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[Warner Losh]

> On May 4, 2005, at 5:24 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
> >> Agreed.  I consider it a serious misfortune that FreeBSD doesn't use
> >> /bin/sh as root's shell.  On the other hand, it's easy enough to fix,
> >> so I haven't spent my time complaining about this.  :-)
> >
> > All BSDs have, since a very long time ago, used /bin/csh as root's
> > shell.
> 
> NEXTSTEP never did; and neither does OS X:

Nexstep is mach based, not BSD based.  OS X is FreeBSD based, so
clearly they changed it :-)

> Likewise for the majority of UNIX systems I am familiar with (Solaris, 
> Ultrix, HP/UX).  In the case of Linux, or a few other systems, they 
> would use a POSIX shell like bash or ksh instead, which are almost 
> entirely backwards-compatible with /bin/sh.

Ultrix/mips and Ultrix/VAX did have /bin/csh as their root shell, at
least in early versions that I used in the late 1980's.  Solaris is
SYSV based with some BSD bits added to that base, so isn't of BSD
orgin.  HP/UX likewise.

I'm not looking for a catalog of systems.  I'm telling you why
we are where we are today, and why things haven't changed: There's
really no need and inertial keeps things BSDish.  Most people never
use the root shell directly, and all shell scripts are /bin/sh
anyway...

It truely is one of those things that just doesn't matter at all.

Warner