Newer Samsung smart TV is Linux?

elemental

Wherever you go, there you are.
Hmmm ... where did i put my plane of magnetic core memory?
You lost track? Mine's on a shelf in my bedroom... 8K x 16 bit words of PDP-11 memory from a pdp11/40 used at Bell Telephone Labs in New Jersey... priceless artifact :)

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flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
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.
I see you have a lot of knowledge, beyond what I have I am sure. Do you have a professional computer background? Me I am a hacker that self taught myself Dos, Windows, OS/2, when I went to Linux, I could learn a lot on the web, so not so much self taught, but learned in forum. I also will not own an Android, and actually start using it until it has root, and then it becomes "My Phone." And I have bricked and unbricked quite a few in the process. LOL

So are you are saying that GNU Linux and Mac OS share 0% of attributes? Because while you all like to ramble on about this, my point was not that Mac is true Linux. My point is that they both come from UNIX.

 

autostaretx

Erratic Member
So are you are saying that GNU Linux and Mac OS share 0% of attributes? Because while you all like to ramble on about this, my point was not that Mac is true Linux. My point is that they both come from UNIX.
That depends upon your definition of "from Unix".
I'm going to discuss BSD/Mac, not Gnu, since i know the history of BSD better.
BSD was (according to the legal defense, and years of prior scuttlebutt throughout the industry) written in a "clean room" environment ... they did NOT look at the Unix source code.
What they DID look at were the user manuals and application interface routines' manuals.
Then they wrote something that "looked and acted like that".
Some of the courtroom actions compared subroutines' source code line-by-line to try to prove/disprove "theft".
This was a fairly common practice at the time for porting XXXX systems to YYY hardware.
Apple's OSX is/was a licensed port of BSD to Apple's hardware, with their own file system structures and other additions layered on.
So it may *look* like Unix, but it didn't *come from* Unix.

I suspect following the history of GNU would come up with the same process at work.

MSDOS's command line interface is somewhat Unix-like, but they built it on CPM's model.
It has pipes (etc) allowing a very Unix-like sequence of apps to feed data from the first to the last.
(where CPM got it? i do not know)

"Dos" was a fairly generic name for many brands of operating systems, even prior to 1974.

--dick
 
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elemental

Wherever you go, there you are.
So are you are saying that GNU Linux and Mac OS share 0% of attributes? Because while you all like to ramble on about this, my point was not that Mac is true Linux. My point is that they both come from UNIX.
No, I'm not saying that they share 0% of attributes; if they did then the GNU and Linux projects would have been failures.

It is a matter of perspective. The Linux kernel was written from scratch to be functionally equivalent/similar to a Unix kernel, but the actual code is (at least theoretically) completely different. People ramble on about the difference because from the licensing, support, and enhancement capability perspectives the difference is critical. Major legal battles have been fought regarding elements of kernel programming and whether an apparent similarity between the Linux and Unix kernel code stemmed from someone copying code from the Unix kernel into the Linux kernel (very bad legally) or from there being really only one way to implement the code such that any (reasonable) implementation is likely to look very similar to any other (reasonable) implementation (ok legally).

From the perspective of someone just using a Linux O/S machine versus a BSD O/S machine, there is very little difference that would be attributed to the kernel. Ditto for the GNU components (above the kernel) as compared to the BSD-derived components (above the kernel). The whole point of the GNU project and the Linux project was to create something functionally equivalent/similar to the licensed Unix versions, but with open source components that could be freely copied, modified, and enhanced.

If they were both cars, they would look similar and drive the same, but a mechanic fixing one would find entirely different parts in the engine and other systems if they compared the two. And in the case of the "GNU/Linux" car, the mechanic would have easy/complete access to the original engineering drawings and could freely use them to create new parts just like the old ones or modified to improve them or even build an entirely new car from with as much as they wanted the same or different.
 

elemental

Wherever you go, there you are.
That depends upon your definition of "from Unix".
I'm going to discuss BSD/Mac, not Gnu, since i know the history of BSD better.
BSD was (according to the legal defense, and years of prior scuttlebutt throughout the industry) written in a "clean room" environment ... they did NOT look at the Unix source code.
Thanks... this is an aspect of BSD that I was NOT as familiar with and should have been, especially as I was answering flman. I hadn't realized/remembered that BSD itself had gone through a clean room re-writing process. Should have hit Wikipedia to refresh my memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution.

The battles over "Unix" and "Unix-like" operating systems, re-writes, naming, etc. has been long and bloody.

And that's before we get into the religious battles over the various open-source licenses.
 

autostaretx

Erratic Member
Thanks... this is an aspect of BSD that I was NOT as familiar with and should have been, especially as I was answering flman. I hadn't realized/remembered that BSD itself had gone through a clean room re-writing process. Should have hit Wikipedia to refresh my memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution.
... and that Wiki page, plus the "Unix Wars" page, say that BSD was a very "dirty room" development (they did use Unix code), but that GNU was "written from scratch". My memory is suspect.

... meanwhile, prior to and during all of that, i was dealing with real-time data acquisition systems (or perverting time-share systems to act like them), so i didn't have to implement Unix until roughly 1990.
People would travel from the environment i'd set up to Unix sites, then come back and thank me for not imposing Unix on them.
It wasn't until after 1992 that Unix systems finally began to compete speed/power/price-wise in our environment. Even then, it wasn't until 1998 or so that we finally shut down our physically large VAX/VMS 11/780 system ... by then we had quite a few microVaxes and Alphas scurrying around.

--dick
 

rollerbearing

Well-known member
I'd forgotten all about AMOS. That was a memory jog. Although I did continue to see it for years and years after I would have thought it dead running the local warehouse liquor store's sales and inventory terminals.
 
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elemental

Wherever you go, there you are.
It wasn't until after 1992 that Unix systems finally began to compete speed/power/price-wise in our environment. Even then, it wasn't until 1998 or so that we finally shut down our physically large VAX/VMS 11/780 system ... by then we had quite a few microVaxes and Alphas scurrying around.
A VAX 11/780, by 1998, could have been replaced for the cost of the electricity alone I suspect, if anyone was doing a "total cost of operation" comparison. I build a VAXcluster with an 11/780 (or was it an 11/785 by then? don't remember) and a VAX 8550 in 1988 (CI-based, with an HSC50 for shared storage). Added a MicroVAX 2000 in 1989 using the Local Area VAXcluster technology. Had to demonstrate compute-parity between the VAX 11/780 and the Microvax 2000 for our local user community that was somewhat perturbed (based on the physical size) that I was billing out the CPU time for the MicroVAX 2000 at the same cost as the 11/780. Had to, though... government regulations (DCAA) required that I justify all rates.

Unix workstations (HP running HP UX, Sun running SunOS, and IBM whatever running AIX) cannibalized the VAX user base first (for scientific users), then PC and Macs came along and killed off most of the Unix workstations. I made it easy for the PC folks by getting DEC's PCSA/PATHWORKS up and running in 1988, along with a 10BASE5 (thickwire Ethernet LAN) distributed through our 3 floors (and in a year extended down 7 floors and out to a remote wing) that let people have their *very own computer in their own office* (radical, I know) on the *network* able to share files with the big VAX :) locally, and even (over the corporation's Wide Area Network) with other VAXes at other locations using DECnet. Heady stuff. Good times. As far as operating systems go, VMS was my all-time favorite.
 

autostaretx

Erratic Member
Last i looked, Intel (who now owns the Alpha product line) has made VMS free for hobbyist use.
It may even run on normal PC chipsets.
We kept the 11/780 running due to its mix of peripherals and our decades of mag tape data.
(we had the last functional 7-track tape unit on campus ... to handle our data that went back to 1963).
The 11/780 itself (in 1980) was the replacement for a 1965 SDS 930 ... the first "affordable" silicon computer at less than $100k.
When i took over the position of system manager/maintenance/ribbon-changer my 1st two years were spent (a) keeping the two SDS 930s alive (individual transistors) and (b) replacing them (with, it turned out, an 11/60 and the 11/780 ... the acquisition of which was due to a cocktail party promise by a DEC higher-up at a DECUS conference). I hardware-hacked both systems to a fare-thee-well.

Yes, VMS was a marvelous OS. I regard it very very fondly. None of the current blend/mix come as close to my heart.

--dick
 

flman

Roadrunner, Genius of Birds ALWAYS WINS! NO FAILS!
Okay Auto and Elemental, thanks for the clarification.
 

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