Also POSIX would be even less relevant, and very few would be buying BeOS X for doing Linux coding.
I think in your alternate universe it’s likely we’d have seen something entirely different emerge.
GNUStep still looks much like to the on the same state it used to be when I was using WindowMaker in the late 90's.
I regretted the time I once spent on the GNUStep room at FOSDEM, as the only subjects of relevance seemed to be the theme engine, as if there wasn't anything more relevant to get working properly.
Though it's entirely possible Jobs would have tossed the BeOS tech along with Quickdraw GX, Newton, etc.
I don't think I'd enjoy a GNU userland/glibc/Linux monoculture, quite honestly. I'm glad POSIX exists to have a slightly less moving target.
The only successful UNIX desktop is OS X.
And it isn't at all relevant on mobile OSes.
C++ in a non-standard version as compiled by gcc 2.96 release! Awesome.
In fact, Haiku does support more modern toolchains and the BeOS R5 is only kept around due to ABI issues with binary only BeOS software.
There is no such thing as C ABI, it only happens to work on OS that are, surprise surprise, written in C.
https://github.com/hjl-tools/x86-psABI/wiki/X86-psABI
The ABI for C needs to agree less stuff than a C++ ABI but it's still quite a lot of stuff, if these things don't get agreed then code won't work unless everybody uses the same (version of the) compiler.
x86-64 platforms not using the said ABI:
- macOS, "This article describes differences in the OS X x86-64 user-space code model from the code model described in System V Application Binary Interface", (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/De...)
- Unisys Clear Path OS200 and MCP
- Android (where JNI is what matters)
- Chrome OS (where JavaScript and WASM is what matters)
So no, it isn't everything except Windows on x86-64 and then there are all the other OSes running on ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, PIC and plenty of other less relevant CPUs .