What flavor of Unix is aix?

[Oleg Kiselev]

In article <873 at awdprime.UUCP> fenway.aix.kingston.ibm.com!mjones writes:
>>AIX on the PS/2 is based mainly on the code from the RT with
>>some more Berkeley stuff added and 

Saying that AIX PS/2 kernel (and AIX/370, for that matter) is mainly based on
RT code is misleading.  The kernel was modified to support RT-isms, which had
to be re-implemented in most cases, due to differences in the internal
designs of the kernels.  "Some more Berkeley stuff" is a 99% compatibility
with 4.3 BSD on the system call level, while maintaining sVr2 (as defined by
SVID) and 100% POSIX compliance.

Same goes for the utilities code and availability.  AIX/370 is very 4.3 BSD in
its behaviour to a user who prefers that environment (and everything feels
like SysV when you use "sh" :-)

>>some work done by Locus.

AIX project at LOCUS was a many years effort by one of the best collections of
UNIX talents in the world.  Not to minimize IBM's contribution, but calling
what LOCUS did "some work" is a gross and unfair under-statement.

Most of the LPPs, like compilers, WHIP, ATE, original GSL code, COBOL, and
all kinds of other "applications" I have no idea exist are IBM's work.
However, to my mind, applications do not define the "flavour" of UNIX.  The
kernel, C libraries support and tools, on the other hand, do.
-- 
			"No regrets, no apologies"   Ronald Reagan

Oleg Kiselev            ARPA: lcc.oleg at seas.ucla.edu, oleg at gryphon.COM
(213)337-5230           UUCP: [world]!{ucla-se|gryphon}!lcc!oleg