[H-GEN] What is Unix?

[Anthony Towns]

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Hello world,

I thought I might ask a question.

This being a _Unix_ club and all, am I being an evil being when I
bring navy (the BeBox) to meetings?

I mean, sure, it runs bash, and it uses "ls", and "cp" and so on for
basic file manipulation.

And sure, it doesn't have a teletype display by default, but neither
did dbs' rebadged SGI, and most of you run X, anyway.

So what, exactly, makes a Unix?

The commands? Adherence to various little philosophies like "a
hierarchial filesystem starting a / and descending", or "a single tool
that does a single job well"? A kernel based on ken's original?

Is an Amiga with Fred Fish's GeekGadgets installed a Unix?

Is a Win95 box with the GNU utilities installed a Unix?

In short, is my BeBox (effectively) a Unix?

(Oh, and the last word as to "What's Unix" goes to a DEC employee:

	From:	CLOSET::E::PETER 29-SEP-1989 09:43:26.63
	To:	closet::t_parmenter
	Subj:	Unix

	In a previous job selling Lisp Machines, I was often asked
	about Unix. If the audience was not mixed gender, I would
	sometimes compare Unix to herpes --- lots of people have it,
	nobody wants it, they got screwed when they got it, and if
	they could, they would get rid of it. There would be smiles,
	heads would nod, and that would usually end the discussiona
	bout Unix.

as quoted in _The Unix Haters' Handbook_, by Garfinkel, Weise and
Strassmann, and generously delivered from amazon.com on this day
among days, that of my final exam for semester. *blissful sigh*)

(What's happening, if anything, with the network accounting at
meetings, btw?)

Cheers,
aj

- --
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://student.uq.edu.au/~s343676/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

``NT, Networking, Security. Pick any two (you can't have all three).''
	-- _The Twelve Networking Truths_, RFC 1925, paraphrased 

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