Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Yeah, but aren't they all just implementations of the POSIX standard 
> which basically defines exactly how everything has to work anyway?

  Posix defines some minimum requirements, it doesn't say what else the
OS may also implement.

  Also, I don't think the posix standard says much about how the kernel
should internally be implemented (only about some of its interfaces).

> Interesting. I thought that Solaris only works on Sun hardware. [And, 
> either way, that it's quite expensive].

  Yes, I know you don't read current events on almost anything. Solaris
has worked on Intel hardware for quite some time, and Sun made it open
source also some time ago. Apparently they have gone to great lengths
to implement robust support for PC hardware. Some people even claim it's
better than linux in some aspects.

> >   Believe it or not, sometimes people must access the WWW without a
> > fancy graphical user interface, eg. from a text terminal.

> Interesting... You would think that's a pretty rare requirement.

  The computing world consists of more than just desktop PCs. Those
mythical big servers out there somewhere don't run by themselves, and
they don't all have fancy graphical user interfaces (many of them don't
have a graphics card at all).

  Of course there are also a few purist unix gurus out there in their
caves who think that late 70's is the only real computer era and that
current computers are just toys for kids.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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