

40 Years of Unix - glaze
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8205976.stm

======
mechanical_fish
Semi-obligatory companion link to _The UNIX-HATERS Handbook_ :

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UNIX-HATERS_Handbook>

Now entirely obsolete, of course. Today everyone has come to love everything
about Unix, the most perfect OS in this best of all possible worlds. ;)

~~~
ionfish
Alternatively, the worst operating system there is—apart from all the others.

------
10ren
Multics: carefully engineered, fail.

Unix: small and hacked together, success.

Plan 9: carefully engineered, fail.

I'm not sure what the lesson is here... there's that "worse is better"
essay... maybe it's that when great engineers let their hair down, they do
much better?

~~~
ionfish
The lesson to be learned is, surely, the same one as we should have learned
from the web: creating small pieces, loosely coupled is the best way to build
large systems. Ecosystems, not clocks.

~~~
sp332
That doesn't explain why Plan 9 failed, it's really a better version of Unix
but it never caught on.

~~~
scott_s
"Better" isn't enough to gain traction. You need to provide something
completely new.

~~~
billswift
Better can be enough, if it's ENOUGH better. The rule of thumb is that
something has to be at least twice as good to replace a similar but already
functioning system (the real costs of retraining and lost productivity during
the changeover can almost never be accurately calculated, that's why there is
the rule of thumb). For an academic view, see "The Fable of the Keys"
<http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html> about qwerty vs Dvorak; and the
version that was expanded into a book about Dvorak, Microsoft, and the
internet [http://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Stan-
Liebowit...](http://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Stan-
Liebowitz/dp/0945999844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250787834&sr=8-1) .

ADDED: And Christensen in "Innovator's Dilemma"
[http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-
Busin...](http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Business-
Essentials/dp/0060521996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250788049&sr=1-1)
shows how slight improvements can gradually replace something that was
originally better.

------
kragen
This article is really sloppy and full of errors; it's not worth reading.

 _Unix had computer networking built in from the start_

Bill Joy and his buddies added networking to Unix in 4.2BSD around 1977, 8
years after the _start_.

 _Work on Unix began ... after AT &T, ..., MIT and GE pulled the plug on ...
Multics._

AT&T pulled out in April 1969, but the development of Multics continued
elsewhere; GE/Honeywell/Bull worked on it until 1990:
<http://www.multicians.org/chrono.html>

_The syntax of many of those commands, such as chdir and cat, are still in use
40 years on._

 _chdir_ doesn't exist on Unix. It's _cd_.

 _The idea of users directly interacting with the machine was downright
revolutionary._

In a way, yes. But this revolutionary idea was also present in CTSS and
Multics before Unix started, heavily backed by DARPA, and the major reason for
the ARPANET project that began in 1969. By the time Unix V7 was out (in
1977?), in addition to many timesharing systems, PARC was pursuing Alan Kay's
1969 Dynabook vision, there were Altos in operation at PARC, the Star was well
on its way to production, and thousands of Altairs had been sold, not to
mention things like the COSMAC ELF, the IMSAI, the Osborne 1, and the Apple
][. All of these had, as their central principle, the idea of users
interacting directly with the machine.

 _What helped this grassroots movement was AT &T's willingness to give the
software away for free._

Not to anybody but universities, and I think even an academic license included
some derisory fee.

 _In May 1975 it got another boost by becoming the chosen operating system for
the internet._

Not even close. If there was a chosen operating system for the internet in the
late 1970s, it was TOPS-20.

 _The wars are over and the Unix specification is looked after by the Open
Group - an industry body set up to police what is done in the operating
system's name._

That is a severe misrepresentation both of the origin of OSF and of the
current activities of the Open Group.

------
RyanMcGreal
_the Unix philosophy heavily influenced the open source software movements and
the creation of the Linux desktop OS_

Of course there are plenty of desktop Linux distros, but most Linux machines
in the wild are running servers.

~~~
riffic
I'd say most Linux machines in the wild are running on consumer devices.

~~~
calcnerd256
Both can be true simultaneously. My server is running on a consumer device.

~~~
calcnerd256
Scratch that. I just realized that he wasn't referring to desktop computers
when he said consumer devices. I now think he meant set-top boxes and things
of that nature.

~~~
riffic
Bingo, the tivo's and tomtom's of the world. and if you go by generic unix-
style systems, you can throw in iphones and ipod touches to that list too.

~~~
riffic
tivos and tomtoms rather.

------
100k
I have the book "A Quarter Century of UNIX", published June 1994. I bought it
some time later. Still, this is making me feel old. ;)

[http://www.amazon.com/Quarter-Century-UNIX-Addison-Wesley-
Sy...](http://www.amazon.com/Quarter-Century-UNIX-Addison-Wesley-
Systems/dp/0201547775)

