AT&T Archives: The UNIX Operating System

[nicholas]

In the late 1960s, Bell Laboratories computer scientists Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson started work on a project that was inspired by an operating system called Multics, a joint project of MIT, GE, and Bell Labs. The host and narrator of this film, Victor Vyssotsky, also had worked on the Multics project. Ritchie and Thompson, recognizing some of the problems with the Multics OS, set out to create a more useful, flexible, and portable system for programmers to work with.

What's fascinating about the growth of UNIX is the long amount of time that it was given to develop, almost organically, and based on the needs of the users and programmers. The first installation of the program was done as late as 1972 (on a NY Telephone branch computer). It was in conjunction with the refinement of the C programming language, principally designed by Dennis Ritchie.

Because the Bell System had limitations placed by the government that prevented them from selling software, UNIX was made available under license to universities and the government. This helped further its development, as well as making it a more "open" system.

This film "The UNIX System: Making Computers More Productive", is one of two that Bell Labs made in 1982 about UNIX's significance, impact and usability. Even 10 years after its first installation, it's still an introduction to the system. The other film, "The UNIX System: Making Computers Easier to Use", is roughly the same, only a little shorter. The former film was geared towards software developers and computer science students, the latter towards programmers specifically.

The film contains interviews with primary developers Ritchie, Thompson, Brian Kernighan, and many others.

While widespread use of UNIX has waned, most modern operating systems have at least a conceptual foundation in UNIX.

[youtube]tc4ROCJYbm0[/youtube]

http://youtube.com/#/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%253Fv%253Dtc4ROCJYbm0

[nicholas]

Especially when it turned out that Novell owned the rights that SCO were claiming to own.

I agree that UNIX should be owned by the US taxpayer though.  I hate it when privately owned companies get taxpayer's money for free, they should stand or fall according to market principles.

Tax money should only be used to nationalise failed companies if at all.

[nicholas]

Unix is everywhere, it has a stranglehold on Mobile Phones and tablets, Unix may have won the post pc era.

Yeah, I just pasted the blurb from the video.

The only mainstream non-unixoid still in major use is windows and that's rapidly becoming irrelevant especially in the mobile space.

[nicholas]

I could not agree more.  I remember a lecture from my CS Prof talking about the history of UNIX and the amount of money the tax payers and put into it.  It should be Public Domain!


-P

Perhaps a petition should be started on whitehouse.gov?  I'd sign it if wasn't a Limey.

[nicholas]

I used Solaris on a previous job. Ii I remember correctly I had a Sunblade 1500. Really cool machines! And good looking too

I was so happy when I learned about the OpenSolaris project. This project was being promoted by Sun. The OS had some really nice features like Dtrace and the ZFS file system with a "time machine" so you can take snapshop of files and such.

So what happened to this obvious superior OS with a bright future? Oracle happened... After Oracle bought Sun nothing happened with OpenSolaris. It was quiet. And then Oracle decided to pull the plug. OpenSolaris died. I'm still not over this...

http://openindiana.org

[nicholas]

It it just me or does the ad bot attach the words "the plug" to an eBay listing for a "vibrating butt plug?"

It knows what you have previously been looking at on other websites and tailors the ads to you.

[nicholas]

It makes me smile to see threads like these and remember the 1996-up conversations about OS development where someone always asserted that "operating systems don't want to be Unix when they grow up".

Well, GNU's Not UNIX afterall.

[nicholas]

I have an announcement: I wasn't me!
"My" link reach the same listing apparantly. I wonder how these ads are resolved.

Perhaps it uses geolocation and as you are both in Australia it thinks Aussies are in the market for such devices? lol

[nicholas]

It has been said that WNT== V++ M++ S++

From what I remember NT design was inspired by the VMS design in the same way the BSD design was inspired by UNIX.  Similar but not the same.

[nicholas]

There's some play on a product and IBM, IIRC.  Urban legends are fun.



Cutler did things with Windows NT that Digital wouldn't allow him to do with VMS.  As I recall, this would not be the first time in history a company lost an employee or engineer because it wouldn't allow a certain product implementation.  The venerable old Z80 came about in similar fashion as Intel was difficult to push in certain directions.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Oral_History/102658073.05.01.acc.pdf

Indeed, didn't Atari lose Jay Miner because he wanted to make the Amiga and they wouldn't let him?

[nicholas]

@Fats

You obviously didn't read the article from Microsoft Press if you still feel that NT was just an "influenced" product based on the common knowledge of other OS's at that time. And I made no mention of Unix at all in my post.  I was clarifying Pentad's assertion that NT was not based on VMS, which clearly it is based on VMS.....straight from the mouth of Microsoft.

The Kernel design is for sure, but the God awful userland and its accompanying Win32 API isn't.

[nicholas]

More goodies from the archives by the master himself Dennis M. Ritchie.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:wGjW68VNclMJ:ftp://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/retro.pdf+The+notion+of+%60%60record''+seems+to+be+an+obsolete+remnant+of+the+days+of+the+80-column+card.+A+file+should+consist+of+a+sequence+of+bytes.&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjS_Z1aLw87Ub4IPQKU-FdabTaTnx_jSKCRa_uc93CgtqI9iOSGzROPHD_o7eqAtSuEmvjm0iwjNHoHT2osB2AT4Eji0cdfOf85FCksNKt4aRFEzHsSUeecnFJddoLVCyLNGzq7&sig=AHIEtbSpyHT7oEkp4aYI9D8wH31xEnYWGw

Direct PDF download link here:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/retro.pdf

[nicholas]

Go here http://www.viglink.com/opt-out and click "disable viglink" and then you will no more see the adds on amiga.org - or any other sites using it.

N.

I just added 127.0.0.1 viglink.com to my hosts file.