have to suffer through all this UNIX garbage and 20 year old leftovers that still hold most of the system together like a slowly deteriorating duct tape
What went wrong?
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UNIX was the more mainstream OS at the time.
In case you're wondering why they didn't try to make the switch when that changed, the answer is they did. Say hello to Wine and ReactOS.
Particularly the prior. The latter ain't much good yet.
What?
Windows is held together with 20 year old junk
Linux was originally a project to play with some of the 386 memory protection features, but the guy didn't want/have the time to write an entire set of userland tools, so some tools were taken from the MINIX, while others came later from GNU.
There wasn't really a greater free windows project at the time, and windows with memory protection was barely a thing (came in with NT 3.51 iirc).
fuck minesweep
Windows didn't become relevant until well into the 90s.
Based AUX
Unix is for professionals, Windows is for consumers.
Said no-one ever
That is how it was when Linus wrote his kernel.
UNIX is held together by 60 year old junk. Your point?
UNIX used to have its source code on hand for universities and students and ran on cheap minicomputers well before DOS was even thought of, so it spread like the virus it is
Window's source code isn't available to the general public you autist. There isn't anything to build on. There are a group of people making a Windows compatible open source OS though and it's called ReactOS.
Honestly there should be a combination of the wine project using the Linux kernel to make a psuedo windows distro. Then I would completely switch to Linux but the legalities are somewhat questionable I suppose. In the end I like win32, steam, and directx too much to leave.
>muh gaymes
>instead we have to suffer through all this UNIX garbage and 20 year old leftovers that still hold most of the system together
you seem to be under the impression that windows isn't stuck with unending legacy cruft either
why copy Windows when it didn't even have memory protection at the time and was DOS-based (well, oldschool Windows basically kicks DOS out and then virtualizes it (eg, when you run a DOS box under Windows), but it still depends on DOS and on pretending to be DOS)
and DOS had poorly copied several major Unix features (pipes in DOS are a joke and try making a file named aux.txt because lol device files in every directory)
UNIX was crufty, but there have been remarkably few actually better designs, and Windows was definitely not one of them.
as an aside, UNIX was the system of choice in high-performance computing at the time, used in high-end SGI, Sun, NeXT, etc machines
there no way you aren't touching patented parts while recreating windows.
and you will have to run windows kernel to make it 100% compatible or or...
> e have to suffer through all this UNIX garbage and 20 year old leftovers that still hold most of the system together like a slowly deteriorating duct tape
Bait. Wanted to reply, butt fuck you.
But Linux is not Unix and there is 0 Unix code in Linux.
UNIX at this point is more of a design & philosophy than an actual kernel or OS. Any Unix systems still in use are proprietary and not consumer oriented. BSD doesn't count...
....
As far as the original question:
Linux was based on Unix because that was the standard at the time and in many ways still is. Windows and msdos have always gone against the grain. Even today, if I started an OS I'd take more inspiration from Unix and try to make it at least somewhat POSIX compliant.
But it doesn't matter much anymore. Linux has WINE, windows has Linux subsystem. Virtualization is viable for everyday use. Hypervisors like Xen let you run Linux and windows side by side. Get a dedicated video card for windows with at least a quad core processor and you can run everything as good as native.
>UNIX is held together by 60 year old junk. Your point?
The difference is that modern Unix-like operating systems are written from scratch, or in the case of the BSDs, only share a little bit of official Unix code. It's a somewhat old-fashioned model, but easy to extend.
Windows actually uses a lot of ancient code in current and future versions to maintain legacy support. It's not profitable for MS to improve on it because software compatibility is the main reason Windows is so popular; otherwise, they would've gotten destroyed in the market by other commercial OSes.
Clean room reimplementations of proprietary software are legal, since they don't use any of the copyrighted code. It's just difficult as hell and takes forever to make anything complex. React has been in development for like 20 years and only went from pre-alpha to alpha quality in recent years.
This.
>Why didn't they base Linux on DOS/Windows architecture and they based it on UNIX instead
Because Linus Torvalds wanted to have Unix at home. Watch the Aalto talk (iirc) where he goes into that
Windows was just a desktop environment for DOS up until XP. The crap that came later was worse but nobody likes DOS when you can have UNIX chad around.
Yup, it's the truth though. I'm sorry for having a fun time on my computer as opposed to wanting to kill myself over the new Linux fashion trends.
>>UNIX was the more mainstream OS at the time.
Unix was barely a blip on DOS' radar in their core markets and even in the high-end was mostly just an academic fixture or a sideshow to mainframe/midrange platforms. The only thing Unix was really a fixture in was workstations.
Windows' core is re-written about as frequently as the Linux kernel is, you're falling into the same trap as the guy you quoted where you're basically shitting on an operating system because it still implements the same fundamental APIs and behaviors despite massive under-the-hood improvements over the years.
>software compatibility is the main reason Windows is so popular; otherwise, they would've gotten destroyed in the market by other commercial OSes.
Like OpenServer, Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX and GNU/Linux? Oh, wait...