Crabb clears the Linux record

First of all, I am sick and tired of trotting out my Unix pedigree, but here's the short form. I've used Unix since the first distribution of BSD (Berkeley, as in the University of California at Berkeley, Standard Distribution of Unix. Unix, by the way, was invented by Bell Labs in the late 60's for use by their engineers) way back in the 70's.

I edited, for God's sake, the UNISIG Newsletter for DECUS (Digital Equipment Computer User's Society), also in the 70's -- which is how I got started in this writing thing.

I wrote the book for ZD Press, "Running Unix So It Doesn't Run You," and edited a half-dozen other Unix books. My department (Computer Science) and much of my University (The University of Chicago -- where my 'real' job lives) has been Unix forever -- long before Mac or DOS or C/PM or Windows or Foobar7.

So get this straight -- I use Unix every goddamned day. I've got GREP, AWK, and arcane UNIX subcommands you've never heard of flipping through my brain when I sleep.

Happy or Sad
Am I happy that Apple has not done a better job of supporting Unix for the Mac?

Hell no. Up until a year ago, I was still running an original AUX-based Workgroup Server in my labs. I replaced that with a powerful AIX-based Apple Network Server. In both cases, Apple pulled its support for the OS. In the case of AUX, which was Apple's first lame attempt to Macintize BSD and System V (sort of) Unix, Apple pulled the plug on the OS. In the second, Apple pulled the plug on building servers with IBM's UNIX at their heart -- AKA AIX.

In both cases I was seriously peeved, and still am. Not because UNIX is the only decent server-based OS on the planet (although it still blows the doors off of NT, which is about as configurable as a boat anchor, but without the boat anchor single utility), but because Apple shouldn't be so daft when it comes to supporting mature, multiuser, multideployable operating systems like Unix.

I am further annoyed that Apple has done a crappy job of supporting the freeware Unix variants available for the Mac -- most notably MK Linux and PPC Linux. Both "could" be serious multiuser, multideployable operating systems that "could" help Apple in universities, in financial houses, in engineering companies, and elsewhere where Linux is making inroads against the NT juggernaut and against commercial Unix variants that have not advanced much in a couple of years (hello HP! [HP-UX], hello Sun! [Solaris, Sun OS], hello SGI! [IRIX]).

Watch Where You Step
Instead, Apple focused on its OpenStep/Rhapsody/Mach product. Nothing wrong with that, since Mach is yet another Unix variant. And since Rhapsody was BSD-compliant, it did not really matter.

Then Apple changed its OS plans to Mac OS X -- which has all the pro-Unix, pro-Linux crowd cheesed off -- as if Apple was somehow going to cut Mach and OpenStep out of Mac(h) OS X.

Well, to that crowd, I offer the same analysis that I offered Apple: Don't be daft. While Apple might not offer a monitor control window that autopops-up on startup, or a mechanism for shooting quick commands to a CLI (command line interface), or a way to edit .cshrc or .login files from the Finder to modify your startup shell (look it up), it does not mean that Apple is throwing out the technology that Mac OS X is based upon or the technology tools that Mac OS X Server will provide.

Maybe it just means that Apple, for the first time ever, has Unix figured out: it wants to offer the robustness, configurability, flexibility, and power of Unix, without trying to turn the rest of Macdom into card carrying Unix nutballs, like me. After all, do these folks really need to know the operational and usage differences between vi and Emacs, LaTeX and Troff, or any of the rest of it?

I don't think so. They just want a Mac that won't crash, runs fast, costs less, looks cooler than any hump of a Wintel PC, and can run all of their software.

And that software is not written for Linux, my friends, and it never will be.