3 ms·

I guess. I’m not sure I buy how just removing some shitty idea from a system is copying a system that never had that in the first place. The actual meat of how

by epcoa 3y ago

I guess. I’m not sure I buy how just removing some shitty idea from a system is copying a system that never had that in the first place. The actual meat of how the filesystems and namespaces work (and Unix has several types of files - block and character special to start with) are still wildly different between the two systems.

teleforce 3y ago
Remember that Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were part of the original Multics project, and the Unix name was a joke or more exactly a pun on the former. I strongly believe that the non-existent of complicated file structures are actually by design not by chance by Unix authors, and perhaps at the time is mainly due to the limitation of the hardware. But since now we have computer with TB size of storage and RAM (that's not a typo), and apparently no OS after VMS copy the record and index file structure, it's probably a very bad idea. The fact that modern OS textbooks don't bother to cover them in details but only in passing mentions is really telling something.
- epcoa 3y ago
  > I strongly believe that the non-existent of complicated file structures are actually by design not by chance by Unix authors, and perhaps at the time is mainly due to the limitation of the hardware And Unix was just a return to the basics of CTSS, which also was the precursor to ITS. This is not to mention the numerous micro OSes independent of Unix that didn’t live in the bubble of Multics. I don’t think Unix was really original in that regard (but it won, so everybody just assumes they did everything first) - and claiming that everything they undid from an all but forgotten ancient overengineered system was an invention is a bit contrived. “In most ways UNIX is a very conservative system. Only a handful of its ideas are genuinely new. In fact, a good case can be made that it is in essence a modern implementation of MIT’s CTSS system. This claim is intended as a compliment to both UNIX and CTSS” - dmr

by epcoa 3y ago

teleforce 3y ago

Remember that Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were part of the original Multics project, and the Unix name was a joke or more exactly a pun on the former. I strongly believe that the non-existent of complicated file structures are actually by design not by chance by Unix authors, and perhaps at the time is mainly due to the limitation of the hardware. But since now we have computer with TB size of storage and RAM (that's not a typo), and apparently no OS after VMS copy the record and index file structure, it's probably a very bad idea. The fact that modern OS textbooks don't bother to cover them in details but only in passing mentions is really telling something.

epcoa 3y ago
> I strongly believe that the non-existent of complicated file structures are actually by design not by chance by Unix authors, and perhaps at the time is mainly due to the limitation of the hardware And Unix was just a return to the basics of CTSS, which also was the precursor to ITS. This is not to mention the numerous micro OSes independent of Unix that didn’t live in the bubble of Multics. I don’t think Unix was really original in that regard (but it won, so everybody just assumes they did everything first) - and claiming that everything they undid from an all but forgotten ancient overengineered system was an invention is a bit contrived. “In most ways UNIX is a very conservative system. Only a handful of its ideas are genuinely new. In fact, a good case can be made that it is in essence a modern implementation of MIT’s CTSS system. This claim is intended as a compliment to both UNIX and CTSS” - dmr