Talk:Unix/Archive 1

message: Should we go through all those UNIX commands (cp, as et al.) and add them all to a Category?  I was rather suprised to see all those listed in Wikipedia as articles; it seems more appropriate to host them in Wikibooks: (or leave them at the many online man page mirrors on the Internet).
However, if we're going ot have them here (and I don't see any VfDs on them) then it seems they should be linked into a Category. Ne c'est pas? JimD 02:56, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Question: which ones? Do we draw the line at Linux programs? What about emacs? Should we restrict entry to Fifth Edition CLI tools, cutting out vi? --maru  (talk) contribs 04:59, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category for Commands 

message: Somehow, some reference to Pipe (computing) seems compulsory. Is there a good reason why it is not included? --4lex 10:35 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:You are very welcome to include it yourself, just find an appropriate place to mention it.  See also: Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages. --Ap Sun Jul 13 20:31:37 UTC 2003
::The Impact section ought to be moved to the top of the article, ahead of history, and someone needs to go over it carefully to make sure it catches everything Unix did; pipes should go in there. Have ken/dmr's original ACM article in hand when doing this, that paper does a first-class job of listing what was novel and key. The section could also use some copy editing. --Noel 11:27, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pipes 

message: Comment about Version 8 being the last non commercial version of Unix needs to be checked. Xenix was based on Version 7 so was Unisoft's first version of Unix for the Motorola 68000. I believe that version 6 was the last non commercial version of Unix. 
Eddie Bleasdale
eddie@netproject.com
:I would say that 10th Edition was non-commercial(only sold/given to a few universities), and it was the last True Unix release. --Lost Goblin 18:03, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)
::I Was under the impression, that Versions 8-10 were not publicly available (that is outside the Bell Labs). Does anyone have different information? Would be very interested! --M-e-leypold 22:24, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Last non-commercial version 

message: No mention of SUPER-UX and UNICOS?
:Which should be included why? --Maru 05:38, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Never heard of SUPER-UX, but UNICOS is semi-significant -- it was one of the standard operating systems on a lot of Cray machines back in the day. --Haikupoet 04:15, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, even so, I doubt it's worth inclusion unless there was some novel hardware/software feature. Strike me if I'm wrong, but Cray machines were all mainframes, and Unix has never been particularly strong on mainframes. (I think z/OS and other proprietary OSs have always had the vast lion's share of the market.) --Maru 04:29, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hm, I don't know that I'd consider a Cray a mainframe per se -- I think of a mainframe as essentially being a superserver, meant for pushing data around, whereas the Crays were supercomputers, more meant for high-speed number crunching. That is not to say that there isn't some overlap, but apparently for a while before Cray's demise UNICOS was actually the primary OS for their later systems. Haikupoet 04:44, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The Cray systems were generally called supercomputers which has traditionally been held in a different category than mainframes. Specifically the term, as applied to Cray computer was mostly focused on their vector processor-based systems.  (Read the linked articles to compare the terms).  Regarding the orginal observation: I wouldn't suggest that we make this article an exhaustive list of every version of UNIX that's ever been.  UniCOS has its own article which points back to Unix-like which, in turn, points back to us; and a search on UNIX and Cray will find it at the top.  JimD 02:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SUPER-UX and UNICOS? 

message: The new image posted 4:35, 27 August 2005 by User:Camje lemon doesn't show AIX or IRIX. Can these be added back into the image? --Gbeeker 03:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unix Filiation Image 

message: The necessary course of action is a little more complicated than a simple merger -- I think there's a place for both articles, honestly, though Unix-like needn't be much more than a stub. The real problem is that despite the Open Group's attitude towards the trademark issue, the issue of what is and isn't Unix is a very muddy issue. In other fora there has been a distinction between "genetic Unix", "branded Unix", and "Unix-like" which seems to be the most valid way of making the distinction. For those unfamiliar:
*Genetic Unix refers to any Unix-like system with a connection to the original AT&T codebase. That would include the BSDs and (naturally) all Ancient Unix variations as well as most commercial Unices.
*Branded or Trademark Unix refers pretty much exclusively to commercial variants of Unix, but that's largely a market issue as the branding is theoretically available to any entity willing to pony up for the testing. The important thing to note is that a Branded Unix is not necessarily derived from a Genetic Unix codebase -- IBM's z/OS, I believe, carries the brand, for example, though its Unix layer is only a small part of the OS.
*Unix-like refers to workalikes, systems such as Linux, Minix, QNX, and GNU Hurd. They for the most part behave like Unix, sometimes even using the same ABI, but are based on non-AT&T code bases for the most part. Dennis Ritchie is one of those who considers such systems to be Unices in fact if not in brand, but this could be a controversial point.
Any attempt to merge the two articles would require acknowledging these three strains of the Unix world and how they interact and even overlap. Haikupoet 04:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added the above, rewritten a bit to use Eric Raymond's original terminology, to Unix-like. Haikupoet 04:25, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Random thoughts on merging with [[Unix-like]]

message: The article is already quite large, and if Unix-like merged, it will be too large.  I think, History of Unix should be extracted into a separate article --MvR 12:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. &amp;brvbar; Reisio 16:02, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splitting away history 

message: The article says: "Following bad puns of Unics (homophone of eunuchs) being a castrated Multics, the name was later changed to Unix." However, as I read it in other places the pun was intended. Does anybody know more about this? --Qwertyus 00:06, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bad puns can be intentional. And I think the original original name was Eunics (I'm taking this from Andrew Tanenbaum). --Maru  (talk) Contribs 00:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty certain it was Unics, no e -- that's what most of the sources cite, including the Jargon File IIRC. The accepted etymology is indeed a pun on Multics -- if you add an e to the word it has no obvious meaning anymore. Haikupoet 04:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no doubt that the pun on Multics was intentional, but the pun on eunuchs? Qwertyus 10:05, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  UNICS and eunuchs 

message: I added HP's HP-UX to the list of major commercial Unixes still surviving in the 2000s, since it consistently ranks in the top three shares of the server market (along with AIX and Solaris). I also re-ordered the list of manufacturers alphabetically to avoid the appearance of bias. Unfortunately, that puts HP first in the list, and I currently work for HP, which is problematic. Perhaps they should be listed alphabetically by OS name (putting AIX first), or ranked according to factual data such as creation date. The whole paragraph has NPOV problems, lacking both sources and objective criteria for the surviving OSes. Bradd 23:29, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major commercial Unixes in the 2000s 

message: Having read this whole talk page, I'm left wondering if it wouldn't be better to rename UNIX architecture as Unix architecture and expand it where it is. If not, then I definitely think there needs to be an explanation somewhere of what attributes Unix-like systems have that make them like Unix. Is it the file system? Is it the kernel/user space distinction? Is it pipes? Is it all of the above and more? Tarheelcoxn 00:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think for now that'd be fine.  We should probably get stuff organized in this article before we try and branch out. ¦ Reisio 13:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Rename it as what?  Sorry, that didn't make sense to me, can you explain?  Thanks.  Georgewilliamherbert 21:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Rename UNIX architecture as Unix architecture. Tarheelcoxn 01:33, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unix architecture 

message: Comparing the UNIX article with the UNIX course book from my school, I have seen that the programming language B is not mentioned in this article.
It was a language invented by Thompson at Bell labs (before 1974), written not to have to re-write UNIX from scratch in assembler every time a new machine came out. B was a simplification of the BCPL language, which was based on CPL.
:By the way, I don't believe this is true. I've never read it anywhere. It might be true for C. Qwertyus 11:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See B programming language, C programming language. Qwertyus 08:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: B led to C, and Unix was rewritten in C. But AFAIK, no significant part of the OS was ever written in B. IMHO it's not important enough to mention it explicitly here. Qwertyus 11:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  mentioning the B programming language 

message: The chart shows SunOS as a descendant of BSD.  This is correct.
But then it shows Solaris as an another BSD derivative.  This is not correct, Solaris was a switch from BSD family to the System V family.
A chart is harder to change than some text, thus I leave this note here. 70.23.236.53 15:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The chart is wrong 

message: 'Unices' has a long and storied history, especially amongst those who are fond of Latinate pluralization. The only exception for ix -> ices I can find in English is 'fix/infix'; I don't see why 'unix' should be another exception. --Dogcow
:Well, many during the 1980s insisted that while the plural of Unix was Unices, the plural of VAX was VAXen.  Consistency wasn't the point, humor was.  IIRC, Armando Stettner was one of the leading proponents of this.  -- Gnetwerker 07:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let a thousand pluralizations bloom. 

message: A previous edit (reverted, not by me) tried to make the point that Unix was a "kernel".  I disagreed, and wrote a section to prove it.  Perhaps over-long, but as Mark Twain said, I didn't have time to make it shorter. Comments here, of course.  -- Gnetwerker 08:11, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Components

message: I was WP:BOLD and moved the long list of Unix versions out of (essentially) the middle of the article, and moved the important Impact section somewhat higher.  (I did not change or delete any actual text). What I would really like to do is move most of the list of Unix versions to a separate article and shorten the See Also section.  I think the article is overly long and structured in a cumbersome way.  Comments? -- Gnetwerker 08:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Length, Section Order, New Pages

message: RE: 
Because saying UNIX wasn't design as to what was claimed. And Plan 9 was. Reverting back. ems 19:03, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, one of the primary goals of V6 UNIX and beyond was portability.  Plan 9 came along after OS portability was old hat, and while it was portable, this was not a primary goal.  Please don't revert that change without further explanation of your position. -- Gnetwerker 20:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't make a fool of yourself, UNIX was never designed to be any of the things claimed. Most of those came in the rewrite to C, and not in the designing peirod. The design ideas helped alot for portablity, but not totally (hence making UNIX's problems "to deep"). Maybe we should look up the word design? ems 08:31, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please try not to be rude and to actually read the answer.  Dennis Ritchie, wanting the OS to be portable, started rewriting it beginning in 1971, first in a descendant of BCPL ("B"), then in C.  The notion that an OS is "designed" as a unitary idea is an idea that could only be held by someone who has never designed one.  In any case, one of the original Unix papers emphasized its portability, and this document from 1976 also confirms it.  And, in terms of looking like a fool, I was using and writing OS code for Unix in 1977 -- were you? -- Gnetwerker 08:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I fail to see how it is being rude. I just said don't be foolish. I never called you a fool or anything. UNIX was designed in the late 60s, the foundermental design was set since then.  By the late 70s most of the Bell Labs researchers (Ken, Dennis, Rob, David, etc) already started working on rebuilding UNIX from the ground up. Ritchie noted that the Plan 9 system is not based on the UNIX system, which pioneered multitasking computing on small machines. "It's reworked from the ground up, and it has no UNIX code," he said.  He added that Plan 9 is not a successor to the UNIX system, which pioneered real-time, multitasking computing. "It's a different system, not a reworking of the UNIX operating system, and it has no UNIX code."  ems 12:16, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: This last point is wrong. There was internal release since the 80s. ems 12:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Indeed it was portable, and was ported. But it still didn't have portability, and certainly wasn't designed to be like the article claims. Also portablity is the only incorrect statement, most of them are incorrect for UNIX, but true for Plan 9 and mordern Unixs. ems 12:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Indeed, huh? What the hell was I thinking. ems 18:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: If you had read my previous comments more carefully, you would have seen that I cited this article above, in my comment from 08:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portability (was "Why?")