I learned TeX back in 1984 because I wanted a word processor which would put footnotes at the bottom of the page.
troff (which is what would have been used here) can do footnotes.
How Unix made it to the top
61–70 of 126 posts
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#62Wow. 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's been a long time since I've used VMS, but one neat feature I recall was sort of a system/group/user concept of environment variables. For example if you set an environment variable at the system level, the new value would immediately be reflected for all users. Powerful concept.
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#63Earlier 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.
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...
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's complicated. Original UNIX by AT&T was newer open-sourced. BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) was opensource distribution of user programs for UNIX (like TCP/IP stack, vi editor, etc.), used by original UNIX, with proportions 20% of AT&T code and 80% of BSD code. So technically, BSD is(0.8) not(0.2) UNIX. FreeBSD is branched from BSD code, so it is(0.8) not(0.2) UNIX too. Apple MacOS X is based on FreeBSD code…
He asked about the Kernel. The Kernel is XNU / Mach, modified to act like a monolithic/hybrid kernel. The BSD code in Mac OS X is all user space, much of which probably isn't in iOS at all.
Nope. Part of kernel as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU#BSD
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#65Re: How Unix made it to the top
#66Earlier 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.
Any idea if it was a full copy of the files, a rolling diff, or a Copy On Write at the block level?
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#67Wow. 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.
Filesystem level versioning. TRUE async I/O. Reliability for real workloads. Plus a properly configured VMS cluster has never, ever, been hacked.
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't iPhones and iPads also have a UNIX kernel?
It's complicated. Original UNIX by AT&T was newer open-sourced. BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) was opensource distribution of user programs for UNIX (like TCP/IP stack, vi editor, etc.), used by original UNIX, with proportions 20% of AT&T code and 80% of BSD code. So technically, BSD is(0.8) not(0.2) UNIX. FreeBSD is branched from BSD code, so it is(0.8) not(0.2) UNIX too. Apple MacOS X is based on FreeBSD code…
Original Unix by AT&T was open sourced under BSD terms, but long after Linux and macOS came into being.
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 system deletes the first version of the file (ACCOUNTS.DAT;1). To view the version limit on a file, enter the DIRECTORY/FULL command. The version limit is listed in the File attributes: field."
OpenVMS Manual http://h41379.www4.hpe.com/doc/731final/6489/6489pro_006.htm...
I thoroughly enjoyed using DCL (Digital Command Line -- the VMS shell) and VMS (with the wall of documentation, like http://www.pkl.net/~matt/photos/machines/tn/pict0157.jpg.htm...). It always felt structured and orderly, unlike UNIX systems, which are more "organic". :) (I love UNIX too!)
Re: How Unix made it to the top
#70Earlier 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.
Chromebooks like you mentioned is a Linux environment, a unix like clone. MacOS is a certified unix OS.