8 ms·

Will Unix become the next MS-DOS? (1985) [video]

68 points by nfriedly 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
voyou 11y ago
Funnily, as it turned out, VMS became the new MS-DOS (well, kind of: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-re... )
- rbanffy 11y ago
  I like to think Windows actually was intended as a VMS parody. ;-)
  - wycats 11y ago
    VMS + 1 = WNT
zensavona 11y ago
I guess not.
grabcocque 11y ago
Nope.
aabajian 11y ago
Everyone is saying "Nope". A couple events happened in the US in 2013/2014 - The number of cell phones surpassed the number of computers, and the number of smartphones surpassed the number of basic phones. Both iOS and Android are Unix derivatives, so I'd say Unix is winning the post-PC era.
- arvinjoar 11y ago
  And not to forget, OS X, which still has significant market share (>5% of desktops/laptops) and is based on Unix (albeit XNU stands for X is not Unix). Looking at wikipedia, it still seems like a majority of web web clients are windows based, though[1]. [1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - justwannasing 11y ago
    OSX is not "based on" Unix. OSX IS Unix: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm
    - justinsaccount 11y ago
      Is the certification from "The Open Group" relevant to anyone? OS X 10.10 ships with a version of bash from 2007. Without something like homebrew or macports to install an updated userland the "Unix" core of OS X is rotting away.
      - tomphoolery 11y ago
        It just means that the operating system ships with the properly-licensed UNIX software binaries and libraries, rather than the GNU free software replacements for said software. If you look in the man pages for any shell command OS X ships with, you'll see it's from the "BSD General Commands Manual". On Linux systems, this originates from GNU. Your example of bash is actually not part of that distribution, it's something additional OS X ships with just for userland purposes. I suppose the point of being a "certified UNIX distribution" is just so they can put the trademark on their website because it looks pretty.
        0x09 11y ago
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Except that both lack UNIX userland, aren't POSIX compliant and have a sandbox design.
  - varjag 11y ago
    Android is partially POSIX compliant at least, in larger degree than Linux+glibc has been for the first decade.
  - the_why_of_y 11y ago
    ... and ridiculous hard coded limits like 128 shared objects per process: http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#SO_MAX http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#... This hilarious memset(3) bug was shipping for years: https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14699,1,libc/memset.c https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14... Well, that's what you get when you NIH your libc...
    - SamReidHughes 11y ago
      A similar memset bug happened in glibc too.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    The major theme of the episode is that the important part of Unix adoption is applications users use. Of course, in the context of 1985, POSIX compliance is an anachronism anyway. The video was recorded on the front side of the Unix Wars [1]. [1]: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880014 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880...
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    You can install your own glibc and run a full Linux userland on top of an Android kernel.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      I can also run a full UNIX userland on Windows, z/OS or OS/400, that doesn't make them UNIX. And I doubt IPC will work anyway, given that the Android kernel doesn't do UNIX IPC.
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  Well and this is not even mentioning that the 'cloud' is overwhelmingly Unix (well, Linux, so Unix with a small-u) In terms of installed operating systems and the applications people interact with, Unix or Unix-alike systems win. I don't care if the desktops they use are Windows, or if the phones they run (which have a Unix/Linux kernel usually) don't expose a shell prompt -- the applications they run get the largest part of their functionality through server daemons running on systems running *nix.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Which is quite sad, because now we are kind of stuck in OS design, with only Microsoft, Apple and a few universities pushing the OS research further.
    - kitsunesoba 11y ago
      Honest question: When was the last time MS actually did something interesting in regards to OS features/architecture? I read genuinely neat little tidbits about new features in OS X, Linux, and the BSDs on a fairly regular basis, but I can't remember the last time I read about something like that in Windows. The impression that it leaves is that releases of Windows newer than, say, Vista or 7 bring little outside of general cleanup and tweaks to the user-facing parts.
      - pjmlp 11y ago
        The research OS: Singularity, Midori and Drawbridge The attempts to follow OS/400 footsteps with a managed userspace in Windows Phone 7. The OS architecture of Windows Phone 8. The way they are transitioning Windows into a App Container model with the WinRT execution model.
      - tomku 11y ago
        If you want to see internal changes in Windows, look at the server versions, not the desktop ones. Over that time frame where you said nothing happened, Hyper-V has gone from a research project to a central part of the Windows server space. Powershell has gone from a tech preview to the recommended way to manage servers. Windows Server 2012 introduced ReFS and Storage Spaces. I'm sure Server 2016 will have a bunch of cool stuff too. The server-side Windows experience is radically different than it was when Windows 7 came out. Why aren't you hearing about these features? Lots of reasons. Windows is closed-source, so the internal changes you hear about are the ones Microsoft wants you to hear about. Most of the shiny new toys are to support server features that you won't notice unless you're a Windows sysadmin. Most desktop users don't care about internal changes unless they break things, and Windows hasn't broken much on the internal side since Vista. Microsoft's own messaging about major changes has been targeted almost exclusively at Windows server admins. Edit: That's not even getting into the new app development platform that shipped with 8/10, DirectX 12 adding Mantle-like APIs, first-class support for touch input, hybrid boot, booting from VHDs, etc. Microsoft has been busy over the past few years.
rasz_pl 11y ago
So sad it didnt :( Mostly out of vendor greed, anything with Unix in name was treated as $premium$. On that note here is venix86, IBM XT/AT Unix variant, ready to run on emulators: http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/venturcomm-venix86-on-messmame/ http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/ventu...
- mmastrac 11y ago
  I loved seeing the name "winchester" for hard drives in those screenshots. I've been renaming the HDD on every computer I've owned since the 80's to that for kicks.
cmrdporcupine 11y ago
I always find it interesting to see these Computer Chronicles episodes with Gary Kildall (yay!) hosting. I haven't watched the full episode yet, but it's interesting since at the time his company was writing operating systems and tools that competed with both Unix and Microsoft. I watched an episode where they were comparing the Atari ST and Amiga, and I was impressed with how he never showed bias despite the operating system on the ST having been written by his company.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  Gary had himself to blame for failing to see the future of PC market. He build his company on selling tens to hundreds (per week) copies of the $700 CP/M OS used to run $700 dBase II on $10K S100 systems. When IBM entered the market with PC/XT he insisted on pricing himself out of it at six times premium over DOS, as if he didnt believe industry would move in just few years from hundreds to almost hundred thousand boxes per week(1986). As for him being impartial I wouldnt go so far. I also remember that episode and how they showed bouncing ball on Atari with a stupid "see, we can do it too" comment, totally ignoring the fact Atari 520ST was burning >80% CPU just to blit that ball across the screen while Amiga did it all in hardware while CPU was free to run other programs in full preemptive multitasking OS :)
  - cmrdporcupine 11y ago
    Who cares that the ST was burning CPU to do it, in the grand scheme of things at that point in time all the fancy custom circuitry of the Amiga got them... what... 3-4 years ahead of the curve at the cost of massive investment of R&D and a price premium... ? By 1990 stock commodity PC graphics cards on a stock x86 machine could outcompete the Amiga, and Commodore was totally unable to pull another Jay Miner with its next chip set. And multitasking on an 8mhz 68000 -- and with no memory protection in the slightest -- was not much of a win. We had multitasking extensions for the ST, too, and after fiddling with them for a while, the use cases were... unclear. Without an MMU it was dubious. In reality the ST was cheap competition for the Macintosh, not the Amiga. And paired with a hi-res monitor and Atari's cheap laser printer and a copy of Calamus it was a cuthroat priced, quality DTP workstation. Or in a studio as a sequencer hooked up to a bank of synthesizers. The Amiga found its niche in video applications... and games. Anyways, this is all off topic to Gary Kildall :-)
digi_owl 11y ago
I kinda like using a DOS-ish Linux install. A "minimal" boot system that is highly user maintainable etc. Gives a feeling of control that i kinda missed during the Windows years, where everything was hidden behind cryptic registry entries and services.
yuhong 11y ago
It is unfortunate MS turned OS/2 2.0 into an entire fiasco. There is a reason why it is my favorite topic.
- pmelendez 11y ago
  I believe that the fiasco started with IBM using LOC as a metric to pay MS. It's like telling contractors that the will pay them better the most inefficient they get.
  - yuhong 11y ago
    I know. I am talking about the ending of course.
jsingleton 11y ago
Along a similar line. Here's a very interesting show from 1978 about the "rise of the microprocessor". http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-19771978-now-the-chips-are-down http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-197719... Edit: Here's the show on YouTube for those that can't get iPlayer or don't want to install Flash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ
SG- 11y ago
A lot of it's basic ideas did even with OS's that aren't Unix or Unix based. Everything is multiuser, multitasking and network based now. OSX along with iOS which controls a large part of the mobile/tablet. Android has it's Linux roots too. Windows NT set MS up to finally switch to a better OS and discard of DOS based Windows. The server space continues today to be run by Unix based OS's (Linux, BSD, etc). What's really interesting is that in 1985 when this video was out, Next was just being formed and they were building NextStep.
platz 11y ago
Unix is a user-hostile operating system! https://youtu.be/L8G1qg99Kl4?t=22m36s https://youtu.be/L8G1qg99Kl4?t=22m36s

68 points by nfriedly 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

voyou 11y ago

Funnily, as it turned out, VMS became the new MS-DOS (well, kind of: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-re... )

rbanffy 11y ago
I like to think Windows actually was intended as a VMS parody. ;-)
- wycats 11y ago
  VMS + 1 = WNT

zensavona 11y ago

I guess not.

grabcocque 11y ago

Nope.

aabajian 11y ago

Everyone is saying "Nope". A couple events happened in the US in 2013/2014 - The number of cell phones surpassed the number of computers, and the number of smartphones surpassed the number of basic phones. Both iOS and Android are Unix derivatives, so I'd say Unix is winning the post-PC era.

arvinjoar 11y ago
And not to forget, OS X, which still has significant market share (>5% of desktops/laptops) and is based on Unix (albeit XNU stands for X is not Unix). Looking at wikipedia, it still seems like a majority of web web clients are windows based, though[1]. [1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Web_clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- justwannasing 11y ago
  OSX is not "based on" Unix. OSX IS Unix: http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3607.htm
  - justinsaccount 11y ago
    Is the certification from "The Open Group" relevant to anyone? OS X 10.10 ships with a version of bash from 2007. Without something like homebrew or macports to install an updated userland the "Unix" core of OS X is rotting away.
    - tomphoolery 11y ago
      It just means that the operating system ships with the properly-licensed UNIX software binaries and libraries, rather than the GNU free software replacements for said software. If you look in the man pages for any shell command OS X ships with, you'll see it's from the "BSD General Commands Manual". On Linux systems, this originates from GNU. Your example of bash is actually not part of that distribution, it's something additional OS X ships with just for userland purposes. I suppose the point of being a "certified UNIX distribution" is just so they can put the trademark on their website because it looks pretty.
      - 0x09 11y ago
pjmlp 11y ago
Except that both lack UNIX userland, aren't POSIX compliant and have a sandbox design.
- varjag 11y ago
  Android is partially POSIX compliant at least, in larger degree than Linux+glibc has been for the first decade.
- the_why_of_y 11y ago
  ... and ridiculous hard coded limits like 128 shared objects per process: http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#SO_MAX http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#... This hilarious memset(3) bug was shipping for years: https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14699,1,libc/memset.c https://android-review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14... Well, that's what you get when you NIH your libc...
  - SamReidHughes 11y ago
    A similar memset bug happened in glibc too.
- brudgers 11y ago
  The major theme of the episode is that the important part of Unix adoption is applications users use. Of course, in the context of 1985, POSIX compliance is an anachronism anyway. The video was recorded on the front side of the Unix Wars [1]. [1]: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880014 http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html#id2880...
- rbanffy 11y ago
  You can install your own glibc and run a full Linux userland on top of an Android kernel.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    I can also run a full UNIX userland on Windows, z/OS or OS/400, that doesn't make them UNIX. And I doubt IPC will work anyway, given that the Android kernel doesn't do UNIX IPC.
cmrdporcupine 11y ago
Well and this is not even mentioning that the 'cloud' is overwhelmingly Unix (well, Linux, so Unix with a small-u) In terms of installed operating systems and the applications people interact with, Unix or Unix-alike systems win. I don't care if the desktops they use are Windows, or if the phones they run (which have a Unix/Linux kernel usually) don't expose a shell prompt -- the applications they run get the largest part of their functionality through server daemons running on systems running *nix.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Which is quite sad, because now we are kind of stuck in OS design, with only Microsoft, Apple and a few universities pushing the OS research further.
  - kitsunesoba 11y ago
    Honest question: When was the last time MS actually did something interesting in regards to OS features/architecture? I read genuinely neat little tidbits about new features in OS X, Linux, and the BSDs on a fairly regular basis, but I can't remember the last time I read about something like that in Windows. The impression that it leaves is that releases of Windows newer than, say, Vista or 7 bring little outside of general cleanup and tweaks to the user-facing parts.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      The research OS: Singularity, Midori and Drawbridge The attempts to follow OS/400 footsteps with a managed userspace in Windows Phone 7. The OS architecture of Windows Phone 8. The way they are transitioning Windows into a App Container model with the WinRT execution model.
    - tomku 11y ago
      If you want to see internal changes in Windows, look at the server versions, not the desktop ones. Over that time frame where you said nothing happened, Hyper-V has gone from a research project to a central part of the Windows server space. Powershell has gone from a tech preview to the recommended way to manage servers. Windows Server 2012 introduced ReFS and Storage Spaces. I'm sure Server 2016 will have a bunch of cool stuff too. The server-side Windows experience is radically different than it was when Windows 7 came out. Why aren't you hearing about these features? Lots of reasons. Windows is closed-source, so the internal changes you hear about are the ones Microsoft wants you to hear about. Most of the shiny new toys are to support server features that you won't notice unless you're a Windows sysadmin. Most desktop users don't care about internal changes unless they break things, and Windows hasn't broken much on the internal side since Vista. Microsoft's own messaging about major changes has been targeted almost exclusively at Windows server admins. Edit: That's not even getting into the new app development platform that shipped with 8/10, DirectX 12 adding Mantle-like APIs, first-class support for touch input, hybrid boot, booting from VHDs, etc. Microsoft has been busy over the past few years.

rasz_pl 11y ago

So sad it didnt :( Mostly out of vendor greed, anything with Unix in name was treated as $premium$. On that note here is venix86, IBM XT/AT Unix variant, ready to run on emulators: http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/venturcomm-venix86-on-messmame/ http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/ventu...

mmastrac 11y ago
I loved seeing the name "winchester" for hard drives in those screenshots. I've been renaming the HDD on every computer I've owned since the 80's to that for kicks.

cmrdporcupine 11y ago

I always find it interesting to see these Computer Chronicles episodes with Gary Kildall (yay!) hosting. I haven't watched the full episode yet, but it's interesting since at the time his company was writing operating systems and tools that competed with both Unix and Microsoft. I watched an episode where they were comparing the Atari ST and Amiga, and I was impressed with how he never showed bias despite the operating system on the ST having been written by his company.

rasz_pl 11y ago
Gary had himself to blame for failing to see the future of PC market. He build his company on selling tens to hundreds (per week) copies of the $700 CP/M OS used to run $700 dBase II on $10K S100 systems. When IBM entered the market with PC/XT he insisted on pricing himself out of it at six times premium over DOS, as if he didnt believe industry would move in just few years from hundreds to almost hundred thousand boxes per week(1986). As for him being impartial I wouldnt go so far. I also remember that episode and how they showed bouncing ball on Atari with a stupid "see, we can do it too" comment, totally ignoring the fact Atari 520ST was burning >80% CPU just to blit that ball across the screen while Amiga did it all in hardware while CPU was free to run other programs in full preemptive multitasking OS :)
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  Who cares that the ST was burning CPU to do it, in the grand scheme of things at that point in time all the fancy custom circuitry of the Amiga got them... what... 3-4 years ahead of the curve at the cost of massive investment of R&D and a price premium... ? By 1990 stock commodity PC graphics cards on a stock x86 machine could outcompete the Amiga, and Commodore was totally unable to pull another Jay Miner with its next chip set. And multitasking on an 8mhz 68000 -- and with no memory protection in the slightest -- was not much of a win. We had multitasking extensions for the ST, too, and after fiddling with them for a while, the use cases were... unclear. Without an MMU it was dubious. In reality the ST was cheap competition for the Macintosh, not the Amiga. And paired with a hi-res monitor and Atari's cheap laser printer and a copy of Calamus it was a cuthroat priced, quality DTP workstation. Or in a studio as a sequencer hooked up to a bank of synthesizers. The Amiga found its niche in video applications... and games. Anyways, this is all off topic to Gary Kildall :-)

digi_owl 11y ago

I kinda like using a DOS-ish Linux install. A "minimal" boot system that is highly user maintainable etc. Gives a feeling of control that i kinda missed during the Windows years, where everything was hidden behind cryptic registry entries and services.

yuhong 11y ago

It is unfortunate MS turned OS/2 2.0 into an entire fiasco. There is a reason why it is my favorite topic.

pmelendez 11y ago
I believe that the fiasco started with IBM using LOC as a metric to pay MS. It's like telling contractors that the will pay them better the most inefficient they get.
- yuhong 11y ago
  I know. I am talking about the ending of course.

jsingleton 11y ago

Along a similar line. Here's a very interesting show from 1978 about the "rise of the microprocessor". http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-19771978-now-the-chips-are-down http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-197719... Edit: Here's the show on YouTube for those that can't get iPlayer or don't want to install Flash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ

SG- 11y ago

A lot of it's basic ideas did even with OS's that aren't Unix or Unix based. Everything is multiuser, multitasking and network based now. OSX along with iOS which controls a large part of the mobile/tablet. Android has it's Linux roots too. Windows NT set MS up to finally switch to a better OS and discard of DOS based Windows. The server space continues today to be run by Unix based OS's (Linux, BSD, etc). What's really interesting is that in 1985 when this video was out, Next was just being formed and they were building NextStep.

platz 11y ago

Unix is a user-hostile operating system! https://youtu.be/L8G1qg99Kl4?t=22m36s https://youtu.be/L8G1qg99Kl4?t=22m36s