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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: nicholas on July 02, 2013, 01:17:36 AM
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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
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Yep, since AT&T and Bell Labs were a legal monopoly under strict federal supervision Unix probably should be a public domain commodity.
After all, a great deal of development was done at publicly funded higher education institutions.
Still pisses me off thinking about how SCO tried to use legal intimidation tactics to strip mine funds from the rights to this intellectual property.
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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.
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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!
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While widespread use of UNIX has waned
Unix is everywhere, it has a stranglehold on Mobile Phones and tablets, Unix may have won the post pc era.
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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.
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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!
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Perhaps a petition should be started on whitehouse.gov? I'd sign it if wasn't a Limey. :)
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Perhaps a petition should be started on whitehouse.gov? I'd sign it if wasn't a Limey. :)
That is one of the great things (that remain) about the US, even 'Limeys' are allowed to express their opinions.
Thanks for bringing this up Nik.
Unix and the Internet - two things I watched develop during my High School and early college years via contact with local schools.
Yep, we pretty much paid for it, and now don't own it.
Frustrating.
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Yep, since AT&T and Bell Labs were a legal monopoly under strict federal supervision Unix probably should be a public domain commodity.
Although that the BSD's are not public domain they have a quite permissive license...
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Whether anyone likes it or not, UNIX is the beginning of all the commonly used OSes out there. It has great elements in which others would eventually "borrow". ;)
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Whether anyone likes it or not, UNIX is the beginning of all the commonly used OSes out there. It has great elements in which others would eventually "borrow". ;)
"All?" No. Windows NT derivatives are based on VMS, not Unix; in the pre-NT days, DOS was based on CP/M which was loosely based on RT-11. Unix doesn't really show up anywhere in the Windows family tree, aside from the POSIX subsystem added to NT versions pre-XP.
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"All?" No. Windows NT derivatives are based on VMS, not Unix; in the pre-NT days, DOS was based on CP/M which was loosely based on RT-11. Unix doesn't really show up anywhere in the Windows family tree, aside from the POSIX subsystem added to NT versions pre-XP.
Thanks for setting me straight. Windows is crap all on it's own
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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...
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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 :)
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It it just me or does the ad bot attach the words "the plug" to an eBay listing for a "vibrating butt plug?"
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...
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"All?" No. Windows NT derivatives are based on VMS, not Unix; in the pre-NT days, DOS was based on CP/M which was loosely based on RT-11. Unix doesn't really show up anywhere in the Windows family tree, aside from the POSIX subsystem added to NT versions pre-XP.
No, Windows NT was not based on VMS. This is a common misconception because Dave Cutler and other VMS developers worked on the project. I've heard this my whole IT career. You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT
DOS was based on QDOS which Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products. QDOS imitated CP/M pretty heavily. Microsoft bought QDOS and modified it to fit IBM's requirements. This was then called MS-DOS. You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
In all fairness, many companies borrowed heavily from CP/M.
Gary Kildall wrote CP/M as an OS for the new micro-computers that were beginning to arrive. CP/M was written in PL/M (a language which he wrote as a Grad Student - I think) and was influenced by the TOPS-10 Operating System. You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
Cheers!
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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. ;)
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It knows what you have previously been looking at on other websites and tailors the ads to you. ;)
Interesting....that explains a lot on my end. ;)
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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".
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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. ;)
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No, Windows NT was not based on VMS. This is a common misconception because Dave Cutler and other VMS developers worked on the project. I've heard this my whole IT career. You can read more about it here:
Okay, I've heard multiple takes on this issue, but it's a fair point that it's not so clear-cut based on it. Regardless, it's certainly not based on Unix.
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It it just me or does the ad bot attach the words "the plug" to an eBay listing for a "vibrating butt plug?"
I have an announcement: I wasn't me!
"My" link reach the same listing apparantly. I wonder how these ads are resolved.
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http://openindiana.org :)
I've heard of the project for quite some time. Maybe I should check it out now. One reason why I liked OpenSolaris is because of the same because it includes "Solaris". Yes, I am shallow...
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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
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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...
I very much enjoy Solaris. Working with Solaris Zones is pretty cool. Oracle has phuqd it up. I can't get them to call me back for support licenses for my x64 machines. Aggravating because you can't download Recommended Clusters without a support contract, anymore. Thankfully I don't expose any native services to the Internet and compile my own stuff, but that doesn't protect me from local elevation exploits.
One thing I really love about Solaris is all the skript kiddies who try to plant and execute binaries by way of poorly programmed PHP sites: those binaries are always Linux. Of course, marking certain file systems as non-executable helps, too.
Screw you, Oracle. Solaris is dead; Long live Solaris!
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Okay, I've heard multiple takes on this issue, but it's a fair point that it's not so clear-cut based on it. Regardless, it's certainly not based on Unix.
I ignored his Wikipedia articles and went here, instead.
Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story | Windows Client content from Windows IT Pro
http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story
And for the OS/2 tie-in:
IBM insider: How I caught my wife while bug-hunting on OS/2 • The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/23/why_os2_failed_part_one/
Where were the bullet holes on OS/2's corpse? Its head ... or foot? • The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/26/os2_final_fail/
And some interesting history for those who have time to waste:
OS/2 a quarter century on: Why IBM lost out and how Microsoft won • The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/27/the_os_wars_os2_25years_old/
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Oops...LoadWB beat me to the punch regarding the crap on Wikipedia....
@Pentad
I'm sorry but you're wrong about NT's roots. And to use Wikipedia as a reference to back you up is laughable and would get you thrown out of any bachelor or masters program for obvious reasons. NT was heavily influenced by VMS and it's designers. Bill Cutler, the primary designer of VMS was hired by Bill Gates in 1988 along with 20 other former DEC engineers to write NT. Microsoft developers wrote NT's kernel almost entirely in C. In developing NT, these designers rewrote VMS in C, cleaned it up, tuned, tweaked, and added some new functionality and capabilities as they went. The migration of VMS internals to NT was so thorough that within a few weeks of NT's release, engineers still working at Digital noticed the similarities.
My source is Mark Russinovich, a writer working for Microsoft Press: http://windowsitpro.com/author/mark-russinovich
So even Microsoft admits that NT was based heavily on VAX/VMS technology.
More info about VMS and its influence on NT can be found here, thanks to Mark:
http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story
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That is one of the great things (that remain) about the US, even 'Limeys' are allowed to express their opinions.
Thanks for bringing this up Nik.
Unix and the Internet - two things I watched develop during my High School and early college years via contact with local schools.
Yep, we pretty much paid for it, and now don't own it.
Frustrating.
That is for sure, with the President we have in office, people outside the US have more pull than the Americans who pay taxes. Now 17 to 19 trillion in debt and our illustrious leader gives 7 billion dollars to Africa on his $100,000,000 vacation after laying off I don't know how many American gov't workers due to sequestration.
Only in America
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More info about VMS and its influence on NT can be found here, thanks to Mark:
http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story
Looking at so called similarities in table 2 in the article you could probably as well put a UNIX kernel feature next to it and have a similar table. NT is just a product from the common knowledge of OS design at that time.
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Especially when it turned out that Novell owned the rights that SCO were claiming to own.....
SCO owned distribution and usage rights alright as a part of their asset purchase agreement. They just didn't own the copyrights. But they thought they did.
@ferrellsl spot on with VMS and NT.
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Especially when it turned out that Novell owned the rights that SCO were claiming to own.
SCO did appear to negotiate and pay for those rights & were under the impression they owned them. It seems they got stiffed.
Thanks for setting me straight. Windows is crap all on it's own
Awesome argument, one second it's bad for copying and the next it's bad for not copying. While there are many reasons for hating Microsoft at a corporate level, some of their products are actually good. Windows 8 is much better than any Linux I've ever used.
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SCO did appear to negotiate and pay for those rights & were under the impression they owned them. It seems they got stiffed.
Thank $_DIETY. SCO is worse than Microsoft could ever be in terms of its business practices. To this day I do not understand how it can get away with suing the END USER of software which supposedly violates patents and/or copyrights.
Awesome argument, one second it's bad for copying and the next it's bad for not copying. While there are many reasons for hating Microsoft at a corporate level, some of their products are actually good. Windows 8 is much better than any Linux I've ever used.
Boy! Dem's fightin' words! Seriously, though, I suppose I would rank Windows 8 above the latest Ubuntu releases (my upgrade from 10 to 12 was a huge WTF moment.) I'll be installing the preview release of Windows 8.1 to see how it's improved, but for my own purposes I won't be going past Windows 7 after I finally drop XP x64. I trialed Windows 8 at several of my clients and they threatened me with bodily injury if I deployed any 8 machines.
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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.
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It has been said that WNT== V++ M++ S++
There's some play on a product and IBM, IIRC. Urban legends are fun.
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.
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
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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?
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@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.
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@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.
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@nicholas
You got that right!
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@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.
I did not try to claim NT was not influenced by VMS; if one has been programming a kernel in a previous job you'll likely use techniques and solutions you are familiar with.
I do claim that it was influenced by a lot of OSes and not solely or mainly by VMS as I got the impression some people tried to claim that. What I wanted to say is that you can easily write a similar story of proofing Windows NT is heavily influenced by UNIX.
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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.
I heard a lot of the structures are very similar and contain very similar fields. Different enough to avoid being sued but functionally very much the same, of course that was a long time ago in the NT3.1 days.
I do claim that it was influenced by a lot of OSes and not solely or mainly by VMS as I got the impression some people tried to claim that. What I wanted to say is that you can easily write a similar story of proofing Windows NT is heavily influenced by UNIX.
Well yeah, but UNIX was heavily influenced by operating systems that came before it too.
Windows NT was basically VMS made to look like Windows 3.1 & MSDOS. So it had some influence from CP/M. I can't think of anything that went from UNIX straight into Windows NT. MSDOS had pipes, which might have come from UNIX (although in MSDOS the programs were run sequentially as there was no multitasking). MSDOS also had a built in \dev\ directory that could be used with devices (\dev\nul for example could be used instead of nul:
I'd love to see a write up of how UNIX heavily influenced Windows NT.
Windows NT was originally going to be a version of OS/2, it even supported text mode OS/2 software and the OS/2 file system for many years. So I imagine there is also some of IBM's operating systems as an influence too.
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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
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It it just me or does the ad bot attach the words "the plug" to an eBay listing for a "vibrating butt plug?"
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.
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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.