
Why Some Dead OSes Still Matter (2007) [pdf] - vezzy-fnord
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/login/2007-10/openpdfs/mirtchovski.pdf
======
DonaldFisk
There were quite a few non-Unix influenced operating systems that are even
more worth learning about, but it seems hardly anyone knows about them or
remembers them.

Worthy of mention are: ITS
([http://victor.se/bjorn/its/](http://victor.se/bjorn/its/),
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompatible_Timesharing_Syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompatible_Timesharing_System))
This was the original hacker system, developed and used at the AI Lab at MIT.

Genera
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_%28operating_system%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_%28operating_system%29))
and the other Lisp Machine OSes.

EROS ([http://eros-os.org/eros.html](http://eros-os.org/eros.html)), a more
modern research system.

Also worthy of mention are the various mainframe operating systems,
particularly MCP (Burroughs) and VME/B (ICL).

These are all quite different to both the present day operating systems, and
in many ways they were better. If all people know about are Unix-like systems
(and the not too different Microsoft Windows), there will be far fewer ideas
for how to improve them, never mind improving upon them.

~~~
trentnelson
> if all people know about are Unix-like systems (and the not too different
> Microsoft Windows)

UNIX and Windows (VMS) are fundamentally different on just about every level.
(Some more recent notes: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/framework-
benchmarks...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/framework-
benchmarks/vtTvwpTeznI))

~~~
DonaldFisk
Except presumably things like hierarchical file systems and access based
around permissions, non-atomic system calls, and very similar graphical user
interfaces.

The differences between the other systems I mentioned (ITS, Genera, EROS) and
Unix are even more striking.

------
dasil003
The political factors that led to the adoption of Linux as a defacto standard
are endlessly interesting to me. As programmers we like to think of ourselves
as objective to the hilt, but the reality is that at some point the pragmatic
choice is to capitulate to a common standard for the sake of higher-level
efforts. In many ways this is purely a political decision because we don't yet
see the fallout from the tradeoffs made, and by the time we do it's too late
to go back and rebuild the foundations.

We can't go back now and replace UNIX because we've too much invested in it
and there's work to be done.

~~~
cmbaus
What political factors are you referring to? I think Linux took off because it
was easily accessible and widely available, and Linus made a lot of pragmatic
choices.

I remember in the 90s how awesome it seemed to get a *nix system for free with
a book.

~~~
cturner
IBM's investment in Linux was political. For decades, IBM's identity was as a
platform company. It was becoming a regular loser outside of its enterprise
monopoly. It was late to the party on home computing. It created the PC but
still lost control of the platform. It tried to recover with OS/2\. It was a
pretty good platform but they couldn't get the details right. This was was
fizzing as well.

Around 1996 they made a pivot. They invested heavily to recreate themselves as
a company who sold services based on Windows NT. This was a desperate move,
but it worked - by the late 90s they had reinvented themselves as a services
business. One of the stories of the late 90s was the way that IBM had
reinvented themselves.

Then, shrewdly, they invested heavily in Linux. At a time, FreeBSD was still a
much better platform. But Linux had the GPL behind it. The GPL forces people
to release changes. This sabotaged the commercial software market, which IBM
had already lost. IBM could continue to charge for services and retain their
hardware monopoly. This has hurt competitors who had strong footholds in
software but who who were less strong in services (Sun, Oracle).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> It tried to recover with OS/2\. It was a pretty good platform but they
> couldn't get the details right. This was was fizzing as well.

Well, it locked up the PS/2 hardware with patents, so nobody could clone it.
So non-PS/2 hardware was a lot cheaper, because there were a hundred companies
trying to sell it. But that cheaper hardware didn't run OS/2 (at least
initially).

But when Microsoft was able to keep pace (more or less) with Windows, nobody
wanted the PS/2, because Windows on commodity hardware was good enough, and
less expensive.

~~~
cturner

        > Well, it locked up the PS/2 hardware with patents, so nobody could clone it. 
    

The "IBM Compatible" was already well-established though. PS2 architecture
plays were an attempt for them to get relevant again, and it didn't work. The
main technology that they had was EISA, and there wasn't much edge from having
that.

    
    
        > cheaper hardware didn't run OS/2
    

I don't think that's quite right. A mate had a PS2 that was bundled with OS/2
4 in 1996. We found that the OS/2 install disks that were bundled with his PS2
wouldn't install to other systems. But I never had trouble getting
shrinkwrapped os/2 running on commodity ISA or VESA bus hardware - 2.0, 2.1,
3, 4. I ran it as my main desktop for five years. You did have a poor
experience if you didn't have a well-supported video card, and almost nothing
was well-supported.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I stand corrected.

~~~
cturner
Had a wake-at-4am. The prop IBM arch wasn't EISA, it was Micro Channel.
(thanks)

------
michaelwww
The authors worry that the ideas in Plan 9 will be lost if more people don't
take it up, but I wonder if that is true if many of the original authors are
still alive, creating software and teaching others? Only Dennis Ritchie has
left us.

 _The Plan 9 team was initially led by Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Dave Presotto
and Phil Winterbottom, with support from Dennis Ritchie as head of the
Computing Techniques Research Department. Over the years, many notable
developers have contributed to the project including Brian Kernighan, Tom
Duff, Doug McIlroy, Bjarne Stroustrup and Bruce Ellis. [Wikipedia]_

------
vt240
Off topic question. I used BeOS for years and it was the platform I learned
C++ on. I just checked out the Wikipedia page and it was pretty unclear on
what ever happened. Anyone know where the OS ended up, seems like such a loss.

~~~
owyn
It ended up as Haiku: [https://www.haiku-os.org](https://www.haiku-os.org)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_\(operating_system\))

It's linked from the wikipedia BeOS page but not prominently...

~~~
vt240
Yea, I saw that on there. But it appeared from the page they were doing a
total rewrite. Anyway, those were weird days with all those PREP boxes,
scattershot OS development from Apple. Booting up into BeOS for the first time
and the whole development experience was like a gift from god. Anyway, thanks
for the link.

~~~
niklasni1
Haiku does not contain any code from BeOS, except the filemanager and
launcher, which were open souced by Be before they folded. It is a complete
rewrite, done by volunteers.

------
nickpsecurity
DonaldFisk already mentioned some good OS's. I'll add a few other examples
here with things worth copying plus extend two of his.

CTOS was Plan 9 of mainframe world. Unisys killed it for a reason. Imagine
LISP-like macros and debugger at assembler level.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTOS)

Genode Architecture (very active development)
[http://genode.org/documentation/general-
overview/](http://genode.org/documentation/general-overview/)

Architectural overview of QNX (commercially available)
[http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~voelker/cse221/papers/qnx-
paper92.pd...](http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~voelker/cse221/papers/qnx-paper92.pdf)

MorphOS continues Amiga tradition of being lightweight, ultra-responsive, and
beautiful [http://www.morphos-team.net/](http://www.morphos-team.net/)

I wouldn't mind a Burroughs on a Chip today given details below
[http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...](http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burroughs%20B-5000.htm)

IBM's System/38 was way more secure, reliable, future-proof and consistent
than UNIX's design. i432 was also radical.
[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/index.html](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/index.html)

OpenVMS was so reliable admins sometimes forgot how to reboot it. Cluster
uptime up to 17 years. What's cloud uptime again? ;) _Fairly_ future-proof
software, too.
[http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf](http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf)

Worried about embedded security? Try a highly-assured, real-time, pen-tested
Ada runtime. [http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA340370&Location=U...](http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-
bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA340370&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf)

Use, debug, and modify the app down to running OS for developer productivity?
Sign me up! [http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Genera-
why-1.htm](http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Genera-why-1.htm)

PSOS's layering and abstraction were used in highly-secure systems such as
LOCK, GEMSOS, and VAX Security Kernel. Also used object storage to avoid
filesystem in TCB. [https://www.acsac.org/2003/papers/classic-
neumann.pdf](https://www.acsac.org/2003/papers/classic-neumann.pdf)

Flex Machine had Go-like source code, capability-security, garbage collection,
and cross-language VM.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_machine)

Microsoft's VerveOS mathematically verified down to assembler. Relevant to
meme: Nucleus copied/improved General Electric's firmware design.
[http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/122884/pldi117-yang.pdf](http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/122884/pldi117-yang.pdf)

Trying to secure VMM's? Learn from the masters.
[http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse543-f06/papers/vax_vmm.pdf](http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse543-f06/papers/vax_vmm.pdf)

Trying to secure GUI's in VM's, etc? Learn from the masters.
[https://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/54.pdf](https://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/54.pdf)

Trying to do robust networking? Learn from the masters. [http://eros-
os.org/papers/usenix-net-2004.ps](http://eros-os.org/papers/usenix-
net-2004.ps)

Trying to have a secure filesystem? Learn from a good one.
[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/atc11/tech/slides/weinho...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/atc11/tech/slides/weinhold.pdf)

~~~
kjs3
_I wouldn 't mind a Burroughs on a Chip today given details below_

You're looking for the Unisys SCAMP[1] in a Unisys Micro-A. It's a single chip
implementation of the A-series mainframe architecture running MCP packaged in
a "desktop"(ish) package. Very nifty. These days Unisys will sell you what
amounts to an A-series emulator running on a Xeon. For a _lot_ of money.

[1] Not SC/MP. Different chip.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Ok, did the research. So, like IBM did, they put the mainframes on cards that
plug into PC's:

[http://www.cpushack.com/2015/04/18/the-forgotten-ones-
unisys...](http://www.cpushack.com/2015/04/18/the-forgotten-ones-unisys-scamp-
d-mainframe/)

There was a YouTube ad for them, too, that showed the processor and memory
took up little space. Good job on that. The pricing was around $25,000 for
people wanting to play with it. That was nice. Unfortunately, and predictably,
they've moved onto x86 with firmware emulation:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2364600/unisys-phasing-out-
de...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2364600/unisys-phasing-out-decadesold-
mainframe-processor-for-x86-chips.html)

Not sure if that's a mainframe box or not. Has a nice case that reminds me of
Alienware. Anyway, now MCP runs on Libra's which are $900,000 entry-level.
Wasn't crap on eBay for the older stuff. (sighs)

I'd be concerned about buying one given the complexity of mainframes. I tried
to acquire an old AS/400 to play with only to find that there were a myriad of
strangely-named options that probably weren't options. I surely found all for
sale. It take an expert, though, to know what to buy, how to put it together,
and so on. Unless I wanted to sift through encyclopedias. Is acquiring Unisys
Micro-A's etc like that where I'd definitely need an expert rather than just
the documentation?

~~~
kjs3
There were apparently several models of Micro-A. There were definitely
versions that as you say were a SCAMP card in a PC-class machine running
OS/2\. I _think_ there were also SCAMP based Micro-As that ran "native", but I
can't be sure.

As to purchasing one, since it was designed from the start to be an "all-in-
one" product for a relatively non-technical crowd, I image as long as all the
hardware worked, you'd have a working system and would only need to learn MCP
(complicated, but for which there is excellent doco and people who currently
use it for help). However, if anything didn't work or failed later (especially
the disk), you probably have an interesting paperweight. There aren't exactly
a bunch of spares or OS install tapes running around.

That said, I've never seen a Micro-A for sale on eBay or otherwise, and only
know one person that has one. By comparison, the P/370, P/390 and other IBM-
mainframe-card-in-a-PC show up a couple of times a year one place or another,
though I've never seen one go cheap.

Re: AS/400: Oh, yeah...glad I never got bit by that bug. It's crazy trying to
understand various piece parts of that ecosystem. Bonus: as I understand, the
software licenses for an AS/400 are not transferable.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Alright, I appreciate that. Might grab one if I see it up for offer on the
cheap.

"Bonus: as I understand, the software licenses for an AS/400 are not
transferable."

I especially appreciate that. Expired icing on an already rotten cake in terms
of a deal for the inexperienced buyer. ;)

------
stuaxo
When I tried it years ago I was put off by the UI, this might be shallow, but
if I ha been able to use Gtk and Qt apps ai might have used it looks my enough
to appreciate the underlying aspects.

The UX is just quite odd and looks old - making it themeable would certainly
have made it more appealing to my younger self.

~~~
cturner
The UI does obscures the best of plan9. There are defenders of it. But, if we
assume that the goal of Plan9 was to obsolete unix with something better by
the late 90s, the UI is a big part of the failure. It scared people users.

Your alternative doesn't work. Qt in particular is a platform that goes out of
its way to obscure the underlying platform. You could probably use GTK in a
9er way. Still, it wouldn't make sense for applications - the apps written on
GTK for unix or windows don't stick close to the everything-is-a-file
approach. They are monolithic and beige.

Winning users to Plan9 is particularly difficult because part of the vision is
about creating a network, rather than a computer. From this, it follows that
it doesn't make sense to have sshd run on it. I think the community made a
mistake here. If they'd offered a sshd entrypoint, it would have offered a
path-to-adoption for new users coming from a unix background. On the path
they've taken, there's a high barrier to entry to anyone wanting to do work
with it in a non-pure way. If it had ssh, you could sneak it into enterprise.
That's not practical for plan9 in its its current form.

~~~
stonogo
What you're talking about is using plan 9 to do unix things, and there is no
benefit to that. Plan 9 is a real distributed system, not a loosely-connected
pile of autonomous units. Trying to gain any benefit of the plan 9
architecture by crippling it with an overengineered telex emulator is missing
the point entirely.

Not to mention the fact that ssh has existed for plan 9 for as long as there
has been ssh. Plan 9 is older than ssh. Plan 9 also supported rsh and all the
other awful unix communications protocols. They never gained popularity with
plan 9 users because superior alternatives existed, which made better use of
the OS abilities.

~~~
cturner
I think we generally agree as to the strengths of plan 9.

    
    
        > plan 9 to do unix things, and there is no benefit to that
    

No - there is. Lots of benefit. Often when I'm thinking about approaches to an
IPC problem, I'll go to the plan9 manuals and find an approach that is much
more evolved than what's in Stevens. It's not hard to sell people on 9p.

Unix people are attracted to plan9. But it'd be nice to be able to learn rc in
isolation, without having to deal with the cog/overload of the window manager
and the unfamiliar editors. And then gradually move your tool chain over to
9p.

Once they were established they'd branch out towards the other awesome stuff.

    
    
        > Trying to gain any benefit of the plan 9 architecture
        > by crippling it with an overengineered telex emulator
        > is missing the point entirely.
    

Baby steps.

    
    
        > Not to mention the fact that ssh has existed for
        > plan 9 for as long as there has been ssh
    

Really? How do you set up a ssh server on plan9?

~~~
stonogo
> But it'd be nice to be able to learn rc in isolation,

No, because rc "lacks" features unix users are used to, such as command
history. The reason rc does not have this sort of thing is because it's
unnecessary thanks to rio. Without rio, rc is not a useful interactive shell.
Without using rc interactively, why bother using it instead of perl or python?
It's just another programming language at that point.

> Really? How do you set up a ssh server on plan9?

sshserve(1) (see ssh1(1)) for sshv1, and sshsession(1) (see ssh2(1)) for
sshv2.

~~~
cturner

        > No, because rc "lacks" features unix users are used to, such as command history.
    

Hmm. You're right.

The general problem remains. It's difficult to build momentum in a platform
that operates as an all-or-nothing proposition. 9p might offer a way in
though.

