40 Years of Multics, 1969-2009 138
gribll writes "October 2009 marked an important milestone in the history of computing. It was exactly 40 years since the first Multics computer system was used at MIT. The interview is with Multics co-developer, MIT Professor and Turing Award winner Fernando J. Corbato. Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is regarded as the foundation of modern time-sharing systems. Multics was the catalyst for the development of Unix and has been used as a model of operating system design since its release four decades ago. There is also a picture gallery of Multics history."
Favorite quote (Score:5, Funny)
"In hindsight we might have picked a simpler language than PL/I, . . ." Now there's an understatement!
obKanye (Score:3, Funny)
Hey Multics, I'm really happy for ya, and imma let you finish, but UNIX is the best multiuser operating system of ALL TIME. OF. ALL. TIME.
Slashdot is bad with anniversaries (Score:5, Funny)
and they waited until november to tell you!
"Bloated"? Oh, FFS. (Score:4, Funny)
It's true that Multics couldn't get out of its own way on a system with 64K of RAM, although it was technically supposed to run on that configuration. To work well, it really wanted several hundred K of RAM. Thank heavens we left it in the dustbin of history, replaced by the crisp, clean efficiency of Windows, or OS X, or Linux.
Re:40 Years of Multics, 1969-2009 (Score:1, Funny)
Forty-year anniversaries -- what connection? (Score:3, Funny)
So I've got to ask, does this have any synchronic significance with the recent 40-year anniversary of Sesame Street [google.com] recently splashed around Google's main page?
Hmm... "This episode brought to you by the letters P, L, and I, and the number pi!" :)
Cheers,
Re:Hmm, Multics and Sesame Street, both 40 years o (Score:4, Funny)
This episode of Multics was brought to you by the letters P and L and the number 1
Real-Time, too! (Score:3, Funny)
As Roger Needham [wikipedia.org] quipped, Multics was design for the real-time processes of geological processes.
Re:Um, wasn't bloated Multics the reason *WHY* . . (Score:4, Funny)
Of course the Current version of Linux or BSD is probably more "bloated" then the last version of Multics.
Sure, trade in a 40 year old operating system for two 20s, just because its a little bloated after giving you the best years of its life... Does this tty driver make my kernel look fat?
Re:If it was so good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Remember punch cards (Score:1, Funny)
Singer made farming equipment?
Re:Favorite quote (Score:1, Funny)
As Multics begat UNIX, PL/I lives on within the development community of .... SAS.