[ Thanks to Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]
“After the failure of time-sharing system Multics, the
two gentlemen needed a computer and an operating system to run
Space Travel, an early computer game. Since there was a now-famous
“little-used DEC PDP-7” mini-computer at Bell Labs, they took it
over and start programming the game into the computer using paper
tape. Of course, to run the game, they also needed a file system,
some way of handling computer processes. They used the lessons of
Multics to create an operating system that, in time, became Unix.“Today, we often see Unix as an operating system on the way out.
I don’t see that at all. Yes, specific versions of Unix, such as
Sun Solaris aren’t doing well, and no one believes that HP’s HP-UX
or IBM’s AIX are going to reclaim the server operating system
market from Linux or Windows Server. As for SCO’s OpenServer and
UnixWare, they’re both all but dead, thanks to SCO’s focus on
fighting with the Linux companies. It’s a pity, since both of SCO’s
Unix operating systems are actually good systems.”