First of all, I would like to hear people's opinions on what exactly they
consider to be "Unix" - to have a proper comparision one must know what
they're comparing against. With the word being "Unix"; using a specific
acknowledged standard is what I have in mind, but I haven't discounted the
possibility of comparing against a specific vendor, as this will make the
comparision considerably less abstract. So what do _you_ think when you
hear the word Unix? Or what would you like to see Linux compared against?
As short background to the standards - more would be outside of the scope
for this - the facts are that "Unix" is a trademark of "The Open Group".
Their latest standard is "The Single UNIX Specification Version 2",
otherwise known as UNIX 98. Sub-standards (ahem) include UNIX 98
WorkStation and UNIX 98 Server, and the earlier standard was UNIX 95. UNIX
95 includes for example POSIX.1, POSIX.2, FIPS 151-2, ISO C. UNIX 98 is
mostly amandments, 64bit and Y2K stuff.
Secondly, I would obiviously be very grateful for any pointers as to
Linux' standards conformity, features, and such which would ease up the
work. I'm working under a mostly self-imposed deadline of a couple of
months in order to get this out of the way quickly, so it's expected to be
rather brief. Still, let me know if you know any potential resources to
check. I will make the paper available on the WWW as well, so everybody
can benefit from it.
And finally, there's the issue of which version of Linux should be used
for comparing. I'm accepting opinions on this as well; I realize using the
latest developmental versions will give Linux more "points", but from the
point of writing the paper, it's pretty much like shooting at a moving
target. For that matter, there may not be as many resources on the older
kernels.
Please send replies in private e-mail, unless they're very pertinent to
the Linux kernel development. In which case, Cc:ing me would be nice,
since the volume on linux-kernel is oftentimes so large much gets missed.
Thanks in advance to anybody bothering to help.
-Donwulff
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