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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

#91

Post by dekhn »

aap_ wrote: post #84
AsyncAwait wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Linux is perfectly UNIX in terms of userland and 'spirit', if you will. It's not UNIX officially, but that's because nobody bothered to pay for the licensing, since it's not worth it, not because it couldn't get certified as UNIX if somebody wanted to do it - in fact D. Ritchie himself said: "I think the Linux phenomenon is quite delightful, because it draws so strongly on the basis that Unix provided. Linux…

Ken uses OS X.

He also said he worked on the alpha version of Linux.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#92

Post by ArkyBeagle »

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…

"...and it’s great for interchanging programs between different machines..."

This is like saying "DNA is great for interchanging phenotypes between different locations".

I think that the missing piece as to why it's universal is that Linux was better than DOS, not VMS. You kind-of, sort-of had to have a VAX to run VMS. Your desktop 386 could run SCO.

It's ... useable ( but of low useability ) so the Windows API doomed Linux to success.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#93

Post by emmelaich »

squarefoot wrote: post #36
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.

"Unix kernel is hugely popular: think of the millions of Android devices." You probably meant Linux, not Unix. Unix is an entire class of operating systems, not a kernel. Nitpicking aside, the huge problem here is that popularity means nothing if the user is not aware of what he/she is using, so I would rephrase that as "the Linux kernel is hugely widespread ...". There is still a big problem though: Android is mostl…

> he huge problem here is that popularity means nothing if the user is not aware of what he/she is using

I'd say that doesn't matter at all.

The person running Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge doesn't know they're using a VMS workalike/derivative/successor either.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#94

Post by ArkyBeagle »

yourapostasy wrote: post #49
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…

> And that is why your cell phone runs Unix and not VMS. While this is unquestioningly accepted by the software and at large communities, for some reason "low-end manufacturing" in the US and the rest of the developed world is exempt from this logic. Somehow, we'll dispense with this pesky manufacturing economic sector, and when someone wants a "real" high-end manufactured system/product, they will end up purchasing…

Stakeholders won't do this, very nearly ever. They'd rather go down with the ship than preserve the gnosis in a rigorous manner. People believe their only path is to charge rents to the company on pitiful subsets of the overall gnosis, as the firm experiences a slow decay in orbit.

And what if the gnosis is essentially wrong? It usually is; it's just not wrong enough to kill the firm outright. Humans consider themselves to be parasites when they can.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#95

Post by DonaldFisk »

atsaloli wrote: post #69
jbuzbee wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brings back memories. If I recall correctly, when you had this turned on, files would get a hidden extension of .1 .2 .3 etc. And you could specify how many revisions to keep around? I also recall on our system, most of the time this was turned off because disk space was so precious. But I do recall this feature saving my bacon a time or two...

Yep! It goes up to 32k by default, but you can limit it: "The /VERSION_LIMIT qualifier for the CREATE/DIRECTORY, SET DIRECTORY, and SET FILE commands lets you control the number of versions of a file. If you exceed the version limit, the system automatically purges the lowest version file in excess of the limit. For example, if the version limit is 5 and you create the sixth version of a file (ACCOUNTS.DAT;6), the sy…

This wasn't unique to VMS. Symbolics Genera had this capability. ITS, VME-B, and I think TOPS-10, also had numbered file versions.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#96

Post by hyperpape »

paulddraper wrote: post #56
sudhirj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Google, at least, has added a lot of internal controls.

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#98

Post by lisivka »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #81
pjmlp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the BSD developers that are part of BSD since the days before the lawsuit will agree with you.

They may not, but there's so little original UNIX code in *BSD these days that it does not matter, in fact that's one of the main reasons they won the lawsuit in the first place.

I just opened my Red Book and reread «Short history of UNIX». Berkley University bought license for AT&T UNIX[1] in 1977. They started to develop their own software for UNIX and distribute it, so this variant of UNIX is called BSD. Then they decide to remove and rewrite original AT&T code, due to license and associated costs, and released 4.3BSD[2], which then used by BSD flavors.

So BSD is UNIX, but it contains no AT&T code today.

[1] http://www.nordier.com/v7x86/index.html [2] https://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/category/4-3-bs...

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#99

Post by plq »

> Other documents began to accumulate in their directory. By the time we became aware of it, the hoard came to include minutes of AT&T board meetings. 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.

I wonder how many meeting minutes, price lists, product specs, supplier agreements, etc. etc. are currently sitting on Google's, Amazon's, Dropbox's servers now...

Re: How Unix made it to the top

#100

Post by idm »

> Just as one hears of cars chosen for their cupholders, so were these users converted to Unix for trivial reasons: line numbers and vanity.

This is why Jobs was the visionary. "[L]ine numbers and vanity" are real-world problems with technical solutions. When you bridge technology into the real world, to create solutions in real lives, then you create value.

It's painful to consider that something like UNIX could be worthless, but it was worthless ... until it improved somebody's life. This is something I have not fully learned yet.

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