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Comment by duaneb | Hacker News Reader

Hell, the Linux kernel isn't very unix-ish. It's a kernel.

The Linux kernel might not be “very UNIX-ish” but the GNU/Linux integrated system clearly adheres to the basic UNIX philosophy (multi-user, everything-is-a-file, userland shell, non-mandatory non-privileged GUI).

Not all OSes have these same foundational pillars. What I meant to express is that Linux does whereas others (as disjoint as Genera, Windows NT, BeOS Amiga) don't.

In a sense Linux is more "unix" than most, as it seems to expose via virtual file systems what other _nix expose via APIs.

In this sense, plan 9 is more unix than unix....

In that sense the original UNIX kernel was not very unix-ish either. The unix philosophy to a large degree exempts the kernel, as few people will be directly interacting with it during daily usage.

You're referring to /proc and (more recently) /sys I presume. I'm sure you're aware of Plan9 that takes the everything-is-a-file idea to the logical extreme using it as a universal namespace by means of the P9000 (?) protocol (going way off-topic here).

9P? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)

Yes i am aware, and i suspect the Linux devs were in part inspired by that (Linux may even support 9P, iirc).

Plan 9 was pretty much about taking the "everything is a file" thinking to its logical end point. Meaning that you could even manipulate individual GUI windows via the FS.

I was simply musing that Linux may have taken the concept further than the BSDs while still being "unix". I can't say i ever got the impression that Plan 9 was intended to be posix compatible for instance.

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