
Back in the Day: Unix, Minix and Linux - indigodaddy
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/back-day-unix-minix-and-linux
======
ulkesh
Articles like this always make me feel like I missed out on all the geek going
on in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Of course I was a toddler when Xerox
PARC was demonstrating their UI to Steve Jobs, and was in middle school when
Linus was posting about his "(free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be
big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."

So as I enter mid-life, I realize just how much I missed either not being old
enough, not paying attention enough, or not having the means to get in the
game. These stories of tech history, if nothing else, provide motivation for
those, like myself, to get into the game and work on something useful -- and
most of all something fun.

~~~
meddlepal
Better to ask what you can be part of now than worrying about what you missed.

The shape of computing has changed a bit since then but there's still a lot of
very interesting work now and going forward.

But I totally get it... I've felt that way before about tech and music. In the
case of music I spent so many years only paying attention to rock from the
70's, 80's and 90's and telling myself music was dead now, but it is not...
it's just different and needs to be discovered.

------
contingencies
I got on board with Slackware[0] 3 for 80386. Tried Minix a couple of times,
also FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc. Linux killed them due to community. Among
other luminaries I met with Jon 'Maddog' Hall[1] a couple of times around
2000-2001, once in Sydney and once in Taiwan. We had various discussions, and
I recall he said Linux was going to be "huge" in embedded. In 2008, Android
happened. Fast forward another 10 years and now I am in China running a
hardware company, and we're yet to see an open mobile offering. Even as my
company have migrated from Linux to smaller microcontrollers for most tasks,
and as computing and electronics at all layers continue to seep in to the rest
of society causing massive changes (social networking, consumer-first walled
garden devices, connected TV, mobile payment, everything-aaS etc.) on
unsuspecting, status-quo industries, it's interesting to reflect on the
continued significance of Linux's culture in shaping the technical community.

I don't in any way miss the hardware and bandwidth limitations of those
days... but sometimes not having a billion examples on tap forced you to
engage more deeply or distinctly with system fundamentals.

[0] Today I am a supporter of Gentoo (IMHO the 'spiritual successor' to
Slackware) and NixOS.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Hall_(programmer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Hall_\(programmer\))

------
3xblah
"Since nowadays GNU without Linux isn't hugely helpful, it's basically just
been assimilated into core Linux and just about every distro of Linux includes
GNU utilities or GNU versions of common UNIX-born tools."

Nowadays, _GNU compiler collection_ with or without Linux can be hugely
helpful. e.g., it's basically just been assimilated into "core BSD" and just
about every distribution compiles with GCC.

Even in the case of one "distro" where it was recently removed from "core" and
replaced with clang, it is still easily added back from the ports/packages
collection.

~~~
e12e
AFAIK freebsd has depricated gcc in favour of clang, and openbsd as well. Not
sure about netbsd - I think there was some experiments with pcc?

~~~
IWeldMelons
Yeah well, but clang still has ugly corners. Take for example recent FPU bug
on FreeBSD i386. GCC does not have it.

------
ThinkBeat
I see that Linux and MacOS run Unix dervied kernels.

I dont see how Windows does so. Its heritage is more along the line of VMS.

[https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and-
vm...](https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-
story)

Unless he means the Windows Subsystem for Linux but it is my understanding
that it is not runing a Linux kernel, but mapping to the Windows (NT) kernel.

~~~
ytwj
Didn't windows used to distribute BSD code? The old EULAs used to mention the
regents of berkley. Was that the Windows kernel or some network stack?

~~~
m-i-l
Yes, the Windows TCP/IP stack was from BSD. I'm not sure if the code is still
in Windows, but I think it is still configured via an etc/hosts file. I
believe the BSD licence was preferable to Microsoft (as it was to Apple who
based OSX on BSD). The networking stack was supposedly better on BSD than
Linux too, but I'm not sure how correct that is (but I did hear that the
software company I set up a website for in the mid 1990s switched from Linux
to NetBSD pretty much as soon as I left for that reason).

------
secstate
I love historical pieces about technology. There's so much new and shiny all
the time in tech, it's nice to reflect on where we've been.

Makes me want to re-watch Bryan's talk at Monktoberfest a few years ago on
oral tradition in tech:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaWFYm0kEw)

~~~
pjmlp
Here are a couple of good places to start.

[https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/](https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/)

[https://archive.org/search.php?query=xerox](https://archive.org/search.php?query=xerox)

Change the previous query to any company or research institute, e.g.
Burroughs, Apple, ETHZ, Borland and so forth.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Network; TCP or something

------
chj
> PARC had computers where multiple programs were on the screen simultaneously
> in "windows", and there was a pointer device used to control them—so cool.
> Doug Englebart was inspired too; he went back to Stanford Research Institute
> and invented the mouse to make control of those windows easier.

Is that right? Doug Englebart invented mouse in 1963. Unlikely PARC had any
windowing system capable machine around that period.

UPDATE: PARC was founded 1970. So the influence should definitely be inversed.

~~~
leoc
Yes, it's completely backwards.
[http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/](http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY)

------
marmot777
That was an awesome article. Fun to read.

------
pictur
What makes the minix operating system special?

~~~
phicoh
MINIX was special because the book was used in many universities to teach
operating system principles.

MINIX also one of the few affordable Unix-like operating systems you could run
on your own PC, and it came with full source (except for the compiler)

Linus was running MINIX when he created Linux.

And finally there the famous discussion by Linus and Andy Tanenbaum (the
creator of MINIX) about how operating systems should be structured.

~~~
varjag
Minix also runs Intel Management Engine in ring -3 on every CPU where it is
enabled. That makes it one of the most deployed OS in the world.

~~~
justincormack
Although this is Minix3 AFAIK which is quite different from the original
Minix, with more BSD derived code, and designed for production not teaching.

