[geeks] unix [was: q: good source for leather book bag?]

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: gsm at mendelson.com
" 
" On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 12:26:16PM -0700, Rick Hamell wrote:
" >Isn't that pretty close to the same way Microsoft claimed Windows 2000 
" >was Unix?
" 
" Nothing at all. Microsoft claimed that it supported a set of UNIX API's,
" which fit some POSIX standard.

this is true.

" It was part of a product called SFU which was sold as an add-on.
" 
" SFU 3.5 (XP) was eventually made freeware, and the function of it was
" included in (some versions of) Vista. 

sfu was the brainchild of a company called interix; 2.0 was their
final release before being absorbed by ms.  it's a posix personality
layer that runs on top of the nt microkernel alongside win32.  it used
to be, and may still be possible, that you could boot sfu -instead- of
win32, and have a very unixy system that ran ms binaries natively.

back then ms had their own 'posix' library that you were supposed to
compile your posix programs with to run under win32, designed to be
the absolute, rock bottom minimun needed to wangle a posix compliance
sticker, and by all accounts it was a thorough load of crap.

interesting that ms actually dumped their own product for the nih one
that actually worked...
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought