Newer Samsung smart TV is Linux?

[220629]

Probably many others know such things. I just learned that fact. Apparently Samsung Smart TV's have had a form of Linux since 2015.

So my question.
It appears that different Smart TV's use different base computer operating systems. Is there a reason to avoid the Samsung Linux based system? Are there other brands that use a superior base operating system?

To be clear. Samsung smart TV's have worked fine for us to date. The reason I ask is that an older 24" Samsung "Smart" TV that we once used in our RV ain't smart enough now to do what we need. We're looking to replace that pre 2015 Samsung TV.

vic

 

[autostaretx]

Linux (in its various forms) has been the "operating system of choice" for (probably) 90% of home networking and entertainment gear for well over a decade.
I would NOT classify it as a less-than-superior operating system.
(i wouldn't classify it as THE superior operating system, either, just to be fair).

It's always possible for someone like Samsung to take, um, less than a careful approach in their implementation in any particular device, but that's not the fault of the underlying system (be it Linux, full-blown Unix, OSX, Windows, etc etc).

I wouldn't exclude a Samsung TV (hey, my 2010 TV is a Samsung) because they chose Linux. Samsung also does a medium-decent job in implementing updates to their firmware (for a few years).

--dick (operating system agnostic ... believe me)

 

[erik.wahlstrom]

Just about everything is some variant of Linux. What do you want your tv to do and maybe you’ll get some recommendations.
If you don’t need a tuner though I’d recommend a cheap monitor and a chrome cast for a van. Chromcast is Android which is . . . Based on Linux.

 

[autostaretx]

Of course, it was recently discovered (and in the midst of patching) that Chrome had a couple of two-year-extant security holes.
... and the holes were not related to its derivation from Linux.

--dick (the word "Chrome" in the above can be replaced by any OS's name)

 

[220629]

Thanks for the replies and education.

I'm not at all against Samsung or Linux. We have kinda basically keyed in on Samsung home products. I was mostly just curious.

When I powered up the Samsung Android phone my daughter gave me I was surprised to see the phone and 65" Samsung TV recognize that they were in proximity. I assume it was via the common Wifi router. I guess it could be Bluetooth related.

We need a TV that will download and run the Spectrum app. I didn't want to go to Roku box or similar. Self contained is more portable. As much as I'm not a fan of Spectrum, the internet service that they offer is our fastest and easiest path to communication. The next time we are away from home for a month (if I live long enough for that to happen), I plan to drop Spectrum for that time. If I drop Spectrum for 30 days I become eligible for new customer status and better pricing for at least some time period.

Anyway. I did some searches and it turns out that Samsung is reported to be reliable with the Spectrum app. We found a Samsung 32" Smart TV UN 32M4500BF online/Best Buy. 147 bucks plus tax. Free delivery to our home. (Amazon was 199.) A 24" or 27" would have been fine, but I didn't find any small(er) Samsung new(er) model Smart TV's. Once I saw 32"/150 bucks I didn't search much further though.

vic

 

[220629]

We received the Samsung TV. It has what I consider a very good picture. Stepping through the setup was easy. The Spectrum app downloaded and works as it should. The TV is out on our back porch and working fine. Happy wife. Happy life.

I may look into a sound bar. The rear mount speakers aren't bouncing out into the porch area so well.

vic

 

[flman]

I have 2 Samsung TVs, I like them, and that is what I stick with for streaming. I used to use the Firestick, but it was way too slow. And yeah, Android, and even Apple uses a form of Linux. Microsoft is the big sloppy OS, that took over the world by a maniacal geek, who repackage QDos, and holds a patent on C19.

 

[elemental]

even Apple uses a form of Linux

In what product does Apple use a form of Linux?

 

[Ho-Hum]

I may look into a sound bar.

Definitely get the sound bar!

 

[erik.wahlstrom]

In what product does Apple use a form of Linux?

Yeah this is just wrong. Darwin is BSD in part. When I worked there I think the only Linux was in some random servers used for tools and maybe some of there services were Linux based. MacOS, iOS, watchOS, etc. aren’t.

 

[flman]

In what product does Apple use a form of Linux?

I guess not exactly, but they do have the same structure as Linux. At least they did a few years back when I looked into it.

What are the key differences between Mac OS and Linux that prevent application compatibility?

I understand Mac and Linux both have a similar architecture, so what are the differences that prevent for example, mac applications being compatible with linux?

askubuntu.com

 

[elemental]

I guess not exactly, but they do have the same structure as Linux. At least they did a few years back when I looked into it.

What are the key differences between Mac OS and Linux that prevent application compatibility?

I understand Mac and Linux both have a similar architecture, so what are the differences that prevent for example, mac applications being compatible with linux?

askubuntu.com

Ah, right on. Some details in case anyone cares...

In the beginning was Unix, an operating system written by some employees of Bell Labs back when there was only one telephone company in the US (circa 1970). For reasons, Unix escaped Bell Labs and was put into use in a variety of places, including the University of California, Berkeley as the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The BSD version of Unix ended up as the basis for Apple's MacOS X in 2001 (via a company called Next and their NextStep operating system). There were many other variants of Unix, but all had a problem with being tied up with licensing agreements that prevented them from being freely used. In this respect the Unix variants were just like other major operating systems, but Unix had a proud history of usage inside academic institutions where many learned it, learned to love it, and wanted to use it freely.

The only way to escape from this licensing purgatory was to create an open source operating system structured and patterned after Unix, but with its own written-from-scratch operating system kernel. This magnificent effort was undertaken by one Linus Torvalds, and resulted in the Unix-like (but not Unix as trademarked/copyrighted/etc. by corporate interests) operating system kernel called Linux that debuted in 1991. It is hard to overstate the value of his effort to our current world of electronic devices.

Since Linux is open source, and free, it has become very widely used, and is very well supported by many volunteers who cooperatively support, maintain, and improve it. It runs in everything from high-end server farms to dedicated computing appliances to consumer electronic devices (like televisions and set top boxes) all the way down to mobile phones (the Android OS is derived from Linux).

So Apple uses a strain of Unix as the basis of the MacOS X operating system, while consumer electronic devices like the Samsung TV are powered by the freely-available Unix-like (but not Unix) operating system called Linux. It would be a very interesting development were Apple to switch to using Linux... hence my curiosity.

 

[autostaretx]

Tiny tweaks (and foggy memories) to add to the story:
(a) Circa 1978 i wrote Western Electric (the "equipment sales" chunk of Bell/AT&T) a letter and received an academic license for Unix for my workplace installation. We got the installation tape from a different site on campus. We only ran it on our DEC PDP-11/60 a couple of times (99.999% of the time it was running RSX-11 as a real-time data acquisition system).
Although we could've, i never even tried to install Unix on our VAX 11/780.
(b) Next created a fork of BSD to create "BeOS", their name for their operating system. Steve Jobs was "Next".
(c) Berkeley (and BSD) were in many legal battles with AT&T over "was BSD an illegal copy of Unix?"
(or one quite protracted battle)
(d) The original OS-X was based upon BSD ... and came with the BSD man pages as "documentation".
Apple had created an entirely different disk structure "under the hood", so the man pages were totally wrong about file locations. As the guy tasked to do bizarre things with our computer systems, that hodge-podge of distinctly WRONG documentation did not improve my opinion of Apple. I think it took the release of OSX v10.2 for the documentation to finally reflect reality.

Back when AT&T was the sole source (sort-of) of Unix, the Common-Carrier regulations they were under prevented them from *directly* selling Unix to customers on computers. They could license it to 3rd parties, who would then build the hardware and sell it on (with support). Thus Microsoft sold a Unix (Xenix, licensed in 1970). HP sold "HP-UX". DEC sold a Unix for their MIPS processor boxes (Dec Unix).
AT&T was allowed to *give* Unix away, hence the free academic licenses. (i wonder where that letter-of-license went?).

--dick (I'd say "don't get me started"... but it's already too late...)

 

[220629]

Wow. All this free history and education because my wife needed a Smart TV on the back porch.

Thanks.
(That is not a hint to stop.)

vic

 

[rollerbearing]

The Santa Cruz Operation, SCO UNIX, in the early '80s obtained licensing for Xenix from Microsoft and ported to Intel x86. They also did a port to Motorola 68000 attempting to get in with Apple.

Santa Cruz Operation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I believe their UNIX assets were eventually gobbled up by a Linux company (Caldera).

SCO's marketing wizard - Bruce Steinberg - was the photographer (and more) for the album covers of multiple major rock and roll groups/artists.




Some good Intel x86 UNIX history in here:

Some lessons from Bruce Steinberg | Linux Journal

www.linuxjournal.com

Album work:

Bruce Steinberg Songs, Albums, Reviews, Bio & More | AllMusic

Explore Bruce Steinberg's discography including top tracks, albums, and reviews. Learn all about Bruce Steinberg on AllMusic.

www.allmusic.com

BRUCE STEINBERG GALLERY - About the Site

If youre into the funk-music scene that exploded out of the San Francisco Bay Area in the 60s and 70s, and would like to experience up-close-and-personal visual images of some of the artists and albums most closely associated with that timeless music including Tower of Power, youve come to the...

www.brucesteinberggallery.com

 

[flman]

They are all Unix variants, and Samsung TV runs on Tizen just like my old Samsung watch did. Thanks you guys all proved my point.
And most of the CLI for Linux and Mac are the same.

Unix - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[220629]

Off Topic.

Possessing mostly the knowledge base of a generalist, I found this video enlightening. There are others in the series.

vic

 

[autostaretx]

The Santa Cruz Operation, SCO UNIX, in the early '80s obtained licensing for Xenix from Microsoft and ported to Intel x86. They also did a port to Motorola 68000 attempting to get in with Apple.

Motorola funded Microware to do their own Unix-like port to their 8-bit MC6809 processor ... and called it OS-9
(a name which Apple stomped on a decade later).
Hobbyists managed to get it working on the RadioShack Color Computer, and/so eventually RadioShack produced a package:



... true multi-user operation on an 8-bit processor with a roaring 64kbyte of ram.
Could be run from 5.25" floppies or 5 MB hard drives. In 1982.

I can't recall if they also ported OS-9 to the MC68000 (which also existed at that time) ... they may have just gone with SCO's.
The architecture of the MC68000 was quite similar to DEC's PDP-11 family, so "true Unix" would've been an easy port, too.

--dick (that's an embarrassingly current photo)

 

[elemental]

They are all Unix variants, and Samsung TV runs on Tizen just like my old Samsung watch did. Thanks you guys all proved my point.
And most of the CLI for Linux and Mac are the same.

Unix - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Oh, wait a minute! Now you have opened another can of worms (with malice aforethought, I suspect).

If you want to talk about the CLIs (Command Line Interpreters) for Linux and Mac and why they are so similar (but not the same), then we need to have a discussion about GNU (GNU's Not Unix!). The CLI used with the Linux kernel is GNU. GNU (as the acronym spells out) is not Unix, in the same way that the Linux kernel is not Unix. The GNU project set about re-writing all of Unix in order to escape the Unix licensing regimen (before Linus Torvalds time), with the utility programs that form the CLI as the most successful output of the project. Note: The GNU project created its own operating system kernel called GNU Hurd (have you heard of GNU? I have a herd of GNUs.) but it is sadly not as good as the Linux kernel. So most people using GNU are actually using GNU/Linux (usually referred to as just Linux... turns out that people can't agree what to call that combination).

Anyway, so the CLIs for Linux (GNU/Linux) and MacOS X are similar, but the Linux CLI is NOT Unix and the MacOS X is Unix. But they look very much alike, so your confusion is understandable.

The GNU project was essentially the beginning of the free software movement. It was announced by a guy named Richard Stallman in 1983 (he is famous and infamous in the free software movement). It fought back against a growing tendency for computing hardware and software to get locked up in corporate products and licensing, something that those who want to work on their Sprinter vans themselves can surely appreciate. Microsoft quite famously tried to quench the free software movement (as detailed in a series of internal memos called the Halloween documents) with then-CEO Steve Ballmer claiming in 2001 that Linux is “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches”. Microsoft has recently admitted that their stance against free software was a mistake.

Raise a glass, everyone, to the free software movement (and the "right to repair" movement which is, at least in spirit, related to the ideals that the free software movement was founded upon).

And the free software movement has, by the way, made everyone's smart TVs and Android phones just a bit more affordable.

 

[rollerbearing]

--dick (that's an embarrassingly current photo)

Now we're showing our age and certain hoarding tendencies. My first brush with MicroWare was their RTOS for the SS50 bus SWTPc 6800. They later had OS9 versions for SS50 bus systems.

I still have a working SWTPc SS50 black perf-metal box computer. My high school aged son is learning about 8 bit processors and hardware bus with it. Nice big tactile hardware with signals slow enough that you can use a cheap scope and logic analyzer to actually see things happen.

The oldest working computer I have is one of the original IMSAI 8048 "doll house" single board computers pulled from an instrument that I "modernized" 35 years ago. It is also the first "notebook" computer in that it was shipped with the board clipped into its three ring documentation binder. Now worth a bit of money ($2K but maybe not for much longer - gotta sell that thing!!)


Coffee lovers may recognize the now valuable Spong coffee grinder on the shelf in the kitchen!



sell that thing!)