[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“Everyone says UNIX was great because it was portable, or it was
great because of its pipes, etc. However, nearly every significant
piece of UNIX had been explored in other OSes or published in
research papers prior to its incorporation in UNIX as we know
it.”
“UNIX was singular because it was the first OS to bring
essentially that entire body of work into one operating system, not
because of any specific feature. … The question then is, why is
no one doing that now?”
“Although Linux has a very strong culture supporting it, there
is no filetyping at all within Linux, and as a result, any content
management (including basic file management) must be done on an
application level. Also, the majority of the GUI applications
available for Linux build their GUIs based on what is popular,
i.e., Windows, not what research has shown is most effective.”