I see now what he meant with "disconnect between the Linux kernel and basic userland". As others have already pointed out, I also don't think that this is an integral part of what being like Unix is and I stand by my first assessment of him being wrong, trollish, or as an additional option, throwing in this argument to detract from the real criticism.
The article doesn't go into much detail why having the kernel and the userland being maintained by the same group is better. Neither on theoretical grounds nor with actual examples.
On theoretical grounds, I would agree that it should be benefitial although in my personal experience (Solaris, FreeBSD, OSX, Windows with Cygwin, Linux (normal userland and busybox for low-spec devices), it's not a given that this means necessarily a better user experience.
Solaris used to have (some years ago, haven't used it lately) and OSX still has a really bad default set and the sooner you replace them with the GNU tools, the better for your peace of mind. I'd even go so far and claim that Windows with Cygwin is a better user experience than those two.
I see now what he meant with "disconnect between the Linux kernel and basic userland". As others have already pointed out, I also don't think that this is an integral part of what being like Unix is and I stand by my first assessment of him being wrong, trollish, or as an additional option, throwing in this argument to detract from the real criticism.
The article doesn't go into much detail why having the kernel and the userland being maintained by the same group is better. Neither on theoretical grounds nor with actual examples.
On theoretical grounds, I would agree that it should be benefitial although in my personal experience (Solaris, FreeBSD, OSX, Windows with Cygwin, Linux (normal userland and busybox for low-spec devices), it's not a given that this means necessarily a better user experience.
Solaris used to have (some years ago, haven't used it lately) and OSX still has a really bad default set and the sooner you replace them with the GNU tools, the better for your peace of mind. I'd even go so far and claim that Windows with Cygwin is a better user experience than those two.