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What is the Operating System?
- Thread starter amirm
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There would be too many compatibility issues and backwards compatibility is the primary reason anyone uses Windows in the first place.
That's easy to do if you don't follow the cultural tracks *before* Stallman's gnu.
The guys running the ITS operating system - who lived and breathed assembly and lisp - like Stallman, Richard Greenblatt, Tom Knight, Gosper et al, *may* have had what some would perceive as an unnatural involvement with the machine. The closer you go to it, the closer you got to God. AI was the thing, although fun diversions like Zork got created on it. Apparently the machine-god didn't mind unkempt appearances. It looked inside you.
Hard to think of this now, but "hacker" was kind of derogatory back then. These guys were "disciples", not hackers.
ESR's main thing was some incredibly detailed usenet posts buying guides about the various oem and 3rd party offerings that would put Unix, or a tweaked flavor of it, on your PC or perhaps other more costly high-end consumer / low-end commercial boxes. Many offerings were totally costly, unstable hacks, unbundled like 1-user only (root and you), flaky c-compilers, binary only, binary with source, good or bad tech-support, had bugs for hardware you needed to know about etc etc. Most of these things hovered around $1000 or so. Not available retail or in stores. You had to know who to call and he provided that. He put an incredible amount of time and energy into that. Just unbelievable. Nobody asked him to do this, but he just did.
Oh, and the jargon file.
Product reviews basically. And then the last post came where he stopped all that and said he was switching to linux. (linus kernel + gnu userland) Done. No need for the monthly product review postings any more.
I'm not sure he was or totally understood the ITS / AI / Lisp disciples that came before him. I'll have to look that up. Usenet posts are one thing. Being totally TRON with a DEC mainframe is another.
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Special mention about PR1ME and PR1MOS earlier...
Bill Poduska was also a "Multician". He wrote the Multics EPLBSA (Early PL/1 Boot Strap Assembler).
(In the early days, the outside compiler house couldn't produce a working PL/1 compiler, so Doug McIlroy of ATT - Ken Thomson and Dennis Ritchie's boss) got the ball rolling with what was called the EPL (Early PL/1) compiler.
Doug McIlroy was all about "pipes" even back then, but it made it's first appearance when he brow-beated Ken into putting it into Unix when ATT dropped out of Multics.
Anway, when Multics was flailing, Bill Poduska left and co-founded PR1ME. Or as he called it "Multics in a matchbox". He later went on to found Apollo (and the Apollo Domain OS)
en.wikipedia.org
Bill Poduska was also a "Multician". He wrote the Multics EPLBSA (Early PL/1 Boot Strap Assembler).
(In the early days, the outside compiler house couldn't produce a working PL/1 compiler, so Doug McIlroy of ATT - Ken Thomson and Dennis Ritchie's boss) got the ball rolling with what was called the EPL (Early PL/1) compiler.
Doug McIlroy was all about "pipes" even back then, but it made it's first appearance when he brow-beated Ken into putting it into Unix when ATT dropped out of Multics.
Anway, when Multics was flailing, Bill Poduska left and co-founded PR1ME. Or as he called it "Multics in a matchbox". He later went on to found Apollo (and the Apollo Domain OS)
PRIMOS - Wikipedia
This gets brought up every so often. Impressive if you want to get your ITS o/s groove on. Those disciples were tied closely to just one machine-god of the DEC PDP-6 / 10. Want ITS on a VAX? Total rewrite from scratch.
This was how it was done in the super-old days. Assembly for a very specific machine model, hardly any of your code was "portable" - each machine had to be totally rewritten and so forth.
Hence the determination going all the way back to say 1964 with DTSS and Multics trying to do systems-level programming in a high-level language. Most, but not all obviously.
So assembly was reserved for those very very specific hardware needs that could not be addressed (pun intended) by a higher level (more conversant) language.
So not commercially viable today, but if I spent much time with MenuetOS, I'd have to make sure I get a haircut, brush my teeth, and go outside (what's that?) once in awhile like the ITS guys did.
Hard to predict because the "personal computer" for 99% of the world is just an abstract way of filling out forms, listening to music, watching video etc, which used to be done by individual devices.
Hardly personal-computing.
If you want to do that, open up your bash terminal in MacOS at full-screen, stare at the prompt and ask yourself what can *I* make it do? Doesn't have to be fancy or perfect.Ie, implying learning how to program, (in basic even!) perhaps just simple shell-scripting and see what you can make it do with your own personal twist.
But not everyone wants to do that. The brilliance of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was recognizing waay back in the 70's that most people wanted an app-launcher for other peoples ideas, much to Wozniaks and Pauls dismay.
The underlying O/S app-launcher hardly matters to most people really. Just get what you like. it's an open market, vote with your wallet or download something free and install that.
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Sorry 'bout this. I feel sorry for the new generation that has known nothing but computers in their lives.
They'll never understand the joy at seeing just the A:> prompt, (Thank you Gary Kildall) and wondering "where do I go from here?"
And like learning a musical instrument, it takes a bit of practice. At first your notes are all disjointed and squawking. Then you get your programing groove on. Hard to explain if one has never been there. But these guys did. Whether you are programming in LISP on a DEC mainframe doing AI like Stallman was, or learning your first loop in basic like I was - yeah, it's kind of a spiritual journey.
They'll never understand the joy at seeing just the A:> prompt, (Thank you Gary Kildall) and wondering "where do I go from here?"
And like learning a musical instrument, it takes a bit of practice. At first your notes are all disjointed and squawking. Then you get your programing groove on. Hard to explain if one has never been there. But these guys did. Whether you are programming in LISP on a DEC mainframe doing AI like Stallman was, or learning your first loop in basic like I was - yeah, it's kind of a spiritual journey.
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Windows? Pffffft.
Linux? (snicker)
unixmultixprimeoswhatever? Give me a break.
What the world really needs is a reborn VMS. Finest OS ever created. You're welcome.
Dave Cutler (DEC) was *absolutely right* when he said that "Unix is snakeoil" !
Usually taken out of context when potential customers would ask if they had it instead of VMS, having no clue that their application didn't really care or need to have it! They just heard someone mention unix in the hallway before picking up the phone.
The same applies today - most consumers have absolute zero interest in their app-launcher of choice. Well, maybe how many times it phones-home.
Had it not been for DEC coming out with the PDP-11 series, more or less the "raspberry-pi" of today back then, unix might have been stillborn, because there was no way ATT was going to let their researchers have a PDP-10 mainframe!
"But Dad, all the other kids at MIT have one!"
"Nope."
"Ok, how about this, DEC is coming out with a small inexpensive PDP-11, can we use that?"
"Nope - we don't want you pesky kids playing around with O/S research after our Multics fiasco"
"Wait wait - we promise not to do OS research - the patent department needs a custom text-processer!"
"Erm, Ok, but we've got our eyes on you."
And the rest is history.
Usually taken out of context when potential customers would ask if they had it instead of VMS, having no clue that their application didn't really care or need to have it! They just heard someone mention unix in the hallway before picking up the phone.
The same applies today - most consumers have absolute zero interest in their app-launcher of choice. Well, maybe how many times it phones-home.
Had it not been for DEC coming out with the PDP-11 series, more or less the "raspberry-pi" of today back then, unix might have been stillborn, because there was no way ATT was going to let their researchers have a PDP-10 mainframe!
"But Dad, all the other kids at MIT have one!"
"Nope."
"Ok, how about this, DEC is coming out with a small inexpensive PDP-11, can we use that?"
"Nope - we don't want you pesky kids playing around with O/S research after our Multics fiasco"
"Wait wait - we promise not to do OS research - the patent department needs a custom text-processer!"
"Erm, Ok, but we've got our eyes on you."
And the rest is history.
Right on - used to do that myself. But I finally wanted some really nice hardware.
Circa 2004 or so, I picked up a little white plastic iBook, and when the guy at the Genius Bar asked what I was going to do with it, I told him when I got it home, I was going to put the PowerPC port of FreeBSD on it.
Crickets. Got looks like I stepped off from another planet.
The plan was to get SHRDLU running on it:
en.wikipedia.org
It's then that I realized that maybe I *am* from another planet. Or at least heavily influenced by a time long since past..
Circa 2004 or so, I picked up a little white plastic iBook, and when the guy at the Genius Bar asked what I was going to do with it, I told him when I got it home, I was going to put the PowerPC port of FreeBSD on it.
Crickets. Got looks like I stepped off from another planet.
The plan was to get SHRDLU running on it:
SHRDLU - Wikipedia
It's then that I realized that maybe I *am* from another planet. Or at least heavily influenced by a time long since past..
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Worked with PDP11s in college and a bit afterwards. They were brand new and not everyone had access to them. My employer kept some of them going till nearly 2000. Then sold them for scrap pricing to a gas utility that was using them to do payroll.Dave Cutler (DEC) was *absolutely right* when he said that "Unix is snakeoil" !
Usually taken out of context when potential customers would ask if they had it instead of VMS, having no clue that their application didn't really care or need to have it! They just heard someone mention unix in the hallway before picking up the phone.
The same applies today - most consumers have absolute zero interest in their app-launcher of choice. Well, maybe how many times it phones-home.
Had it not been for DEC coming out with the PDP-11 series, more or less the "raspberry-pi" of today back then, unix might have been stillborn, because there was no way ATT was going to let their researchers have a PDP-10 mainframe!
"But Dad, all the other kids at MIT have one!"
"Nope."
"Ok, how about this, DEC is coming out with a small inexpensive PDP-11, can we use that?"
"Nope - we don't want you pesky kids playing around with O/S research after our Multics fiasco"
"Wait wait - we promise not to do OS research - the patent department needs a custom text-processer!"
"Erm, Ok, but we've got our eyes on you."
And the rest is history.
Re the PDP-11's - you know the funny thing is that even though our hardware has changed a LOT, the underlying philosophy keeps on rolling. I can bang out some pipes, shell scripts, herefiles and so forth on a 2022 box, that would probably do just fine on a vintage PDP-11! Brilliant.
Shout out to OPENBSD ! How could I forget? Every release they offer up a song or two to go with it!
MP3 or OGG versions:
One of my *new* favorites is 6.8 "Hacker People". Plugged in my headphone amp and got a mild groove going.
I haven't totally tested it, but OpenBSD does have guys plugged into the audio subsystem. Hmmmm
Shout out to OPENBSD ! How could I forget? Every release they offer up a song or two to go with it!
MP3 or OGG versions:
One of my *new* favorites is 6.8 "Hacker People". Plugged in my headphone amp and got a mild groove going.
I haven't totally tested it, but OpenBSD does have guys plugged into the audio subsystem. Hmmmm
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I think Gates certainly had a vision, and recognized that deep down users (and admins) wanted something familiar. Something that was 'one and done' from a learning and training standpoint. Competition (I mean by that, competing products) hindered that goal. In the early days of the PC, home users could buy a dozen different 'entry level' word processors--MS had their own, a pretty good one called Works, integrating a basic word processor and spreadsheet. For the most part it was 'given away' when you bought a Gateway 2000, as part of the 'free' bundle. No one complained.But not everyone wants to do that. The brilliance of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates was recognizing waay back in the 70's that most people wanted an app-launcher for other peoples ideas, much to Wozniaks and Pauls dismay.
The underlying O/S app-launcher hardly matters to most people really. Just get what you like. it's an open market, vote with your wallet or download something free and install that.
For enterprise work it was different. You had Word Perfect, Ami (Word) Pro, and MS Word. Lotus Smartsuite, the Word Perfect product, and Office. Moving from one to the other was not a trivial task. If you had a thousand employees who understood Lotus 123, you didn't want to casually switch to Borland's Quattro Pro. Plus, something as simple as opening files in one, on the other, was problematic. Business wanted and needed standardization.
Gates' company had the ability to offer standardization. An 'all in one package'. User level applications tied to their ubiquitous OS, and all for substantial discounts. He 'took advantage' of that advantage, for better or worse. His move was totally successful on the desktop, because MS Office was good. It was certainly better than the OS it ran on (in those early days). In fact, for most users it was too good, simply because most users only required a small subset of its features. But if you needed or wanted more, it was there for you.
MS tried to expand that into other realms, but for whatever reasons, that didn't work out as well. Web browsing was a complete failure for MS. IE was probably the most unloved piece of userland software ever devised. I don't think I'm being too unkind in my estimation. MS couldn't (or wouldn't) make it a decent product, and in spite of 'salesmanship' on the borderline of RICO, users gravitated to other products. Now, today, so many years on, MS still begs people to use their browser.
You are certainly correct, IMO, that with 'on-line' applications, the OS is meaningless for most users. All that is needed is a log in key and a Web browser.
However it is, the end user is not Microsoft's main customer. The end user is a blip on the screen for MS. MS's main customer are corporations and governments. It goes back to standardization. A small operation like Ernie Ball can switch to Linux on the desktop (after being misused badly by MS). A few specialty shops will use Apple products. But for the vast majority of the world (at least its been that way until now), there's no disagreement. What are IT shops going to do? Migrate to OS/2? LOL And when you go to work you use whatever the boss tells you to use. And that will be MS on the desktop. No one has ever said, "I'm not using Excel because the Ribbon interface sucks. Take this job and shove it... I ain't working here no more!"
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a haircut? barbers charge me a search fee. most of it slipped down my face.This gets brought up every so often. Impressive if you want to get your ITS o/s groove on. Those disciples were tied closely to just one machine-god of the DEC PDP-6 / 10. Want ITS on a VAX? Total rewrite from scratch.
This was how it was done in the super-old days. Assembly for a very specific machine model, hardly any of your code was "portable" - each machine had to be totally rewritten and so forth.
Hence the determination going all the way back to say 1964 with DTSS and Multics trying to do systems-level programming in a high-level language. Most, but not all obviously.
So assembly was reserved for those very very specific hardware needs that could not be addressed (pun intended) by a higher level (more conversant) language.
So not commercially viable today, but if I spent much time with MenuetOS, I'd have to make sure I get a haircut, brush my teeth, and go outside (what's that?) once in awhile like the ITS guys did.
@anmpr1
I am *SO* glad you brought up standardization.
As much as I loved my Televideo CP/M box, it was a royal pain to share files via floppy with my buddy running CP/M on his Northstar because the file formats were different! We each had to run userland utilities to read them. Or send files to each other via dial-up Compuserve or local bulletin-board systems. Worst case, bringing our gear together, and running Kermit over a serial connection. UGH!
It was my first taste of what I perceived as "vendor lock-in". But back when CP/M was conceived, some might say Gary was a little bit naive about what vendors might do to the environment as a whole.
When ms-dos became ubiquitous, that problem went away by the standardization of sheer numbers.
Heh, when one wanted to purchase say Wordstar for CP/M, you had to be careful to choose the "Northstar" version or the "Televideo" version.
Things like that weren't foreseen in '73 when CP/M was fledged. The standardization of ms-dos alleviated all that.
I am *SO* glad you brought up standardization.
As much as I loved my Televideo CP/M box, it was a royal pain to share files via floppy with my buddy running CP/M on his Northstar because the file formats were different! We each had to run userland utilities to read them. Or send files to each other via dial-up Compuserve or local bulletin-board systems. Worst case, bringing our gear together, and running Kermit over a serial connection. UGH!
It was my first taste of what I perceived as "vendor lock-in". But back when CP/M was conceived, some might say Gary was a little bit naive about what vendors might do to the environment as a whole.
When ms-dos became ubiquitous, that problem went away by the standardization of sheer numbers.
Heh, when one wanted to purchase say Wordstar for CP/M, you had to be careful to choose the "Northstar" version or the "Televideo" version.
Things like that weren't foreseen in '73 when CP/M was fledged. The standardization of ms-dos alleviated all that.
OT warning:
The World's first reported computer bug was a moth trapped in an early computer in 1947, which disrupted the computer's circuitry while causing consistent errors.
The World's first reported computer bug was a moth trapped in an early computer in 1947, which disrupted the computer's circuitry while causing consistent errors.
Oh yeah, naval officer Admiral Grace Hopper's REAL bug
en.wikipedia.org
Thing is, Gary Kildall (CP/M, PL/M) showed her the microprocessor at the NPS, (Naval Postgraduate School), and she recognized that it was going to be the future - at a time when the uP was considered a toy, which reinforced the cred to Gary to continue on...
That's what I find so fascinating about computer history - although I might not have the exact dates and details down to exact precision, had Admiral Grace Hopper not given the thumb's up to Gary, the whole thing could have stopped had he abandoned the project once he used the uP's for his coin-operated "astrology machine" forecaster in the very early days.
I tend to play the "what if" games, and marvel at how something seemingly insignificant played a huge role in what we have today. What if the Admiral laughed at the uP that Gary showed her?
Grace Hopper - Wikipedia
Thing is, Gary Kildall (CP/M, PL/M) showed her the microprocessor at the NPS, (Naval Postgraduate School), and she recognized that it was going to be the future - at a time when the uP was considered a toy, which reinforced the cred to Gary to continue on...
That's what I find so fascinating about computer history - although I might not have the exact dates and details down to exact precision, had Admiral Grace Hopper not given the thumb's up to Gary, the whole thing could have stopped had he abandoned the project once he used the uP's for his coin-operated "astrology machine" forecaster in the very early days.
I tend to play the "what if" games, and marvel at how something seemingly insignificant played a huge role in what we have today. What if the Admiral laughed at the uP that Gary showed her?
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First up: William Jolitz - 386BSD. (BSD being a Berkeley Software Distribution of the ATT research unix code), and kinda' sorta' like Gary Kildall trying to bring Unix to perhaps serious students, not necessarily gamers or app-launchers.
386BSD - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Sometimes to get it right, one has to look into all the crannies, so an update I skipped out on an important detail that nearly *everybody* misses when they only look the surface.
Re the endless history about the progression from 386BSD to Free / NetBSD, when 386BSD seemed to be stalled or not taking any "patches" from the end-users who were hungry.
Bill Jolitz (R.I.P), had ALREADY been down this road before the 386 uP revolution. He bet his stakes on the NS32016 microprocesser, and had even produced a product based on it, long before! The Symetric 375 running BSD 4.2. Portable for those days!
Symmetric 375
So when he brought out 386BSD, as a free-as-in-freedom thing to the PC, in my perception, it was done more as a way to bring BSD to students who could actually afford the hardware, AND have it be "architecturally sound" - with perhaps him and Lynne as the architects.
And THAT is what I think is often missed - bringing hardware and BSD to a uP could be done, as proven by the Symetric 375, but I think Bill wanted 386BSD to not just be a "product" for the PC, but something architected instead. I'm not sure he realized how immense architecting something like this would be - hence Free / NetBSD people eventually took over as architects.
So RIP Bill - I *think* this was your vision. Possibly being as misunderstood as Gary Kildall was.
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