NT is often touted as a "very advanced" operating system. Why is that? What made NT better than Unix, if anything? And is that still the case?
  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Nice to see a pro NT article for a change but there are some details wrong

    “It’s true that Unix has attempted to shoehorn other types of non-file objects into the file system”

    ‘Everything is a file’ was Unix’s design principle from the very start. It wasn’t shoehorned in. It is IMO superior to NT’s object system in that everything is exposed to the user as the file system rather than hidden behind programming api’s.

    • exu@feditown.comOPEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’m not a kernel dev, but I’ve read often enough that there are some places where “everything is a file” somewhat breaks down on Unix. (I think /proc and some /dev)

      For an “absolutely everything is a file” system have a look at plan9, it was the intended successor to Unix, but then that got popular while plan9 stayed a research project.

      • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I know about 3 people on earth that ever ran it in anything approaching production. Two of them still found a way to use the acme editor til LSPs took over, one is still at it.

        It remains a pretty cool project you can still find people maintaining the bones of it. I think the core utils are ported and in the arch repo.