[mtillman]

This is really cool. Reminds me of the original Unix was invented in a couple weeks while Ritchie's family went on vacation to CA to visit his in-laws.

Source: UNIX: A History and a Memoir Paperback – October 18, 2019 by Brian W Kernighan (Author)

[balder1991]

But I think it’s relevant to say that before writing Unix he was working on Multics for a long time already. Unix was a “simplified” version of it, if I remember well. So it didn’t “spring out of thin air.”

[teleforce]

Unix was a kind of play word for Unique as an anti-thesis for Multics that latter was originally designed for modern multi-user and multi-process OS. Ironically as any real-world OS Unix eventually becomes multi-user system similar to Multics but the name stucked. Granted Unix has a very simple (as in simple as possible but no simpler) multi-user permission and security system that work reliably for many decades until now. Of all the organizations NSA actually even come up with a better replacement for the modern Unix permission and security model with SELinux, but most users just ignored and disabled SELinux although it's installed by default by many major Linux distros [1].

[1] SELinux is unmanageable; just turn it off if it gets in your way:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31176138

[musicale]

"We even knew that it had a joke name, Unix, coined by Brian Kernighan, that was a reference to Multics."

https://multicians.org/unix.html

"Brian Kernighan takes credit for the idea, but adds that 'no one can remember' the origin of the final spelling Unix."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

Also note that Prof. Kernighan has written a historical memoir about Unix:

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/

[JoeAltmaier]

I understood it was Unix for 'one mechanism' or 'unified' instead of the broad everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Multix approach. That was the joke I understood. Notthing about single-user.

[pjmlp]

Not something that you can disable on Android, or on properly managed Linux servers, where devs only get what they should touch on.

[fuzztester]

>So it didn’t “spring out of thin air.”

Right. Almost nothing does.

You see, it's https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

[eichin]

Mmm, even early versions ended up being more the "anti-multics" than actually simplified-from, despite the name pun...

[DiggyJohnson]

Where did the quoted text come from? Something might have gotten edited.

[trollerator23]

Absolutely.

[laxd]

I think you mean Ken Thompson. I can't be bothered searching through youtube interviews but I'm pretty shure that on more than one occasion, he tells a story something along the lines of having a disk driver, some programs, and maybe some other components. His wife went on a trip and he figured it would be enough time to fill in the gaps and make a complete OS.

[jasone]

I'm pretty sure that is mentioned in this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqI7MrtxPnk

By the way the CHM oral history video series is full of gems.

[mtillman]

Yes. But it is written in no edit stone now. I’m sorry for the future google searches in which this received top billing instead of Ken Thompson’s name.

[dboreham]

But Unix itself took many years to write (if you count V7 as "properly finished Unix"). The first version was only a filesystem, for example.

[lproven]

So was MS-DOS. Sold in the tens of millions and kick-started the entire x86 PC industry, though.

Sometimes small and simple is good.

[jauntywundrkind]

I struggle like hell to imagine what the enduring lasting lessons of DOS are. It doesnt seem to have any real legacy in OS design. Not a single aspect but was copied or emulated or expanded on (although DOS in the whole was cloned purely for sale of having a DOS compatible system).

The lesson seems to be: it's a race to the bottom on price. The lesson seems to be: get lucky and have your competitor just happen to be on a trip the day IBM knocks at their door. The lesson seems to be: have a parent who sells your stuff direct the board. The lesson seems to be: take advantage of decades of now-non-existant anti-trust atmosphere to make the world's biggest computer company seek outside OS. DOS itself? I struggle to think of anything remarkable at all. Maybe the availability of very cheap BASIC on-ramps for enthusiasts.

[lproven]

> Not a single aspect but was copied or emulated or expanded on

The business computing world still, to this day, largely runs on Windows, and Windows NT was built on the foundations of DOS: it bootstraps from a DOS filesystem, as UEFI still does in 2024, and it could be installed from DOS. It implements an API designed on DOS for a DOS GUI and to this day supports DOS-compatible filenames.

All the core system folders in Windows 11 still have DOS-compatible names, from `SYSTEM32` to `SYSWOW64`.

DOS itself was emulated by DR-DOS, FreeDOS, PTS-DOS, and other OSes.

> it's a race to the bottom on price.

Always was, still is. Why do you think Linux does so well? It's not technical merit!

> have your competitor just happen to be on a trip the day IBM knocks at their door.

Absolutely cast-iron lie, and you should be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.

[flohofwoe]

> Windows NT was built on the foundations of DOS

AFAIK Windows NT was mainly influenced by VMS (which Dave Cutler worked on before NT). The DOS-isms were mainly coming in via the Win95 side and for backward compatibility reasons, but I bet everybody on the NT team hated those requirements ;)

> Absolutely cast-iron lie, and you should be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.

Not the parent, but it's at best a good urban legend and not much different from "Gary Kildall was not interested". Do you have any first-person accounts that paint a different picture?

[lproven]

> AFAIK Windows NT was mainly influenced by VMS (which Dave Cutler worked on before NT).

It had three parents: OS/2, DOS and VMS. However, MS could use code from 2 of them but not from VMS. I've blogged about this more than once:

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/67492.html

https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/54464.html

> The DOS-isms were mainly coming in via the Win95 side

Nope. Not true, and you have the timeline backwards.

NT was released in 1993, 2 years before Win95, and only the 2nd version of NT, 3.5, supported VFAT long file names.

NT did not support Win95B's FAT32 until its 5th release, Windows 2000.

> backward compatibility reasons, but I bet everybody on the NT team hated those requirements

No, I don't think so. NT could be installed on top of DOS, via the WINNT.EXE setup program. (Something I urged in OS/2 communities, but they didn't understand the need or usefulness.)

https://networkencyclopedia.com/winnt-exe/

NT could dual-boot with DOS, even in the same partition in early versions. It could also dual-boot with Win9x.

This level of interop was hugely important and useful and really helped the new OS gain adoption. It was not some reluctant bolt-on.

> a good urban legend

No, it isn't. It's a horrid calumny against a good and brilliant man.

> not much different from "Gary Kildall was not interested".

Also utter nonsense.

> Do you have any first-person accounts that paint a different picture?

TL;DR version.

Dr Kildall's wife, Barbara McEwen, was DR's lawyer. She negotiated with clients and suppliers, not the CEO who was a programmer.

IBM wanted an NDA which DR was unwilling to do. She said no. Remember DR was the industry giant in microcomputer OSes at this time, and IBM didn't have an offering at all.

Kildall was flying to visit an important client; this wasn't some accidental joyride.

This lie about Kildall literally drove him to drink and his early death. Stop repeating it. It's not funny or clever. It's an evil, vindictive lie.

Tom Rolander was the other passenger in the plane. Is his testimony good enough?

Listen to him describe the flight he was on.

https://youtu.be/bLVbSjDq0DE?si=Ig9KksWWiJG3KDFn&t=1025

A much longer interview:

https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/12/18/cassidy-theres-more-t...

Video interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VREZ6Zx_usc

Transcript:

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201...

[naitgacem]

i thought that story was about 3 programs that were missing, a text editor being one of them.

I'll have to check because my memory is failing me atm.

[Zambyte]

> I allocated a week each to the operating system, the shell, the editor and the assembler

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050414215646742

[AlexeyBrin]

I think you are confusing Dennis Ritchie with Ken Thompson.