Unix Turns 40

wandazulu writes "Forty years ago this summer, Ken Thompson sat down and wrote a small operating system that would eventually be called Unix. An article at ComputerWorld describes the history, present, and future of what could arguably be called the most important operating system of them all. 'Thompson and a colleague, Dennis Ritchie, had been feeling adrift since Bell Labs had withdrawn earlier in the year from a troubled project to develop a time-sharing system called Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service). They had no desire to stick with any of the batch operating systems that predominated at the time, nor did they want to reinvent Multics, which they saw as grotesque and unwieldy. After batting around some ideas for a new system, Thompson wrote the first version of Unix, which the pair would continue to develop over the next several years with the help of colleagues Doug McIlroy, Joe Ossanna and Rudd Canaday.'"

Comments

Happy Birthday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy Birthday!

And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[antifoidulus]

find my_lawn -name kids* -exec rm -rf {} \;

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[russlar]

followed shortly by this one: wall "damn you cloud!"

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[MrMr]

I think you meant "kids*"

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

find: my_lawn: Permission denied

>>>You're too late old man. It's Our lawn now. ;)

mv /home/old_folks /retirement_home/

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Orp]

Bah. Your command would fail. You need to escape the splat just like the semicolon:

find my_lawn -name kids\* -exec rm -f {} \;

However -exec is slow. Try:

find my_lawn -name kids\* | xargs rm -rvf

Verbose for your kid-removing satisfaction.

Oh, and happy birthday, UNIX! Without you my career would have undoubtedly been less interesting.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Chris Mattern]

Bah. Your command would fail.

Only if there were files in his current working directory that matched the pattern "kids*". Granted, he should quote because he shouldn't depend on there not being any such files.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[morgan_greywolf]

Without UNIX we wouldn't have:

• wonderful, cryptic commands like 'ls, cp, rm, mv, etc.
• awk, sed and Perl ('nuff said)
• C ('nuff said)
• silly recursive acronyms like GNU == GNU's Not Unix
• mv lawn/kids /dev/null
• old stupid jokes like "unzip; strip; touch; finger; fsck; while do; more; yes; more; yes; more; done; zip"
• known the answer to the existential question "who am i"?

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on which unix variant you were using, on sco unixware 2.0, you would have to quote and escape or you would get all kinds of screwed up output.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[multi io]

find my_lawn -name kids\* | xargs rm -rvf

That'll fail to get a kid named "Joe Lawnmower" off your lawn, but will wipe out all lawnmowers and shoot all people named "Joe", including your grandfather.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes a joke is just a joke and sometimes a socially awkward pedantic nerd is just a socially awkward pedantic nerd.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on which unix variant you were using, on sco unixware 2.0, you would have to quote and escape or you would get all kinds of screwed up output.

Screwed-up output from SCO?

I'm sensing a pattern here....

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[that IT girl]

But now he's a more efficient socially awkward pedantic nerd. -nods-

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Wodin]

Bah. Your command would fail. You need to escape the splat just like the semicolon:

Not necessarily. It depends on whether there are files/directories in the current directory that start with the string "kids" (and your shell's globbing rules). If there aren't, then everything works find. If there's only one, things might seem to work, but files/directories in subdirectories will not be found (and therefore removed).

find my_lawn -name kids\* | xargs rm -rvf

Which will break if you have spaces or tabs or newlines etc. in your filenames. Use this instead (I hope you have a reasonable version of find and xargs):

find my_lawn -name kids\* -print0 | xargs -0 -r rm -rvf

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Vanders]

Forget the globing, I'm more impressed you can all remember the syntax & quoting rules for -exec.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oblig. piggyback whore post: The Unix Hater's Handbook[PDF warning]!

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

> mv lawn/kids /dev/null

you realize this doesn't work, since /dev/null is not a directory?

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

I just executed "man yes"
I learnt something today.

And people keep saying slashdot is only a waste of time...

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Eil]

wonderful, cryptic commands like 'ls, cp, rm, mv, etc.

I know you're just going for a +5, Funny, but:

ls = list
cp = copy
rm = remove
mv = move

Not so cryptic? They were deliberately intended to be short so that they were easy to remember and easy to type. Rather important details to an administrator like myself who might use them dozens or even hundreds of times each day.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[mystik]

It also fails if you happen to have more than 65k kids on your lawn....

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[KinkyClown]

wonderful, cryptic commands like 'ls, cp, rm, mv, etc.

Never heard of etc. what does it do?

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[jchandra]

Bah. Your command would fail. You need to escape the splat just like the semicolon:

find my_lawn -name kids\* -exec rm -f {} \;

However -exec is slow. Try:

find my_lawn -name kids\* | xargs rm -rvf

Verbose for your kid-removing satisfaction.

Oh, and happy birthday, UNIX! Without you my career would have undoubtedly been less interesting.

find my_lawn -name kids\* -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rvf

You will thank me one day when some kid creates a file named "\n/\n"

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Jaroslav.Tucek]

> known the answer to the existential question "who am i"?

Well, nice thing to know for sure. On the other hand though, UNIX just turned 40, and it still does not know how to "make love", sad...

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[ailnlv]

in bash it outputs a string through stderr saying

-bash: etc: command not found

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[arth1]

Granted, he should quote because he shouldn't depend on there not being any such files.

One word: NO.

Imagine this:

-rw-r--r-- kids-linus
-rw-r--r-- kids-mark
-rw-r--r-- kids pwn oldmen
drwxr-xr-x oldmen/
-rw-r--r-- oldmen/ken
-rw-r--r-- oldmen/dennis

If quoting like you propose:
find . -name 'kids*' | xargs rm -rvf
... you will now delete oldmen with both ken and dennis, but leave "kids pwn oldmen" in place. That's one step worse than the original -exec version, which at least would delete all the kids.

This is a classic problem, and the solution is more intricate than you might think. Even -print0 and xargs -0 doesn't solve it entirely (if the resulting file list exceeds the maximum command length, you may delete a directory in one xargs-split command, and then try to delete files in the directory in the next xargs-split command, and get an error).
Which is why most good sysadmins stick with using -exec, even when it is dead slow.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[lanc]

However -exec is slow. Try:

rtfm://find

Especially the section explaining the difference between "\;" and "+".

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

+ that you did not have always realtime commandline so you couldn't see what you type until you sended the command. So you needed to be sure that you typed everything correctly without typos. Do that with list, copy, remove, move and other words than short versions of them cp, rm, mv. Less change to type wrong it and easier to correct just by pressing backspace.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

find my_lawn -name kids\* -print -exec rm -f {} +

does the same

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

bzzt... -print0 is not POSIX compliant

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Helen O'Boyle]

It's the 40th anniversary of UNIX, and probably a day away from the 40th anniversary of the first time a more experienced user saw someone typing at the keyboard of a terminal connected to a UNIX box and thought with a knowing smile (as I did when I saw the find command above), "Oh, I'll bet that guy expects that command will do something different than what it will actually do." [ Optionally suffixed with the second thought, "This'll be fun to watch," or "ZOMG! NO!" in those cases where the mistakes are particularly awkward. ]

C'mon, you know you've thunk it when watching the less experienced and the preoccupied before. And if you're like most people, you've had the experience of wanting bash or ksh (or csh, so that the BSD guys feel loved) to be a DWIM shell (do-what-I-mean, as opposed to do-what-I-say).

And probably about one day and 5 minutes from the 40th anniversary of the first time two UNIX users discussed the finer points of quoting in shell commands. ;-)

/.'s up to EIGHT DIGIT uids now? Wow.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Helen O'Boyle]

Helen, Helen, Helen... if I've told you once, I've told you dozens of times... DO NOT post to slashdot when you've been up for 24 hours or more.

Uids are not up to 8 digits. Post id's are, and have been for ages.

Sigh. It's time for sleep.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[jeremyp]

Even in the late 60's teletypes would print the character you just typed in "real" time i.e. just after you pressed the key.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Hurricane78]

LOL. I like your humor.

Also: Interesting approach, to think of errors as a functionality too. I know, it's obvious, if you just got out of a course about defined states in state machines. But you tend to forget it. Should make me create some interesting hacks. :D

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Hurricane78]

Love is not made. It emerges.

"emerge -atv games-engines/love" to be exact.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Hurricane78]

Hey! That's the Johnny Tables of the shell.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[morgan_greywolf]

Even in the late 60's teletypes would print the character you just typed in "real" time i.e. just after you pressed the key.

Which is the real reason why the most commonly used Unix commands are two characters, and the real reason why Unix command only print things when either A) requested, or B) when something surprising happens.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[morgan_greywolf]

Whooooooosh.

I've been a Unix systems engineer for years. I once updated the OS on an AT&T 3B2/400 running SVR3.2. (No, that's not SVR4, that's SVR3.2!)

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[akanouras]

Or even better:

find my_lawn -name kids\* -delete -print

And kiss the fork-fest goodbye...

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[Anonymous Coward]

mv lawn/kids /dev/null

That will overwrite /dev/null, and turn the kids from the lawn into black holes, growing in size from all the unwanted data fed to them by other processes :)

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[LittLe3Lue]

> ls -l /retirement_home

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 1979-01-01 01:01 /retirement_home -> tmp/

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[againjj]

I think you meant "kids*"

In bash, if there are no files in the current directory that match kids*, then the glob is unexpanded.

Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command:

[ma11achy]

Or to make it a little more posix...
cd my_lawn; find . -depth -print -name kids\* -exec rm -rf {} \;

Unix is over the hill

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a fresh new operating system like Windows 7.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[Anonymous Coward]

and you need a slap in the face

Re:Unix is over the hill

[Ethanol-fueled]

Fresh like a pile of garbage heaped on top of an older, more rotten pile of garbage.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[BrokenHalo]

Windows could take on board one thing from From Unix and be a much better product as a result: as David Korn (of ksh fame) says in TFA: "One of the hallmarks of Unix was that tools could be written, and better tools could replace them... It wasn't some monolith where you had to buy into everything; you could actually develop better versions.". Microsoft has a lot to learn. The progress from 1980's DOS to today's offering is pretty sad.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[bytesex]

Is that so ? Then why does Mac OS, for example, take a step back when it want to suddenly comply with UNIX ? The philosophy may be there, but the institution's grip is still firm. This is no slap on Mac OS, mind you - anyone and everyone can be silly enough to take -n out of echo for the simple sake of complying with a piece of paper instead of going with the times.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[rolfwind]

Windows could take on board one thing from From Unix and be a much better product as a result: as David Korn (of ksh fame) says in TFA: "One of the hallmarks of Unix was that tools could be written, and better tools could replace them... It wasn't some monolith where you had to buy into everything; you could actually develop better versions.". Microsoft has a lot to learn. The progress from 1980's DOS to today's offering is pretty sad.

Does Unix philosophy actually mesh with Unix reality? A reason I ask is because in unix everything is supposedly a file, but there were enough exceptions, such as in networking, that in the seperate Plan9 OS, they sought to really make everything a file. And that by the original makers of unix.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[bursch-X]

It doesn't suddenly want to comply with UNIX (actually it is a certified UNIX since 10.5), but OS X is just todays version of NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP which used to be BSD running on top of a Mac kernel. So that made it UN*X in the first place, since 1986. Forget about Mac OS (sans X), that's a dead horse in many ways. What we are looking at now is NeXTSTEP with a different marketing name, which was better than Mac OS to begin with because SJ had the chance to avoid the stupid mistakes done with Mac OS, when he created NeXT

Re:Unix is over the hill

[bursch-X]

Mach kernel, I intended to say, not Mac kernel. Damn typos.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[bytesex]

10.5 /is/ the latest OS right ? Or is Snow Leopard out already ?

I guess my greater point is that, even though you can replace anything on the machine with your own stuff, you still don't know what you break when you do that. Also, certain things have become so ingrained within UNIX, that they hold back true invention: why don't we have a proper network filesystem ? What's happened to a real event API ? And look at all the trouble we have coming up with a really good, fine-tunable access control system !

Re:Unix is over the hill

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you meant the Mach kernel and not Mac. Apple still use a XNU as Leopard's operating system but called by Darwin.

Re:Unix is over the hill

[sjames]

In Unix reality, most everything IS a file, it's just that 'file' grew some rather ad-hoc methods like fcntl and ioctl, unless the file is a socket in which case ass setsockopt, et. el. A directory is a file, but gets special treatment and has a different set of methods :-(

Plan 9 tries much harder to stick with everything is a file and to get rid of any special case APIs like ioctl and company. Personally, I suspect that the reason it hasn't caught on is it's insistance on all or nothing. Change your entire world RIGHT NOW, GUI, shell, and ALL or stay in Unix. Guess which one most have chosen.

Worth thinking about

[Mannerism]

Not a bad retrospective, and interesting in that it illustrates some of the reasons for Unix's success: availability of source, and the ability for the user to create and replace tools easily. One wonders how those lessons might be applied not necessarily to operating systems or even computing, but to other industries and technical endeavours.

Re:Worth thinking about

[ctmurray]

I really liked the link, it really helped me get an overview. These great links are a great benefit of following slashdot.

Re:Worth thinking about

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Not a bad retrospective, and interesting in that it illustrates some of the reasons for Unix's success: availability of source, and the ability for the user to create and replace tools easily.

Exactly. Unix has survived for as long as it has because it was built from, encouraged and profited from a culture of free innovation. Indeed, moreso that its actual code, I would argue that it is this culture that constitutes exactly what is meant by Unix.

Unix is not just an OS. It is a culture. Indeed, there is really no one "Unix" operating system. Or at least, no one widely used one called "Unix". Linux, BSD, OSX, BeOS, all can be called *nix systems. But what unifies them is not their internal mechanisms or algorithms or standards. What links them is the culture of the people who use them, and who build them. The idea of freely sharing tools, building on the work of others, understanding the whole of the machine, making magic happen with code; that is what Unix really is. You just don't see this kind of thinking in groups using other operating systems.

It's no surprise that the GPL and open source in general were born from the minds of Unix hackers. In many ways, the GPL only formalises the culture of academic openness, innovation and free sharing of ideas that existed throughout the Unix timeline. It's true that Unix was regarded by Big Corps as a money making excercise, but that's not how hackers saw it. They saw Unix and the programs that ran on it as part of their culture, and more importantly, heritage.

Unix has become more than source code or a framework. Is a significant part of our society. The norms and customs of Unix hackers have become their own tradition and even law in places. Unix and the hacker culture are a way our society has found to cope with the recent addition of computers, a way that has served well as the they and the internet become more and more pervasive. Like the old traditions and customs that founded our legal and civil systems, the Unix culture has formed the foundation of how we deal with the integration of computers into our lives.

The culture, traditions and ethics of Unix will probably outlast the lines of source that make up the programs, or the architectures they ran on. I expect Unix and hacker culture, or their descendants, will still be around in another 40 or 400 years, forming the philosophical foundation of a digital age.

Re:Worth thinking about

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that The Open Group would disagree with your overly broad definition of Unix

Re:Worth thinking about

[Guy Harris]

I think that The Open Group would disagree with your overly broad definition of Unix

Then he needs to put a * in the right place; they can still whine about it, but they can't pretend the notion to which "Un*x" or "Unix-like" refers doesn't exist.

Re:Worth thinking about

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, lives in hippie fantasy land.

I think you're forgetting that people had to pay AT&T, a bigger monopoly in its time than IBM and Microsoft combined, for a Unix source license and that they would to Very Bad Things to you if you broke that license. You're also forgetting Sun, HP, DEC, Apollo, and a host of other Unix vendors who were not at all about sharing freely or cooperating. (Granted, they're all dead now or nearly so.)

Your words are poetic but largely revisionist bullshit.

Re:Worth thinking about

[Vanders]

It's no surprise that the GPL and open source in general were born from the minds of Unix hackers.

RMS had never even used UNIX when he started the GNU project: he was an ITS & Lisp hacker.

Re:Worth thinking about

[plopez]

One wonders how those lessons might be applied not necessarily to operating systems or even computing, but to other industries and technical endeavours.

People forget that is the entire concept behind patents. To further progress by showing others how things work, not by wrapping things up in secrecy. The concept is thus:

1) You invent something. You can keep it a secret but if some one invents the same thing you have no recourse. You can't say they stole it from you. There is no such thing as a "trade secret" which is enforceable. In order to prove it you have to reveal it making it no longer a secret.

2) Or you can patent it. For which you *do* get legal protection and a temporary monopoly. In exchange others get to review and study your design to improve upon it and to incorporate it into their products or designs. This furthers technology furthering the common good.

People forget that the original purpose of patents isn't profit. Isn't that strange?

The Unix/FOSS paradigm is also very much like that of scientific research. Where methods, data and results are published for the use of others to further their research.

Re:Worth thinking about

[iggymanz]

sorry, you're the one living in fantasy land. The AT&T kind was mediocre, so Ken Thomspon and other hippies jazzed up the code (which was given to schools by at&t) with many improvements (32 bits, virtual memory, better tcpip) to make BSD. Later it was found in lawsuit against UCB that AT&T had incorporated (stolen) many BSD features into Unix. that was the hippie stuff, that made Unix good. So the BSD damn hippies wrote replacements for the AT&T things

Re:Worth thinking about

[sturm42]

You realize that the GPL was conceived by RMS, an ITS and Lispm hacker, right?

Re:Worth thinking about

[Darinbob]

Source was not easily available in the early days. You needed a license for it, and it was definately a commercial OS like the competitors were (who often also had source code available under license). What made Unix take off were the universities who adopted it I think.

Re:Worth thinking about

[ClosedSource]

Yes, I agree that Unix is a culture, but No, it wasn't based on sweetness and light.

Re:Worth thinking about

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Ken Thomspon spent some time at Berkeley getting the BSD effort going, I don't think he worked on VM, tcp, or any of that. Kind of started with Joy. . .

Re:Worth thinking about

[FordPrefect276709]

speaking about culture: don't forget SCOUnix ;)

Re:Worth thinking about

[Cro Magnon]

We weren't talking about germ cultures!

Re:Worth thinking about

[bill_mcgonigle]

Doug McIlroy gave an extensive history lesson to my LUG a few years back. It's long, but worth the time for those who enjoy computer history:

http://www.archive.org/download/DougMcIlroy_AncestryOfLinux_DLSLUG/DougMcIlroy_AncestryOfLinux_DLSLUG_708kb.mp4

The quality is sub-low-budget, but viewable.

But life is just getting started...

[The Pirou]

40 is the new 30!

Re:But life is just getting started...

[gstoddart]

40 is the new 30!

Man, I hope so. I'm turning 40 this year. :-P

Cheers

This makes Unix 15 years older than Tetris

[tepples]

Unix just turned 40, and Tetris just turned 25. What do they have in common other than closely spaced birthdays? They were both first developed on PDP-11 hardware (Unix on a PDP-11, Tetris on a Russian clone). And they've both been cloned, early and often.

U.S. copyright explicitly doesn't apply to methods of operation. Title 17, United States Code, section 102(b). This makes it legal to "clone" a computer program by observing its method of operation. But SCO has tried to use copyright to shut down Unix clones, and The Tetris Company has tried to use copyright to shut down Tetris clones. SCO already lost its case (there is no copyrightable piece of Unix in Linux), but the other case (Tetris v. BioSocia) is still pending.

And despite Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov's expressed disdain for free software, two servers operated by Tetris (zone.tetris.com and www.tetrisfriends.com) are run using GNU/Linux.

Re:This makes Unix 15 years older than Tetris

[MaskedSlacker]

Actually SCO argued that UNIX-clones weren't clones at all, but were using the same C code. Sure, they were full of shit, but what they were claiming IBM had done actually would have been a violation of copyright law.

Re:This makes Unix 15 years older than Tetris

[darkjedi521]

I belive Unix was first developed on a PDP-7 as PDP-11s did not yet exist in 1969.

Re:This makes Unix 15 years older than Tetris

[Wodin]

Unix just turned 40, and Tetris just turned 25. What do they have in common other than closely spaced birthdays? They were both first developed on PDP-11 hardware (Unix on a PDP-11, Tetris on a Russian clone). And they've both been cloned, early and often.

And Lisp is 50 years old. It wasn't developed on a PDP-11, since PDP-11s weren't around then :) It was developed on an IBM 704, but there was a version for PDP-1 developed a little later.

I think you can say the same about cloning, since there are many different dialects of Lisp and many languages have adopted aspects of Lisp.

Re:This makes Unix 15 years older than Tetris

[harlows_monkeys]

Unix just turned 40, and Tetris just turned 25 [slashdot.org]. What do they have in common other than closely spaced birthdays? They were both first developed on PDP-11 hardware (Unix on a PDP-11, Tetris on a Russian clone)

Unix was first developed on the PDP-7. The PDP-11 wasn't even available when Unix development started--the 11 came out a year later.

Re:This makes Unix 15 years older than Tetris

[tepples]

Unix was first developed on the PDP-7 [...] the 11 came out a year later.

I stand corrected.

God damn it!

[oldhack]

Why does every one of these god damn things have to have a god damn birthday every god damn year?!

Re:God damn it!

[Anonymous Coward]

40 is a pretty significant anniversary though do you not think?

Re:God damn it!

[oldhack]

Which god damn bastard mod me god damn redundant? God damn moron.

Did they invent C too?

[SendBot]

I really, really want to say that Ken and Dennis invented C to make unix but I'm not completely sure. I could look it up, but I'm interested to hear what people have to say here. I mean, they're the K&R of the original C book, right?

Re:Did they invent C too?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yesss. (Expecting +5 Informative!)

Re:Did they invent C too?

[iggymanz]

Ritchie invented C, it's funny that Ken worked on B with some help from Ritchie, C was the successor to B

Re:Did they invent C too?

[osu-neko]

I really, really want to say that Ken and Dennis invented C to make unix but I'm not completely sure. I could look it up, but I'm interested to hear what people have to say here. I mean, they're the K&R of the original C book, right?

No. The 'R' in "K&R" is indeed Dennis Ritchie, but the 'K' is Brian Kernighan.

Re:Did they invent C too?

[RDW]

'I really, really want to say that Ken and Dennis invented C to make unix but I'm not completely sure. I could look it up, but I'm interested to hear what people have to say here'

For the definitive account, see:

http://www.galactic-guide.com/articles/2U20.html

'Dennis and I [Thompson] were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C.'

Re:Did they invent C too?

[harry666t]

The first Unix was written in PDP-7 assembly. A "port" to PDP-11 involved a rewrite in PDP-11 assembly, and AFAIR the second or third (or fourth?) edition was the one to be the first that was written in a high-level, portable language (B or C? Can't remember). One thing I remember for sure is that early Unix has been rewritten several times.

Re:Did they invent C too?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Actually, this Thompson/Ritchie thing is a long-running myth, I'm surprised no /. poster has exposed it yet. The real inventor of both Unix and C was Morton Downey, Jr., who was apparently too busy in his many other pursuits to file a claim for it.

Re:Did they invent C too?

[Holmwood]

Not exactly. RTFA. Unix was originally written in assembler on a PDP-7 in 1969. Thompson developed B, and some Unix development continued using B on the PDP-7. Ritchie developed a successor, C, finishing in 1972; in 1973 Thompson ported most of the Unix kernel to C on a PDP-11.

So C wasn't developed to "create" Unix; Unix was a precursor. C was indeed designed for implementing system software though.

Brian Kernighan -- the K of K&R got involved in C development later, and was indeed one of the two authors of the seminal K&R.

Re:Did they invent C too?

[Brandybuck]

Informative? WTF? The moderators are once again smoking crack...

Re:Did they invent C too?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

To the person who actually modded this ^^^ +1 Informative: This was an extremely feeble attempt at +5 Funny. But thanks for reminding me that I am on Slashdot where mods can be fooled into anything. (*I know, I will go to hell for this...*)

Re:Did they invent C too?

[MaskedSlacker]

Delicious strawberry flavored crack.

OH NO! My mod points!

Re:Did they invent C too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C.'

I cannot believe Ken Thompson wrote this nonsense.

B was derived from BCPL, which was a simplified version of the CPL language, designed at Cambridge and London Universities in the mid-60s. It was too complex to implement at that time, hence BCPL (Basic CPL).

B was very much like BCPL except that it used { } to define blocks, instead of (* and *).

AND, the original article (and the one above) promulgate the canard that Multics was unsuccessful and unwieldy.

In terms of influence on other OS's Multics was probably THE most important OS in history.

And an absolute joy to work with. Hence the original intention of Unics (the original spelling) to be cryptic and confusing - the exact OPPOSITE of Multics.

Re:Did they invent C too?

[FrankDrebin]

I always thought Ritchie's father was "Mr. C". Oh, and sit on it, Potsie.

Re:Did they invent C too?

[flnca]

In fact, the BCPL block introducers and terminators are "$(" and "$)", respectively. However, in modern versions of BCPL published by Richards, they've been replaced by "{" and "}". BTW, CPL was a nice language, but difficult to implement, as it tried to use ordinary math syntax, like "ab+c" would mean "a * b + c", for instance. It also depended on the Atlas character set, which used 1024 distinct characters (including overlined and struck-out characters). I once wrote a CPL terminal in Java for fun (and discovered that Java is capable of real-time screen emulations in 60Hz on any platform).

Re:Did they invent C too?

[W33B]

I'm still waiting for D

Re:Did they invent C too?

[againjj]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)

Re:Did they invent C too?

[W33B]

my wait is over!

Re:Did they invent C too?

[iggymanz]

You'll be happy to know there is also E, F, two G but no H. There is J, K and L, and Q, R, S and T, and Y and Z.

The difference between Unix and Eunichs

[Anonymous Coward]

Eunichs don't have children.

Mod +1 informative -1 everyoneknowsthatalready.

A Quarter Century of Unix, the Book

[Fished]

For those who haven't read it, this book is a GREAT read: A quarter Century of Unix by Peter H Salus Highly recommended, and once you've read it you'll suddenly understand why a lot of stuff is the way it is. Hat's off to the Best. Operating System. Ever.

Re:A Quarter Century of Unix, the Book

[Makarakalax]

Bought, thanks.

Happy 1.26227704e9

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy 1.26227704e9

Meanwhile, in Redmond

[93 Escort Wagon]

In honor of Unix's 40th anniversary, at 10:00 tonight there will be a celebratory Launching of the Chairs. It's open to the public, but seats are expected to go fast so you should plan to come early!

Re:Meanwhile, in Redmond

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonderful. I bet they need quite a lot of douche to flush out the sand they've got in unsightly places.

Re:Meanwhile, in Redmond

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so bitter. For such an enormous collection of programming talent, you-know-who has done very poorly indeed. Perhaps that's because it has been run by Legal and Accounting, and not by Tech. Admittedly, it has also been held hostage by its shareholders, but nobody forced them to take it public; the pre-load contracts alone would have ensured them plenty of money.

But it's not about having plenty, is it. It's about having everything.

Learn a bit about the past buddy boy, it tends to serve one well going forward.

Re:Meanwhile, in Redmond

[4D6963]

In honor of Unix's 40th anniversary, at 10:00 tonight there will be a celebratory Launching of the Chairs.

The ceremony opened with an impromptu speech by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during which he declared: "I'll fucking kill UNIX, I've done it before and I'll do it again!".

Re:Meanwhile, in Redmond

[Anonymous Coward]

~ballmer$ps aux|grep unix
0 vmunix
~ballmer$kill -9 0
NO CARRIER

There. Fixed that for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

find my_lawn -iname 'kids*' -exec rm -rf {} \;

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but point out the obvious here, but Android is based upon linux.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to feed a troll, but in case you are as ignorant as you sound. Android uses the Linux kernel so Linus, et al. will most certainly not be out-of-work as you say. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

An alternate point of view

[Anonymous Coward]

http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

"Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix.
I don't think that is a coincidence."

Re:An alternate point of view

[harry666t]

I always interpreted that quote as: "two of the greatest gifts for the humanity" :)

Re:An alternate point of view

[Guy Harris]

http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

"Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don't think that is a coincidence."

Neither of them were, of course, invented at Berkeley; one might, at best, argue that Berkeley perfected both of them. :-)

Re:An alternate point of view

[Vanders]

UHH is actually an interesting critique, and many of the criticisms still apply today. The chapter on X is worth reading alone.

Re:An alternate point of view

[geekgirlandrea]

Yes, and the two go very well together. :)

While Unix can read from stdin as good as ever...

[Anonymous Coward]

...there is much greater latency on opening stdout and even a few dribbles after eof.

glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) thun

[iggymanz]

Unix is grand, I consider the open source BSD and GNU/Linux flavors of Unix. But Unix(tm), I could tell that was starting to go downhill when they stopped including full C compiler with system, all of a sudden it wasn't a system one could extend as needed without paying serious coin. Most Unix(tm) meant being locked into one hardware vendor

Correction

[BrokenHalo]

A small correction to the submission:

Multics was believed to have stood for "Many Unnecessarily Large Tables In Core Simultaneously". ;-)

Re:Correction

[Muros]

You owe me a new keyboard :(

40 and still relevant

[krisbrowne42]

Wow... 40 already.

When I started doing Unix Admin professionally Unix was just turning 30, Linux was poised to take over the Desktop, Mac OS X was just a glimmer of hope, and Sun was the king of commercial Unix.

When I started using Minix, Unix was only 20, but RMS was kvetching about source code (and Hurd was Coming Soon), BSD had just won it's freedom, and Steve Jobs was doing cool things over at NeXT. Unix was just leaving it's First "Golden Age"...

Now, at 40, Mac OS X is the most used Unix system, Sun was just bought cheap, most other commercial Unix systems are defunct... But with Android, Pre, and iPhone all putting *nix systems in the palms of millions, Macs selling more than ever, and many companies offering Linux pre-installed in the box, Unix is as relevant as ever.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Gothmolly]

"Now, at 40, Mac OS X is the most used Unix system".

I do not think that phrase means what you think it means.

Re:40 and still relevant

[UnknowingFool]

If you measure in terms of directly by consumers, yes. Also by number of machines, yes. OS X is the #1 selling Unix machine by number of units. By revenue, no.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Brandybuck]

...and Hurd is still "coming soon".

p.s. The term "GNU/Linux" wouldn't be so repulsive if there actually were a GNU system that Torvalds bastardized by swapping out a kernel. But there is no such beast because Hurd remains unfinished. RMS publicly called the kernel the simplest part of an operating system, yet they still have not finished it.

Re:40 and still relevant

[mario_grgic]

What do you think it means? OS X is certified (by the Open Group) UNIX, and it owns 8% of the desktop market. That's a lot of UNIX machines. Yes, other UNIX OSes dominate on the server (where OS X has no foothold at all), but I doubt there are as many server machines as there are client machines in general.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

"most used" != "most consumers" and also != "revenue". Linux is widely used in servers, Ballmer claimed 60% of servers are running Linux (the exact number is unknown, of course).
Also, the use of OS X on the desktop worldwide is exaggerated, the price difference really matters outside of the first world, I know more non-technical people using Linux than any kind of people using OS X.

Re:40 and still relevant

[krisbrowne42]

Let's answer two ways that could be taken... No, I didn't mean Mac OS X is 40, my grammar radar missed that possible interpretation. (Though being a hereditary Unix through NeXT, BSD4.4 and back, it could be considered such)

By any measure I have seen in the past 5 years, Mac OS X continually shows market penetration 5-8+ times that of Linux, compared to which any other Unix system usage can mostly be considered statistical noise.

That's not to say they don't have relevance or followers, but when it comes to getting the average user putting their hands on a Unix or Unix-like system, no other compares to Mac OS X, and that's not even counting embedded usage like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Re:40 and still relevant

[kamochan]

Hurdle :== Hurd, as in Turdle :== ...

Re:40 and still relevant

[dotgain]

I mean, it's fine as a desktop OS (grand actually, I'd recommend it to anyone). But Darwin is evil.

Not so much as a link to explain why, though. I'm actually genuinely interested, having recently moved from Linux after 13 years to an OSX box. Most of my time has still been spent getting set up there, haven't had any hard out command line sessions yet, but porting my own apps was a dream.

Re:40 and still relevant

[MaskedSlacker]

Why would i provide a link to explain my own opinion? I'm typing this from my macbook.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Vanders]

Mac OS X continually shows market penetration 5-8+ times that of Linux

On the desktop, yes. We have these big machines called "servers" though and Linux wipes the floor with everyone there: 50% of servers now run Linux.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Ilgaz]

Please go to sourceforge and read some app sources or better go to Apple darwin site. You like it or not, OS X is UNIX. Each 0.1 percent OS X gets equals to UNIX share.

Apple has spent significant time and money to get Unix 03 cerficate, perhaps it added months to Leopard release date.

If those "lusers" running iTunes and Safari wasting that great power bothering you, fine. The sad truth (!) is, OS X is at same league as very big boys like IBM (AIX), HP and others in terms of UNIX compliancy.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Ilgaz]

In other sense, OS X is still built on the same idea of UNIX. If you time warped a UNIX user from 1970s to a OS X running Terminal full screen, it wouldn't take long for him/her to adopt to it.

Even the OS X technologies like launchd (which is free as in every sense) is coded in same sense as Unix was coded.

It really seems some .NIX users are jelous to a point that they can actually ignore a UNIX 03 compliant OS. It is because it went with a completely different attitude and managed to be choice of general end users?

Re:40 and still relevant

[ceoyoyo]

Do you use it more if it's more expensive?

Re:40 and still relevant

[UnknowingFool]

Apple sells millions of OS X machines per quarter. That means millions of Unix machines per quarter. Millions of per quarter + existing base of users. Name one Linux vendor that sells that many. How about Unix? IBM sells much more in Unix revenue as they sell servers and workstations which are priced higher per unit but they don't sell millions per quarter.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget all the iPhones and iPod Touches also running OSX. Quite a few of them too...

Re:40 and still relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

It could have 100% of the server market and it wouldn't matter.

There are probably a hundred times as many desktops out there as there are servers, and all the Linux desktops and all the Linux servers combined wouldn't match the number of OS X desktops alone.

Re:40 and still relevant

[dzfoo]

Actually, a link within the article claims that OS X has 12% of the UNIX server market.

        -dZ.

Re:40 and still relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we say anything else than http://www.topology.org/human/?a=/linux/lingl.html ?

Re:40 and still relevant

[Vanders]

You should go read the available market data. Revenue from server installations far exceeds revenue from desktop & laptop installations.

Re:40 and still relevant

[terjeber]

all the Linux desktops and all the Linux servers combined wouldn't match the number of OS X desktops alone

I doubt that all the Linux servers and all the Linux desktops, combined, will match the number of iPhones and iPods (touch) sales combined. Those also run OS X.

Anyone thinking that Linux has anywhere near the penetration of OS X is on some serious drugs.

And many happy returns!

[KwKSilver]

Bravo!

exaggeration about Minix...

[at_slashdot]

"But they may have come too late to stem a flood tide called Linux, the open-source operating system that grew out of Prof. Tanenbaum's Minix."

I think this is a bit of embellishment... Linux didn't grew out of Minix. Sure, Minix was useful, but to say that Linux grew out of it it's a bit of exaggeration.

Re:exaggeration about Minix...

[MightyMartian]

It's a load of horseshit, as Linus has repeatedly explained. Linux is not based on Minix. The architecture of the two kernels is completely dissimilar, and Linus has many times made his feelings known about what he thinks of microkernels.

Re:exaggeration about Minix...

[Anonymous Coward]

And Minux is not a clone of Unix, and early Minux had limited usability due to missing features and poor performance at the time Linus started his effort.

This article is significantly flawed in many other ways.

Re:UNIX is Gay

[hogleg]

actually, unix is not gay. its more asexual then anything else, and yes that thought is somewhat disturbing.

Re:While Unix can read from stdin as good as ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying UNIX can take it deep, but all it's holes are left dripping and sloppy?

The Gospel of Tux

[Gothmolly]

Every generation has a mythology. Every millenium has a doomsday cult. Every legend gets the distortion knob wound up until the speaker melts. Archeologists at the University of Helsinki today uncovered what could be the earliest known writings from the Cult of Tux, a fanatical religious sect that flourished during the early Silicon Age, around the dawn of the third millenium AD...

The Gospel of Tux (v1.0)

In the beginning Turing created the Machine.

And the Machine was crufty and bogacious, existing in theory only. And von Neumann looked upon the Machine, and saw that it was crufty. He divided the Machine into two Abstractions, the Data and the Code, and yet the two were one Architecture. This is a great Mystery, and the beginning of wisdom.

And von Neumann spoke unto the Architecture, and blessed it, saying, "Go forth and replicate, freely exchanging data and code, and bring forth all manner of devices unto the earth." And it was so, and it was cool. The Architecture prospered and was implemented in hardware and software. And it brought forth many Systems unto the earth.

The first Systems were mighty giants; many great works of renown did they accomplish. Among them were Colossus, the codebreaker; ENIAC, the targeter; EDSAC and MULTIVAC and all manner of froody creatures ending in AC, the experimenters; and SAGE, the defender of the sky and father of all networks. These were the mighty giants of old, the first children of Turing, and their works are written in the Books of the Ancients. This was the First Age, the age of Lore.

Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of Turing, and saw that they were swift of mind and terse of name and had many great and baleful attributes. And they said unto themselves, "Let us go now and make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to our own use that they may bring us great fortune." With sweet words did they lure their customers, and with many chains did they bind the Systems, to fashion them after their own image. And the sons of Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems. And the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits, despising and being despised by the true Engineers, the children of von Neumann.

And the Systems and their Corporations replicated and grew numerous upon the earth. In those days there were IBM and Digital, Burroughs and Honeywell, Unisys and Rand, and many others. And they each kept to their own System, hardware and software, and did not interchange, for their Licences forbade it. This was the Second Age, the age of Mainframes.

Now it came to pass that the spirits of Turing and von Neumann looked upon the earth and were displeased. The Systems and their Corporations had grown large and bulky, and Suits ruled over true Engineers. And the Customers groaned and cried loudly unto heaven, saying, "Oh that there would be created a System mighty in power, yet small in size, able to reach into the very home!" And the Engineers groaned and cried likewise, saying, "Oh, that a deliverer would arise to grant us freedom from these oppressing Suits and their grave and perilous Licences, and send us a System of our own, that we may hack therein!" And the spirits of Turing and von Neumann heard the cries and were moved, and said unto each other, "Let us go down and fabricate a Breakthrough, that these cries may be stilled."

And that day the spirits of Turing and von Neumann spake unto Moore of Intel, granting him insight and wisdom to understand the future. And Moore was with chip, and he brought forth the chip and named it 4004. And Moore did bless the Chip, saying, "Thou art a Breakthrough; with my own Corporation have I fabricated thee. Though thou art yet as small as a dust mote, yet shall thou grow and replicate unto the size of a mountain, and conquer all before thee. This blessing I give unto thee: every eighteen months shall thou double in capacity, until the end of the age." This is Moore's Law,

Re:The Gospel of Tux

[MrKaos]

Window's install disc, $150. iMac, $1500. The Gospel of Tux (v1.0), $Priceless.

Re:The Gospel of Tux

[nv5]

did you write this just for this thread? If yes, my hat's off to you. +5 Funny doesn't do it full karma justice.

Re:The Gospel of Tux

[dzfoo]

Fantastic! Did you really write all that yourself?

          +5 Fucking Amazing
          -dZ.

Re:The Gospel of Tux

[Gothmolly]

FYI, I didn't write this, I found it online.

Re:The Gospel of Tux

[An ominous Cow art]

I think I first saw this at segfault.org (RIP?) about 10 years ago. Thanks for digging it up again.

Where the Name Came From

[Anonymous Coward]

Brian Kernighan, a long-time Bell Labs stalwart (and the guy who taught me C), coined "Unix" as a pun on Multics. He's also the man responsible for "Hello, world".

The True Legacy of UNIX

[hduff]

The true legacy of UNIX and it's derivatives is that it will eventually reduce a significant bit of technology to a fungible good, a universal commodity. Then the real fun begins.

that was good management!

[basiles]

What is scary (or at least very sad) today is that very probably no manager would let a few brilliant programmers to develop their own system during a couple of years: in academia, publishing is much more important that working on a big software system, and in industrial R&D, one could no more work for a couple of years on a brand new software.

Current managers would look with scare at their spreadsheet and would not let that kind of things happen anymore in 2009, and I still think it is really a pity, and we could get some really innovative systems if R&D was managed differently today.

Re:that was good management!

[Anonymous Coward]

A good point. As an addendum, one should note that UNIX did have to be justified later, and it was. As a text processing system. One could glimpse that in the article briefly, when it mentioned that the first use outside of the department was for typists.

This is how the old [n]roff text formatting system came about.

Re:that was good management!

[colinrichardday]

Yes, among other thing it was used for preparing patent applications.

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[Brandybuck]

Every Unix I have used included a full C compiler. Maybe not as a default install, but definitely included on one of the CDs.

Eunuchs

[Brandybuck]

Eunuchs® is a trademark of Ball Labs.

Re:Eunuchs

[shis-ka-bob]

40 year old Eunuchs and 21 year old Minx, seems rather sad actually

Windows has more and more Unix features

[stoffer_k]

Did you notice that since Windows 3 Microsoft keeps adding Unix-like features? Windows 3 did not have _real_ multitasking, it came with WinNT. Windows NT was also a multi-user system, another Unix-like feature. With Windows Vista came the Windows power shell, M$ equivalent of Unix shell. In fact, Unix is an ideal, which Microsoft is approaching in each new Windows release.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[calidoscope]

This actually started before MS got a hold of DOS. QDOS/86-DOS was pretty much a clone of CP/M with UNIX like features.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[colinrichardday]

Microsoft got a Xenix license before it developed MS-DOS.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not really. I mean, yes, there is Unix services for windows, which implements all of a typical Unix shell environment. But its Unix like behavior is not an indication that its adopting the Unix philosophy.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[calidoscope]

Development of QDOS/86-DOS was done by Seattle Computer Products (SCP), not Microsoft. SCP was planning to do a clone of MP/M as well, but that was dropped when MS bought the rights to 86-DOS from SCP in mid-1981.

Some of the UNIX'isms in 86-DOS include "copy" instead of "pip", file sizes known to the byte, "con", "aux" and "prn" were treated as files, batch files executed by command.com.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[ZorbaTHut]

On the other hand, Linux has been adding Windows-like features for the same period of time . . . like, say, GUIs, and drivers, and hardware acceleration, and programs that end-users want to use.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[SilverHatHacker]

And the best part is, Microsoft somehow manages to get patents on them too!

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Mr Z]

And don't forget directories separated by slashes. They would have used forward slashes, except that they had already used forward slashes for flags (inherited from VMS by way of CP/M). And there were pipes, and redirection... Apparently one of the targets for MS-DOS 3.3 was to be compatible with MS's XENIX, with the eventual goal of switching everything over to XENIX. At least, I seem to recall reading that somewhere (Undocumented DOS, perhaps?). Lots of XENIX fun here.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean that Windows(tm) 8 will drop the GUI and then several groups will code several windowing systems from zero and then fight for fourty years over whose is best? That looks interesting!

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Anonymous Coward]

There were several bad habits that Seattle Computing retained from CP/M; many of these bad habits came in turn from DEC operating systems. The very worst of them was the CRLF convention for ending lines. Another one, not so problematic in itself, was the convention of marking command switches with slashes instead of hyphens.

MS-DOS did not pick up its Unix-like features until version 2. Did Microsoft get it right? No! They retained / as a switch character and gave us the brain-dead convention of using a backslash as a path separator. They kept the two-byte line-ending convention. Even though they made it so that you could access the device files with names like \dev\con, you still couldn't use con, aux, lpt1, and prn as the names of normal files.

They have a talent for retaining the wrong things and adding more bad things to the bad things they already have. Look at Windows registry files: UTF-16 (not UTF-8) encoding, escaped backslashes in directory names, and CRLF's for line endings.

Forty years of Unix and less garbage than 29 years of Windows.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Mr Z]

They have a talent for retaining the wrong things and adding more bad things to the bad things they already have. Look at Windows registry files: UTF-16 (not UTF-8) encoding [...]

Well, considering that Windows NT's development largely predates UTF-8, I think that they could be given a pass on that one. (As I understand it, Windows NT was the first Windows to really deeply embed Unicode, and the reason they went with UTF-16 was because that was the best that was available.) UTF-8 came on the scene in early 1993, and Windows NT came out just a few months later.

Or am I misremembering?

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny... With UTF-8 we've come back to Plan 9 for the second time in this discussion.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[Philip_the_physicist]

That is unsurprising, given that *nix is generally held to be the best OS family for most tasks, with there only being doubt about mainframes and desktops (and in desktops, the advantages of Windows are mostly non-technical, or relate to third-party software). Plan 9 was supposed to be Unix done right, with the benefit of hindsight and experience of the mistakes made. As we are talking about ways to improve OSes, in particular Unix, we will naturally mention many idea related to Plan 9.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[jcupitt65]

In fact X pre-dates Windows, by a small amount at least. Windows 1.0 launched in November 1985, X version 6 (the first public one, I think) was released in January 1985. X has had hardware acceleration since the beginning, Windows picked that up much later.

I just missed X10. My first workstation ran X11, a tricky 10 MB source code download by acoustic modem (!!!) as I recall.

Re:Windows has more and more Unix features

[sjames]

NT was only sort of multiuser. Even the most recent Windows manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in order to make sure they don't accidentally let someone use the system without paying the requisite pound of flesh.

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[RLiegh]

And I'm gonna guess it was probably the same compiler ...gcc.

What Unix taketh away, GNU giveth back.

let there be pipes

[epine]

I've encountered bits and pieces of Unix hagiography for the last 15 years, and in all that time, I've internalized that "Multics sucks" (somewhere alongside the virgin birth), yet I can't bring to mind a single reason *why* Multics sucked. Were the Romans really so stupid as they are made out to be?

From Fernando J. Corbató's 1991 Turing lecture concerning one of Muttlix's early teething problems:

The decision to use a compiler to implement the system software was a good one, but what we did not appreciate was that new language PL/I presented us with two big difficulties: First, the language had constructs in it which were intrinsically complicated, and it required a learning period on the part of system programmers to learn to avoid them; second, no one knew how to do a good job of implementing the compiler.

So, perhaps, not the best suited language for systems programming?
From Wikipedia:

The goal of PL/I was to develop a single language usable for both business and scientific purposes.

Doesn't that vision give your average PHB a throbbing chum? If simplicity is hard, let's scale up the mediocre talent and do sameness instead.

PL/I was designed by a committee drawn from IBM programmers and users drawn from across the United States, working over several months.

No sociology experiment from the 1960s was complete without confederates in white shirts. The free-love hippies managed to sneak into the language promiscuous data type conversions.

Dijkstra summed it up in 1975 with his monograph
How do we tell truths that might hurt?

PL/I --"the fatal disease"-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

God, I love this guy. He's the patron saint of annoying the hell out of people by always being right, and putting a fine point on it. Same monograph includes another famous zinger:

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past.

From Myths about Multics

We wrote 3000 pages of the Multics System Programmer's Manual first, while waiting for the PL/I compiler.

That should strike a painful nerve in anyone who tried to adopt the C++ STL in 1994.

Ouch. Shipwrecked on the beach of half a programming language, fondling your monads.

Not half surprising that Thompson ended up carving his own canoe with a pen knife to escape.

Re:let there be pipes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used PL/1 and Multics. They aren't as unweildy as you have been lead to believe.

Re:let there be pipes

[rbrander]

Same here. One of the largest MULTICS installations in the world for many years was the University of Calgary that bought big into the idea. It was the technology that "should have been". The OS ran only one the one piece of hardware that we were ever aware of, the big Honeywell "DPS8" mainframe.

So all U of C students of the era (end-of-70's, most-of-80's) were taught PL/1 first and foremost; "C" was picked up on-the-fly by students working on Unix on our several VAX computers of the same era, rather than there being any actual C courses at the time. But PL/1 was considered the smart thing to learn if you wanted a commercial programming career, as it was surely the Coming Thing. I didn't learn C until my last year there (1984-85), for a computer graphics course on the VAX. (Yes, computer graphics on a 1 MIPS VAX, over a 9600-baud line to the graphics terminal. I still remember the scan lines coming in as you watched, building up a 512x512 image over the course of a minute. Then you would take a Polaroid photograph of the screen, there being only one laser printer in the University.)

The MULTICS OS, once you had the whole huge mainframe installation up and running, once you had the multiple experts keeping it so, was a flawed but basically great development environment. Everything but the kitchen sink, fine-grained security protocols out the yin/yang (it was designed for the military, mostly), vast virtual resources. And while PL/1 took a while to learn, it was also a "all but the kitchen sink" of languages. Don't tell me programmers don't want that, look at emacs. They want it, they just usually can't afford it.

Same with MULTICS; what UNIX brought to the table was that it was small enough and clean/understandable enough for scientists and engineers to run their own departmental minicomputer, and later their personal workstation. The industry went off in that direction rather than to ever-larger mainframes, as people making straight-line assumptions has imagined.

And it is STILL headed that way, with Unix running on netbooks, 30 years after that turning point. In the meantime, the rich, full, all-but-kitchen-sink environment of MULTICS would probably run on a $900 desktop nicely...which brings us to the other problem: totally proprietary and only maintainable if large companies were making tens of millions doing it.

But the quality of MULTICS was very high: secure, flexible, featureful, crashproof, 7x24.

What came before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking from the point of view of someone who wasn't born when Unix was invented, I have a hard time seeing what was revolutionary about it. I realize that this is because almost all of the operating systems which came after cribbed heavily from the Unix paradigm, and Unix doesn't look special because non-Unix-inspired OSs don't exist anymore. (There are non-Unix OSs, but all of them use concepts which Unix pioneered.)

So could an old salt fill us young-un's in? What was it like before Unix? What did Unix change? Is there a way to make someone who has only ever used WinDos/Mac/*nix machines understand how Unix changed the OS landscape?

Re:What came before?

[cptnapalm]

UNIX was the first portable operating system. Previous operating systems were done in assembly (as was the original PDP-7 version of UNIX {or UNICS, to be precise}). In order to do that, a new language was needed. So UNIX begat C.

Pipes, pumping output from one program into another program, comes from UNIX.

Not pretending to know better than the user what the user wants. That's why a ls -a in the home directory gives newbies heart attacks :)

The open nature of UNIX development let the guys at UCB make BSD and make all kinds of new stuff, demonstrating that open source could be a big win for innovation.

UNIX is older than me by a few years, but this is just stuff that I've learned over the years.

Re:What came before?

[argent]

So could an old salt fill us young-un's in? What was it like before Unix?

Here's a typical computer job from before UNIX... IBM JCL. The following is roughly the equivalent of "lpr -Pxerox

//CHECKS JOB (),'BARR',MSGCLASS=A
//*
//* TESTING ASA CARRIAGE CONTROL
//*
// EXEC PGM=IEBGENER
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=D
//SYSIN DD DUMMY
//SYSUT2 DD SYSOUT=(S,,CHKS),DCB=(RECFM=FBA),COPIES=1,
// DEST=(BAR1TN06,XEROX)
//SYSUT1 DD *

Re:What came before?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can safely say that over 90% of my time at work is spent building JCL and the cardin for things like sorts, file-aids, and most of all easytrieve plus. I've got procs, includes, and symbolics speeding up the process of building them, and quite honestly I enjoy it. It's the closest *nix experience I can get at work, at least until they replace the OS on my workstation.

Re:What came before?

[ClosedSource]

Of course there were many operating systems before Unix, but in the embedded world OS's were rarely used until the 90's.

Re:What came before?

[argent]

It takes all kinds, I suppose. I don't remember my mainframe days at all fondly... whether it was JCL, DCL, Exec, or GCOS.

UNIX!

[darth dickinson]

I know this!

Intel begat the 8080 not 8800

[calidoscope]

FWIW, 8800 was the original designation for the iAPX-432.

QDOS was renamed 86-DOS before rights were sold to M$.

Any documentaries?

[antdude]

I watched two Tetris documentaries (can find the links to watch them on http://www.aqfl.net/?q=node/4263 ).

Are there any good ones on UNIX too?

UNIX and FORTRAN will still be there in 2100

[peter303]

Old computer languages/systems seem to never die.

WTF!?

[ThePhilips]

Unix. [...] what could arguably be called the most important operating system of them all.

WinNT is the most important OS of them all: they even had UNIX reinvented dozen of times already.

Re:WTF!?

[toby]

Thereby proving the "poorly" part of Henry Spencer's epigram. Cutler should have stopped at VMS.

Question for Mac OS X Users

[c0d3r]

I'm a Linux expert, but have never used Macs very much, and now I'm starting to use them more. My question is:

What is the major difference between Linux and Mac OS X?

Which one is better?

My GF's Mac had a kernel panic, and I was going to try to fix it.. I know how to do this with Linux but not macs.. On linux.. I'd boot a kernel of a disk, and mount the fs and check the filesystem or re-install a kernel.. or disable init scripts to find out what the problem is...

Will it be hard for me to learn OS X? Is it worth getting a Mac - I might get my GF to buy me one?

Re:Question for Mac OS X Users

[msk]

It won't be hard to learn OS X. The GUI is different from X windows (though X is bundled, for compatibility with other *nix flavors), but only under the hood. From a user perspective, a GUI is a GUI, with each one having aspects you may like or dislike.

There are ways to boot install media to run diagnostics or repair file systems. With OS X, it's a more limited choice of tools for that than you would have with Linux, but the mechanics are similar enough.

Once the OS is up and running, you can do anything *nix with it.

Re:Question for Mac OS X Users

[argent]

What is the major difference between Linux and Mac OS X?

OS X's graphical user interface is not open source. That's really the biggest difference. Boot while holding down COMMAND-S and you'll end up in the same single-user mode as in Linux. Enter the user name ">console" and you'll get a command line login with no GUI.

Which one is better?

For what? :)

Will it be hard for me to learn OS X?

Open up Terminal.app and you're running /bin/bash, with a mix of GNU and other command line programs. It's totally familiar to anyone used to pretty much any conventional UNIX platform.

Re:Question for Mac OS X Users

[c0d3r]

I think what I'm worried about, is can I get gcc running on it and will nothing compile? Will i end up with a platform where I can't compile anything the runs on linux. Or will it have so few things for it, I'm better off on linux?

Re:Question for Mac OS X Users

[c0d3r]

I'm wondering how you got about fixing a kernel panic.. Do you have the source to the kernel? or at least headers and libs?

Re:Question for Mac OS X Users

[argent]

The kernel, Darwin, is open source. You can download it from www.opensource.apple.com, along with almost all of the command-line utilities. The only significant one I haven't been able to find there is "ditto", and I think they're kind of embarrassed by it, they've largely replaced it by extra options to the standard "cp" utility.

Re:Wow!

[dmsuperman]

Not only that but Linux != Unix, not really sure how that conclusion can be drawn :-/

echo is a shell builtin, and the Finder..

[itomato]

The Finder is just another app.

Don't like it? Replace it with Front Row or something else.

Don't like your shell's interpretation of a POSIX command? Replace it with something else - 'printf' comes to mind.

There's no Apple-imposed barrier. POSIX -ne UNIX, and POSIX owes much of its shell syntax requirement to ksh interpretation (not pdksh, not tcsh, not bash, and not zsh).

eventually Unix begat OS X

[plopez]

because in the end it was easier to make Unix user friendly than it was to to fix Windows :)

An old joke but it had to be said.

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[iggymanz]

the el-cheapo crap K&R kind that have come with SunOS/SOlaris and HP/UX and such for years are only for kernel compiles (mainly linking to activate modules). The full processor-tuned C compilers are extra money. And the IRIX one needed a registration key for more $$.

UNIX as Literature

[toby]

"Unix is not just an OS. It is a culture." Sounds familiar.

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[iggymanz]

oh yeah, and the XL C compiler for AIX costs extra $$$ too.

You are correct

[toby]

As described in Dennis Ritchie's The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System.

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[tbuskey]

SunOS stopped including one by default. You had to purchase it. Solaris has always been that way (IIRC) until SunStudio 11 was made available for free. HP-UX stopped with version 9.x.

Luckily, gcc was good enough by this time and you could obtain it at a reasonable price from the FSF.

Linux and the BSDs came out and started getting good enough to displace the other OSen.

Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservatism

[malevolentjelly]

It's wonderful to see everyone parading around and celebrating the mastery of UNIX. I've seen mention of the fact that UNIX is better because its components can be replaced... and yet this isn't any different than Windows, which can have its explorer ripped out... and yet the morons chime on.

And for all this amazing progressive openness (which will solve everything someday), the Unix Hater's Handbook is still almost as completely applicable today as it was over a decade ago when it was written.

What does that say about progress? Basically, Linux is now doing the same thing UNIX has done historically, leverage enthusiasm from conservative admins to block all progress in system development. It is the ultimate curse of the "good enough" solution, demonstrating that the most important factor in the computing world is elitism. It's the cult of the inaccessible and unusable system. It is a blackhole of useless knowledge. It's a gaping wound in security, stability, and the progress of usability.

Indeed, UNIX is as bad as it ever has been... it's 2009 and people are pushing this hellish mess onto home users, now offering desktops like Ubuntu, swallowing resources, breaking at every turn, and all at once offering less lucidity and ease of use than 20 year old commercial solutions.

UNIX is the cancer that keeps computers "geeky" and keeps the power of computing out of the hands of regular users. UNIX is like the Church which dragged society out of the enlightenment of Rome and into the dark ages, filling peoples' heads with superstition and making progress a dark taboo. Now, thanks to the new popularity of linux, CS students are raised in unix-like environments, where dogmatic and archaic beliefs will prevent them from ever advancing software. They are trapped in streams of text and monoliths, doomed to repeat outdated principles of system design.

Here's to the new dark ages.

The importance of Open Systems.

[argent]

You're the revisionist.

It didn't matter if the UNIX you were running on was licensed from Sun, HP, or Dec. You could write your program for the UNIX API and move from one to another. That's WHY they failed, they were trying to establish proprietary lock-in on a platform that had openness built into the bones. The only proprietary operating system that has any market penetration now is one that refused to become another implementation of the hippie OS... Windows NT.

Not AT&T, not DEC, not HP, not IBM, none of them could keep the hippie OS from shining through. Those of us who were working in hippie OS land in the '70s and early '80s kept telling the squares that they couldn't keep the cats in the bag, and we were right.

Re:The importance of Open Systems.

[cthulhu11]

I remember a quote attributed to Gates in the MSWNT 3.51-4.0 days something like "NT is just another UNIX".

What really gets me is when the Linux-du-jour kids go out of their way to distance themselves from the distasteful word "UNIX", as if the two are unrelated.

Re:The importance of Open Systems.

[argent]

I believe Gates actually said that NT was the best version of UNIX. Nothing so modest as "just another" one. :)

We should be concerned

[toby]

After all, he totally killed Google.

20-year-old languages

[toby]

Dijkstra: "FORTRAN --"the infantile disorder"--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use."

Probably this applies to most languages after they turn 20. Can you guess which one I am thinking of?

In those days...

[neonsignal]

hackers were brave, the stakes were high, terminals were real terminals, floppy disks were real floppy disks and big furry beards from Alpha Centauri were real big furry beards from Alpha Centauri.

It is amazing that author ignores OS X is Unix

[Ilgaz]

By definition, long and endless testing, the way it works. OS X is UNIX. In fact, Unix 03 standard (Intel distro).

So the Unix you seem to show as dying to add some emotion to your otherwise good article is approaching 10% of market share and completely changed mobile scene (as iPhone runs mini OS X). It is the only serious competitor to MS in Desktop and in same sense, it is the only OS MS would bother to code apps for.

If writing an article about UNIX and mentioning the open group, having such strict standards, OS X is UNIX 03 compliant operating system. Also POSIX is making its way to Mobile in mini form or real form.

Like it or not or downplay as OS from iPhone maker, OS X is UNIX and even more interestingly, it is also Mach based. It is not a very easy thing to achieve, ask any UNIX admin how huge set of tests and standards it requires to get that certificate.

http://www.opengroup.org/comm/press/19-2-nov07.htm

You can thank monopolies

[ClosedSource]

Like it or not, most of the key innovations in computers came from monopolies: Xerox, IBM, AT&T. When you have more money than you know how to spend, you can afford letting people play. Why not Microsoft? Although it has had some innovation, MS was never a monopoly in the same league as the other three. Also, there was a lot more low-hanging fruit in the computer world of the 60's and 70's than there was later.

Talk about your leaky abstractions

[ClosedSource]

If everything is a file, shouldn't I be able to flush my mouse?

Re:Talk about your leaky abstractions

[nausea_malvarma]

or copy your mouse electronically until you have a warehouse full of mice? That's how staples can sell em so cheap.

Here's to the new Reformation - long live Unix!

[turing_m]

You have the analogy backwards. Corporations such as Microsoft are the church. Their modus operandi is to constrain their users into a narrow view of thinking while extracting as much in the way of resources as possible. Linux allows escape from that, much to the chagrin of Microsoft.

Re:Here's to the new Reformation - long live Unix!

[malevolentjelly]

You have the analogy backwards. Corporations such as Microsoft are the church. Their modus operandi is to constrain their users into a narrow view of thinking while extracting as much in the way of resources as possible. Linux allows escape from that, much to the chagrin of Microsoft.

This is perhaps the weakest retort anyone has ever given me on slashdot.

You've completely forgotten that there is computing outside of Microsoft and Unix... and technologically, Microsoft has been far more progressive. Linux people are taking powerful energy-wasting modern desktop hardware and running them like 1970's dumb terminals. It's pathetic and regressive. The greatest contribution of the open source community to the modern computing world is to fill the web up with so many reports and messages in forums and mailing lists of buggy, undocumented, and misbehaving software that the open source ecosystem is beginning to rival porn as the biggest wad of useless data on the web.

The masturbatory self-congratulation of the open source community alone has turned the entire web into something between an AA meeting and a fetish club for computing sadists.

Don't worry UNIX

[sootman]

1,261,440,000 is the new 946,080,000.

Alice in UNIXland (Re:Worth thinking about)

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief, what a load of nonsense. May I refer you to the original Alice in UNIXland? Just as accurate today as is was two decades ago; all that it would take to update it is to substitute in a few names.

<elided>

Soon Alice came upon a large brown table. The Consultant was there, as was an apparently Mad Hacker, and several creatures that Alice did not recognize. In one corner sat a Dormouse fast asleep. Over the table was a large sign that read "UNIX Conference."

Everyone except the Dormouse was holding a paper cup, from which they were sampling what appeared to be custard. "Wrong flavor," they all declared as they passed the cup to the creature on their right
and graciously took the one being offered on their left. Alice watched them repeat this ritual three or four times before she approached and sat down.

Immediately, a large toad leaped into her lap and looked at her as if it wanted to be loved.
"Grep," it exclaimed.

"Don't mind him," explained the Mad Hacker. "He's just looking for some string."

"Nroff?" asked the Frog.

The Mad Hacker handed Alice a cup of custard-like substance and a spoon. "Here," he said, "what do you think of this?"

"It looks lovely," said Alice, "very sweet." She tried a spoonful. "Yuck!" she cried. "It's awful. What is it?"

"Oh just another graphic interface for UNIX," answered the Hacker.

Alice pointed to the sleeping Dormouse. "Who's he?" she asked.

"That's OS Too," explained the Hacker. "We've pretty much given up on waking him.

Just then, a large, Blue Elephant sitting next to the Dormouse stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen," he trumpeted pompously, "as the largest creature here, I feel impelled to state that we must take an Open Look at..."

A young Job Sparrow on the other side of the table stood up angrily. The Elephant noticed and changed his speech accordingly. "...what our NextStep will be."

"Half the creatures bowed in respect while the other half snickered quietly to themselves. Just then, OS Too fell over in his sleep, crashing into the Elephant and taking him down with him. No one seemed
a bit surprised.

"What we need," declared a Sun Bear as he lapped up custard with his long tongue," is a flavor that goes down like the Macintosh.

"Suddenly, the White Consultant began jumping up and down as his face got red. "No, no, no! he screamed. "No one pays one fifty an hour to Macintosh consultants!"

"Awk," said the Frog.

"Users," explained the Sun Bear, "want an easy interface that they will not have to learn."

"Users?" cried the Consultant in disbelief. "Users?! You mean secretaries, accountants, architects. Manual laborers!"

"Well," responded the Sun Bear, "we've got to do something to make them want to switch to UNIX."

"Do you think," said a Woodpecker who had been busy making a hole in the table, "that there might be a problem with the name `UNIX?' I mean, it does sort of suggest being less than a man."

"Maybe we should try another name, " suggested the Job Sparrow, "like Brut, or Rambo."

"Penix," suggested a Penguin.

"Mount," said the Frog, "spawn."

Alice slapped him. "Nice?" he asked.

"But then again," suggested the Woodpecker, "what about the shrinkwrap issue?"

Suddenly, everyone leaped up and started dashing about, waving their hands in the air and screaming. Just as suddenly, they all sat down again.

"Now that that's settled," said the Woodpecker, "let's go back to tasting flavors."

Everyone at the table sampled a new cup of custard. "Wrong flavor," they all declared as they passed the cup to the creature on their right and took the one being offered on their left.

Totally confused, Alice got up and left. After she had been walking away, she heard a familiar voice behind her.

"Rem," it said, "edlin."

Alice turned and saw the Frog. She smiled. "Those are queer sounding words," she said, "but at least I know what they mean."

"Chkdsk," said the Frog.

kids

[Anonymous Coward]

40 year old women look like jailbait to me now.... ..I don't know if this is good or bad either.....

Re:Wow!

[nausea_malvarma]

GNU's not Unix, you insensitive clod!

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[Ereth]

Microsoft told the Court that removing Explorer was impossible. They lied, but that's not the point. There's an attitude difference.

Microsoft doesn't want you changing their OS. It's theirs, they are the only ones who get to decide what is good and what is bad.

In Unix the choice is given to the user. Change shells by simply typing the name of any of the half-dozen provided to you. If you don't like the ones that are there, write your own and distribute it.

Forking is GOOD. When someone has a better idea in Unix, they release their better idea and people get to see it, to use it, to decide if it really is a better idea, and if it is, it will win out, and the old idea will be replaced. To do that in the Windows world, you have to hope Microsoft decides its a better idea and incorporates it for you. The eco-system is completely different.

And if you think Unix prevents software from advancing, I'd like you to take a look at the World Wide Web, almost all of which was developed by that same open model you denounce. Not just TCP/IP and the web browser itself, but PHP, Ruby, all the new tools doing things that were never done before, come from those places you claim will never advance software.

Sounds to me like you have your own reality distortion field.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[TropicalCoder]

Offering an operating system without a default web browser now-a-days is pretty sad...

Careful there - that's a meme the MS shills are trying to establish ahead of the EU ruling, and I am sure you wouldn't want to consciously repeat that. In the first place, the vast majority of consumers receive an OS when they buy the computer, so whoever sells the computer will be happy to install a browser, or several browsers, or the browser of the user's choice. Computers sold to businesses often have tech support who should be able to install a browser without too much difficulty (meaning none at all). For any case not just covered, a friend with a browser downloaded onto a thumb drive will do the trick nicely. Absolutely no need at all for the OS to come with a browser.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[malevolentjelly]

Careful there - that's a meme the MS shills are trying to establish ahead of the EU ruling, and I am sure you wouldn't want to consciously repeat that. In the first place, the vast majority of consumers receive an OS when they buy the computer, so whoever sells the computer will be happy to install a browser, or several browsers, or the browser of the user's choice. Computers sold to businesses often have tech support who should be able to install a browser without too much difficulty (meaning none at all). For any case not just covered, a friend with a browser downloaded onto a thumb drive will do the trick nicely. Absolutely no need at all for the OS to come with a browser.

It's absolutely true, though. The primary purpose of your computer now-a-days is to access the web. When you're offering a platform, you're also offering a supported web experience. It's an interesting question whether it's the same sort of thing today to offer a system without a supported browser.

By all means, there's no reason they can't offer multiple browsers, though. It's simply important that there's a supported browser available. It shouldn't be any problem to do what OS X did (I forget whether it was Jaguar or Panther) and simply bundle two browsers.

Now, even Apple ships Mac OS X with only Safari. The web browser is the face and flagship for the platform. No amount of hatred of Microsoft will change that. It's going to be tricky for them to define their platform while stepping around these rulings.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[TropicalCoder]

When you're offering a platform, you're also offering a supported web experience.

Who says? I say the OS is irrelevant today. You should be able to tun the web experience of your choice on it. If we are speaking specifically about Windows here, we definitely don't want their "web experience" integrated. Microsoft holds a monopoly on the desk top. We certainly don't want them extending this to the web. The danger of monoculture is another thing to avoid.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[malevolentjelly]

Who says? I say the OS is irrelevant today. You should be able to tun the web experience of your choice on it. If we are speaking specifically about Windows here, we definitely don't want their "web experience" integrated. Microsoft holds a monopoly on the desk top. We certainly don't want them extending this to the web. The danger of monoculture is another thing to avoid.

Okay. That's not what you want. Microsoft really can't take the position of ruining itself, though- that is, ceding the most important spot on the desktop, the browser. They will fight for the right to offer a browser on their desktop to remain relevant on the web.

I would hardly say things are moving towards a monoculture... all the third party browsers are gaining marketshare.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[TropicalCoder]

Microsoft really can't take the position of ruining itself, though- that is, ceding the most important spot on the desktop, the browser. They will fight for the right to offer a browser on their desktop to remain relevant on the web.

This is why we are all so grateful to see the EU stepping in to level the playing field.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[malevolentjelly]

This is why we are all so grateful to see the EU stepping in to level the playing field.

I agree. That is the appropriate position of government regulation. Corporations can't fail to be self-interested.

UNIX, oh yeah!

[tekshogun]

It feels kind of good that, at 26 years old, I am using an IBM flavor of UNIX (AIX) that runs great and of which the core is older than I am. I remember seeing System V books at my mom's old job when she use to work for AT&T and Lucent Technologies. Go UNIX!

rilly...

[airdrummer]

mal-jelly certainly is bass-akwards, calling rome enlightened & the church the cause of the dark ages...it was the church that preserved the texts, & the language, until the enlightenment...

his rearview mirror should have a warning: events in mirror are in reverse order;-)

Re:rilly...

[RocketRabbit]

Bah, brainwashing.

The Church did its best to destroy any really useful ancient knowledge, and still has untold reams of it hidden away unavailable to researchers.

What's the uptime on that?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the uptime on that?

shame on u...

[airdrummer]

2 many mice are flushed every year, clogging the nation's sewers:-( the proper way to dispose of unwanted mice is to feed 'em to snakes;-)

Re:shame on u...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're so cool, you don't have to actually spell words.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[systembug]

Okay, I should not do this...

(...)
  UNIX is like the Church which dragged society out of the enlightenment of Rome and into the dark ages, filling peoples' heads with superstition and making progress a dark taboo.
(...)

So what enlightend pre 70's operating systems are you referring to?
Some hints are apreciated.

And what is this stuff about Rome?
The good lawyers, bad mathematicians part?
The "nail every escaped and caught again slave to the cross" one?
The guys who institutetd christianity as state religion to save their sorry state from falling apart just to see it happen anyway?

Once again, some hints are apreciated.

I'm older than unix?

[beschra]

I know I'm older than most things in computers, but *unix*? Wow.

Re:Unix, a blackhole of incompetence and conservat

[malevolentjelly]

Okay, I should not do this...

Why must everyone start out a reply like a High School kid deciding whether or not to drink a wine cooler at a party? Indulge yourself, moron.

So what enlightend pre 70's operating systems are you referring to?
Some hints are apreciated.

I don't know, MULTICS, LispVM, various time-sharing systems. They were age appropriate and forward-thinking.. for their time. Once UNIX came out, it was okay for a 70's system... then it never grew up or changed. People just kept using it and following all of its ridiculous dogmas. Basically, it put a vice on the nuts of computer science and managed to convince generations of computer scientists that the 1970's never ended. At least they never had to stress themselves learning new computing paradigms. I could scarcely imagine how much time and money society has squandered maintaining the UNIX operating system. As far as I can understand, it's been at a permanent state of 90% working.

And what is this stuff about Rome?
The good lawyers, bad mathematicians part?
The "nail every escaped and caught again slave to the cross" one?
The guys who institutetd christianity as state religion to save their sorry state from falling apart just to see it happen anyway?

Once again, some hints are apreciated.

Are you familiar with the dark ages? People had plenty of dogmatic religion, but they had lost the ability to even irrigate their crops. Despite the fact that society had previously built fantastic empires and achieved in all sorts of high fields of study, the church led them around as a religious barbarian horde, conquering every town and burning every library. That's UNIX in a nutshell... a horde of morons burning the libraries of computing progress (Apple, Microsoft, Amiga, Xerox, Be, etc.) to convince themselves and any they should come across that man is to remain in an ancient and sorry (but very Holy!) state... the 1970's can never end for computers... no, there is nothing after text-streams, weak debuggers, and conf files! Abandon hope!
 

Re:UNIX is Gay

[grub]

OSX notwithstanding, your statement is a lie!

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[Brandybuck]

A compiler was included on every set of Solaris CDs I ever had.

You are using the wrong "echo".

[tlambert]

You are using the wrong "echo".

If you use the shell built-in, and you call the shell as "sh" instead of as "bash", you will not be able to use -n; but if you use the echo in /bin/echo, or invoke the shell as "bash" instead of "sh", then you will get the historical behaviour (i.e. your "-n" will work how you want it to. You can also (if you want it to be a bash script instead of a Bourne shell script) issues the command "enable -n echo" to disable the shell built-in for echo.

You'd probably be better off doing the following, in any case, since otherwise your shell scripts aren't going to be portable between BSD and System V systems:

ECHON=`echo -n`
if test "x${ECHON}" = "x-n"
then
    ECHO_OPT=""
    ECHO_TAIL="\\c"
else
    ECHO_OPT="-n"
    ECHO_TAIL=""
fi
# system independent echo-no-nl command
echon()
{
    echo ${ECHO_OPT} $* "${ECHO_TAIL}"
}
 
echon "Hello "
echo "World"
 
exit 0

-- Terry

Not that it matters, but

[Anonymous Coward]

... rm -rf doesn't give an error when given a non-existent file name. It just ignores the argument. (At least that's what GNU rm does, not sure about others.)

ah, the gospel according to...

[airdrummer]

dan brown;-)

Re:glad GNU/Linux & BSD have stolen Unix(tm) t

[tbuskey]

/usr/ucb/cc has always been included. You can't compile useful programs with it. gcc for example. Or perl 4.

My copies of Solaris 2.6, 7 and 8 do not have compilers.

Which version of Solaris are you using?