Unix Turns 40 254
wandazulu writes "Forty years ago this summer, Ken Thompson sat down and wrote a small operating system that would eventually be called Unix. An article at ComputerWorld describes the history, present, and future of what could arguably be called the most important operating system of them all. 'Thompson and a colleague, Dennis Ritchie, had been feeling adrift since Bell Labs had withdrawn earlier in the year from a troubled project to develop a time-sharing system called Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service). They had no desire to stick with any of the batch operating systems that predominated at the time, nor did they want to reinvent Multics, which they saw as grotesque and unwieldy. After batting around some ideas for a new system, Thompson wrote the first version of Unix, which the pair would continue to develop over the next several years with the help of colleagues Doug McIlroy, Joe Ossanna and Rudd Canaday.'"
And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:5, Funny)
Unix is over the hill (Score:4, Funny)
We need a fresh new operating system like Windows 7.
Meanwhile, in Redmond (Score:3, Funny)
In honor of Unix's 40th anniversary, at 10:00 tonight there will be a celebratory Launching of the Chairs. It's open to the public, but seats are expected to go fast so you should plan to come early!
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:3, Funny)
find: my_lawn: Permission denied
>>>You're too late old man. It's Our lawn now. ;)
mv /home/old_folks /retirement_home/
An alternate point of view (Score:5, Funny)
http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf [mit.edu]
"Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix.
I don't think that is a coincidence."
While Unix can read from stdin as good as ever... (Score:2, Funny)
...there is much greater latency on opening stdout and even a few dribbles after eof.
Correction (Score:5, Funny)
Multics was believed to have stood for "Many Unnecessarily Large Tables In Core Simultaneously".
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:5, Funny)
Without UNIX we wouldn't have:
Re:Did they invent C too? (Score:5, Funny)
'I really, really want to say that Ken and Dennis invented C to make unix but I'm not completely sure. I could look it up, but I'm interested to hear what people have to say here'
For the definitive account, see:
http://www.galactic-guide.com/articles/2U20.html [galactic-guide.com]
'Dennis and I [Thompson] were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C.'
The Gospel of Tux (Score:5, Funny)
Every generation has a mythology. Every millenium has a doomsday cult. Every legend gets the distortion knob wound up until the speaker melts. Archeologists at the University of Helsinki today uncovered what could be the earliest known writings from the Cult of Tux, a fanatical religious sect that flourished during the early Silicon Age, around the dawn of the third millenium AD...
The Gospel of Tux (v1.0)
In the beginning Turing created the Machine.
And the Machine was crufty and bogacious, existing in theory only. And von Neumann looked upon the Machine, and saw that it was crufty. He divided the Machine into two Abstractions, the Data and the Code, and yet the two were one Architecture. This is a great Mystery, and the beginning of wisdom.
And von Neumann spoke unto the Architecture, and blessed it, saying, "Go forth and replicate, freely exchanging data and code, and bring forth all manner of devices unto the earth." And it was so, and it was cool. The Architecture prospered and was implemented in hardware and software. And it brought forth many Systems unto the earth.
The first Systems were mighty giants; many great works of renown did they accomplish. Among them were Colossus, the codebreaker; ENIAC, the targeter; EDSAC and MULTIVAC and all manner of froody creatures ending in AC, the experimenters; and SAGE, the defender of the sky and father of all networks. These were the mighty giants of old, the first children of Turing, and their works are written in the Books of the Ancients. This was the First Age, the age of Lore.
Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of Turing, and saw that they were swift of mind and terse of name and had many great and baleful attributes. And they said unto themselves, "Let us go now and make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to our own use that they may bring us great fortune." With sweet words did they lure their customers, and with many chains did they bind the Systems, to fashion them after their own image. And the sons of Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems. And the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits, despising and being despised by the true Engineers, the children of von Neumann.
And the Systems and their Corporations replicated and grew numerous upon the earth. In those days there were IBM and Digital, Burroughs and Honeywell, Unisys and Rand, and many others. And they each kept to their own System, hardware and software, and did not interchange, for their Licences forbade it. This was the Second Age, the age of Mainframes.
Now it came to pass that the spirits of Turing and von Neumann looked upon the earth and were displeased. The Systems and their Corporations had grown large and bulky, and Suits ruled over true Engineers. And the Customers groaned and cried loudly unto heaven, saying, "Oh that there would be created a System mighty in power, yet small in size, able to reach into the very home!" And the Engineers groaned and cried likewise, saying, "Oh, that a deliverer would arise to grant us freedom from these oppressing Suits and their grave and perilous Licences, and send us a System of our own, that we may hack therein!" And the spirits of Turing and von Neumann heard the cries and were moved, and said unto each other, "Let us go down and fabricate a Breakthrough, that these cries may be stilled."
And that day the spirits of Turing and von Neumann spake unto Moore of Intel, granting him insight and wisdom to understand the future. And Moore was with chip, and he brought forth the chip and named it 4004. And Moore did bless the Chip, saying, "Thou art a Breakthrough; with my own Corporation have I fabricated thee. Though thou art yet as small as a dust mote, yet shall thou grow and replicate unto the size of a mountain, and conquer all before thee. This blessing I give unto thee: every eighteen months shall thou double in capacity, until the end of the age." This is Moore's Law,
Re:An alternate point of view (Score:4, Funny)
http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf [mit.edu]
"Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don't think that is a coincidence."
Neither of them were, of course, invented at Berkeley; one might, at best, argue that Berkeley perfected both of them. :-)
Re:40 and still relevant (Score:5, Funny)
...and Hurd is still "coming soon".
p.s. The term "GNU/Linux" wouldn't be so repulsive if there actually were a GNU system that Torvalds bastardized by swapping out a kernel. But there is no such beast because Hurd remains unfinished. RMS publicly called the kernel the simplest part of an operating system, yet they still have not finished it.
Eunuchs (Score:5, Funny)
Eunuchs® is a trademark of Ball Labs.
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:2, Funny)
Depends on which unix variant you were using, on sco unixware 2.0, you would have to quote and escape or you would get all kinds of screwed up output.
Screwed-up output from SCO?
I'm sensing a pattern here....
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:5, Funny)
UNIX! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:2, Funny)
In those days... (Score:3, Funny)
hackers were brave, the stakes were high, terminals were real terminals, floppy disks were real floppy disks and big furry beards from Alpha Centauri were real big furry beards from Alpha Centauri.
Re:Windows has more and more Unix features (Score:0, Funny)
Do you mean that Windows(tm) 8 will drop the GUI and then several groups will code several windowing systems from zero and then fight for fourty years over whose is best? That looks interesting!
Re:But life is just getting started... (Score:3, Funny)
Man, I hope so. I'm turning 40 this year. :-P
Cheers
kids (Score:1, Funny)
40 year old women look like jailbait to me now.... ..I don't know if this is good or bad either.....
Re:Talk about your leaky abstractions (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:2, Funny)
wonderful, cryptic commands like 'ls, cp, rm, mv, etc.
Never heard of etc. what does it do?
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:3, Funny)
in bash it outputs a string through stderr saying
-bash: etc: command not found
Re:And to celebrate, it issued the command: (Score:3, Funny)
Uids are not up to 8 digits. Post id's are, and have been for ages.
Sigh. It's time for sleep.