Re: UNIX is/was an Operating System

From: Alan Connor (zzzzzz_at_xxx.yyy)
Date: 03/31/05 

Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:35:53 GMT

On comp.unix.questions, in
<slrnd4nekm.13c.vek@station02.ohout.pharmapartners.nl>, "Villy
Kruse" wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 05:48:47 GMT, Alan Connor <zzzzzz@xxx.yyy>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>> (and DOS is actually a poor Unix clone, severely damaged by
>> its authors attempt to hide the fact that this is what it is,
>> [and laziness: they left out the most important part of Unix
>> -- networking!] whereas Linux is an up-front Unix clone)
>
>
> Networking wasn't part of unix either.

More-or-less?

The original unix was a 'mainframe' with a lot of terminals that
were, practically speaking, networked with each other.

Those terminals could be miles apart and still talk directly
with each other, and share files.

Not much different than having an IRC or POP server between
yourself and and someone else today. When you use a shell account
somewhere, you are really only operating your home machine as
a terminal: The computer you are actually using is a long ways
away.

> It was mostly ported from Berkeley code.
>

I thought Berekely _was_ a unix.

Didn't they use the unix OS to create their code which was
written _for_ unix too?

>
> MSDOS had to be limited if it were to be usefull in 16k memory
> and 320k disk space.

So it could be used to play games on instead of sharing
information across the world.

They've always had screwed-up priorities. Which is why most
of the Internet and many vast organizations, governmental and
corporate and non-profit, still run on nix, even in the face of
M$'s incredible economic and political power.

During that last worm/virus crisis, M$ took refuge in nix
servers in many locations.

> Later MSDOS became networking add-on just
> like unix did.

And their networking code is a an over-sized nightmare
compared to nix's.

>
> Villy

You are probably technically right, but I really don't think of
anything pre-BSD as being _truly_ unix. What came before BSD was
pre-unix, or unix-in-its-infancy, to me.

As far as I am concerned, it reached its peak with the
development of basic graphical capabilities (static color
images of decent resolution) and has been going downhill every
since, in its effort to compete with M$.

It used to be something run by scientists. Now it is the
bean-counters who are in control. That applies to much of
the linux world too.

AC

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