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How Unix made it to the top

minnie.tuhs.org

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Re: How Unix made it to the top

#51

Post by snarfy »

ue_ wrote: post #48
flomo wrote: post #29

Wow. I have to say that it is funny how you hear the legendary tales of computing history over and over again and then some little crucial minor details like "we sold the CEO's office on it" eventually slip out. Ok, that was important at AT&T, but not really why Unix currently rules the universe. Due to anti-trust settlements and cheap licensing, and copyright foibles, Unix was the cheap midrange choice for students…

What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.

In VMS, revision control was built into the file system. It was easy to retrieve older versions of files. Unix didn't have anything like that until rcs was invented, and even then it was a tool, not something built in like what VMS had.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#53

Post by gkya »

deaddodo wrote: post #33
cperciva wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "popularity"? UNIX is found in many devices end users don't think of as being "computers" at all. The best software is the software users don't even realize is there, because it just works .

> UNIX is found in many devices end users don't think of as being "computers" at all. No, Linux is. http://kernelbook.sourceforge.net/pdf/ch-intro.pdf Some devices run BSD derivatives, but I'd still hesitate to call those Unix vs derived from Unix.

This is an incredibly unnecessary nitpicking here.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#54

Post by jmclnx »

ue_ wrote: post #48
flomo wrote: post #29

Wow. I have to say that it is funny how you hear the legendary tales of computing history over and over again and then some little crucial minor details like "we sold the CEO's office on it" eventually slip out. Ok, that was important at AT&T, but not really why Unix currently rules the universe. Due to anti-trust settlements and cheap licensing, and copyright foibles, Unix was the cheap midrange choice for students…

What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.

I was 'exiled' to VMS for a couple of years, though a very nice system there was lots more typing on VMS's command line. Anyway I think it was scaling and software that allowed UNIX take over. I had a useful UNIX on a 8086 and software could be found. On VMS just about any useful programs cost $, never mind support costs for using VMS.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#55

Post by tyingq »

ue_ wrote: post #48
flomo wrote: post #29

Wow. I have to say that it is funny how you hear the legendary tales of computing history over and over again and then some little crucial minor details like "we sold the CEO's office on it" eventually slip out. Ok, that was important at AT&T, but not really why Unix currently rules the universe. Due to anti-trust settlements and cheap licensing, and copyright foibles, Unix was the cheap midrange choice for students…

What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.

It had fixed and variable record based files in addition to regular stream type files. All had built in versioning as well.

Also, fast loosely coupled clusters, with distributed file systems and locking...back in the early 80's.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#56

Post by paulddraper »

sudhirj wrote: post #24
old-gregg wrote: post #13

> It didn't seem like a very good idea for us to be keeping records from > the inner sanctum of the corporation on a computer where most everybody > had super-user privileges. A call to the PR guy convinced him of the > wisdom of keeping such things on their own premises. And so the CEO's > office bought a Unix system. ... and this is exactly how it works today with SaaS subscriptions, except root-privileged people d…

Isn't that why most smart companies have a self hosted enterprise version as well?

AWS, Dropbox, Google, and Salesforce being "not smart companies".

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#57

Post by ajdlinux »

snarfy wrote: post #51
ue_ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.

In VMS, revision control was built into the file system. It was easy to retrieve older versions of files. Unix didn't have anything like that until rcs was invented, and even then it was a tool, not something built in like what VMS had.

I wonder what the VCS landscape would have looked like if git was being developed on top of VMS rather than Linux...

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#58

Post by dsr_ »

ue_ wrote: post #48
flomo wrote: post #29

Wow. I have to say that it is funny how you hear the legendary tales of computing history over and over again and then some little crucial minor details like "we sold the CEO's office on it" eventually slip out. Ok, that was important at AT&T, but not really why Unix currently rules the universe. Due to anti-trust settlements and cheap licensing, and copyright foibles, Unix was the cheap midrange choice for students…

What sort of things could/can VMS do that Unix couldn't? I know almost nothing about computer history.

VMS had early support for clustering and associated technologies like shared filesystems with a distributed lock manager.

VMS had amazing support for terminal servers, so that each terminal user could choose among several connected computers. Terminal I/O was almost completely offloaded: it was common for other users to get delays and random short freezes, but VMS terminal users had smooth responsive I/O all the time.

DEC mandated the Common Language Environment, something like the C library calling convention but much better thought out and specified. It was totally normal to write an application in two or three languages because you felt that each language had advantages for that part. Every compiler and interpreter knew how to call functions from the CLE and export their own.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#59

Post by kps »

lisivka wrote: post #15
nine_k wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix kernel is hugely popular: think of the millions of Android devices. Unix userland, not so much, outside the software engineering community.

Linux is not UNIX. GNU/Linux is POSIX (common standard for UNIX'es) compatible, so it is UNIX compatible. Android/Linux is not POSIX compatible, however compatible library can be installed to Android/Linux to make it POSIX compatible, see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27604455/is-android-posix... . *BSD, MacOS X, iOS are UNIX'es, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) .

Linux distributions are often not POSIX-compatible out of the box either, at user level. Typically some commands are missing due to insufficient shiNIHness, and there may not be a POSIX-compatible shell ('bash --posix' is not, at least as of bash 4.3).

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#60

Post by pmontra »

xorcist wrote: post #31
pmontra wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only successful desktop UNIX derivative is MacOS. That ship has sailed. However the most relevant computing devices for consumers are phones and tablets nowadays, not desktops. UNIX derivatives run almost all of them. Big success, I'd say. UNIX derivatives are running most servers too and are making inroads into the Windows desktop. The outlook is good unless a new popular market suddenly open with no meaningful…

Chromebooks are very successful, outselling MacOS desktops in 2016. They run a pretty standard Linux environment. I don't think anyone thought Linux to take over the office desktop by mass porting office applications but by moving them to the web. That shift is still happening.

You're right, according to the the US stats I saw. I probably forgot about them because I never saw one (Italy here) or if I saw them I mistaken them for a Windows laptop. However I think I never heard the word Chromebook in a conversation, either work or friends. We could use a Chromebook everywhere we're connecting to the Internet with our laptops but apparently we're not.
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