On: A bit of XENIX history (2014)

[jandrese]

It's not so crazy when you consider the specs of the machines Unix was developed on. A PDP-11/20 comes with 24k of memory (16k 18bit words) and 500k of drive space and was shared between an entire department full of people.

The reason Unix exists is because they couldn't afford a machine big enough to run Multics.

[dboreham → jandrese]

An 11/20 didn't give a great Unix experience though. You needed an 11/45 with a 80MB drive to support multiple users.

[nix23 → jandrese]

>The reason Unix exists is because they couldn't afford a machine big enough to run Multics.

So true, just imagine a world where multics and some unix spice would be the to-go system....like linux is today.