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The DEC stuff feels like a foreign country to me. Most of the world is powered by Unix (and its clones/derivatives), at least in the infrastructure space, with

The DEC stuff feels like a foreign country to me. Most of the world is powered by Unix (and its clones/derivatives), at least in the infrastructure space, with a small percent still running Windows Server for some masochistic reason. Outside of playing with OpenVMS exactly one time with qemu (purely because I kind of liked their goofy shark logo [1]), I've never used anything from DEC, but throughout the 80s my understanding is that DEC was a force to be reckoned with. I think there was probably more diversity in operating systems back then. The DEC stuff was huge for a period of time, and I feel like there's an alternate universe where VMS and VAX stayed the standard, and Unix is the footnote. I'm not sure that universe would be better, there's probably a reason that Unix won overall, but it's not like DEC and VAX were tiny things. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Dec-vms-vernon.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Dec-vms-...

commandersaki 1y ago
Outside of computing proper, DEC had a massive influence on networking too.
voidfunc 1y ago
Think of Windows NT as the spiritual successor of VMS and it never really went away. Sort of like if Plan 9 had succeeded Unix.
- tombert 1y ago
  Interesting, I hadn't thought of it that way; I didn't realize that NT shared ancestry with VMS.
  - voidfunc 1y ago
    Dave Cutler
    - tombert 1y ago
      Yeah, I looked it up after you mentioned it. Interesting stuff. I hate Windows but that's not so much the kernel but much more due to my hatred of the interface and Windows Update, so I don't know if the alternate universe where DEC reigned supreme would be better or worse.
- hulitu 1y ago
  Only spiritual. The implementation is a disaster.
nineteen999 1y ago
I had a bunch of DEC Alpha's 21164 back in the late 90's I absolutely loved those machines except from the ARC/SRM firmware which was pretty horrible. We also had a Sparc64 board/CPU from Sun Microelectronics which we put in our tower case, added SCSI, video cards etc and ran Solaris. I also worked for a 3rd-party Sun clone maker around that time, we had piles of Sparc/Sparc64 boards sitting round. UNIX probably won out due to licensing and the fact that it was available on x86-64 so much earlier - mainly Linux and BSD I guess but Solaris was there as well, VMS didn't boot on x86-64 until 2019.
- ofrzeta 1y ago
  Everyone loved the Alpha machines when they came out as far as I remember. I also liked Digital Unix a lot more than Solaris or HP-UX though I don't remember any particular reason, probably completely irrational :)
floren 1y ago
If you wanted to run UNIX, a PDP-11 or VAX was a great choice too.
dirkt 1y ago
> Most of the world is powered by Unix Well, Unix came into being on a DEC PDP-11, and C is basically high-level PDP-11 assembly... And MS-DOS was influenced by CP/M which was influenced by DEC operating systems (like OS/8 for the PDP-8).

commandersaki 1y ago

Outside of computing proper, DEC had a massive influence on networking too.

voidfunc 1y ago

Think of Windows NT as the spiritual successor of VMS and it never really went away. Sort of like if Plan 9 had succeeded Unix.

tombert 1y ago
Interesting, I hadn't thought of it that way; I didn't realize that NT shared ancestry with VMS.
- voidfunc 1y ago
  Dave Cutler
  - tombert 1y ago
    Yeah, I looked it up after you mentioned it. Interesting stuff. I hate Windows but that's not so much the kernel but much more due to my hatred of the interface and Windows Update, so I don't know if the alternate universe where DEC reigned supreme would be better or worse.
hulitu 1y ago
Only spiritual. The implementation is a disaster.

nineteen999 1y ago

I had a bunch of DEC Alpha's 21164 back in the late 90's I absolutely loved those machines except from the ARC/SRM firmware which was pretty horrible. We also had a Sparc64 board/CPU from Sun Microelectronics which we put in our tower case, added SCSI, video cards etc and ran Solaris. I also worked for a 3rd-party Sun clone maker around that time, we had piles of Sparc/Sparc64 boards sitting round. UNIX probably won out due to licensing and the fact that it was available on x86-64 so much earlier - mainly Linux and BSD I guess but Solaris was there as well, VMS didn't boot on x86-64 until 2019.

ofrzeta 1y ago
Everyone loved the Alpha machines when they came out as far as I remember. I also liked Digital Unix a lot more than Solaris or HP-UX though I don't remember any particular reason, probably completely irrational :)

floren 1y ago

If you wanted to run UNIX, a PDP-11 or VAX was a great choice too.

dirkt 1y ago

> Most of the world is powered by Unix Well, Unix came into being on a DEC PDP-11, and C is basically high-level PDP-11 assembly... And MS-DOS was influenced by CP/M which was influenced by DEC operating systems (like OS/8 for the PDP-8).