What a weird view of the history of UNIX. Focused on many things that are more niche and missing many major innovations that came from UNIX. Berkeley UNIX gave UNIX TCP/IP networking and virtual memory. SunOS gave us NFS and NIS, the Network File System and Network Information Service. NFS is still in widespread use. SUSE Linux was and still is a niche flavor of Linux. Cray's glory days are before their computers ran any flavor of UNIX. By the time Cray started building cluster based super computers, they were just one of many vendors doing the same think. Much of the cluster work originated with Project Beowulf. You missed the original application of UNIX was as text formatting system for laying out Bell Labs Systems Journal articles. Remember "troff"? The initial commercial success of UNIX was due the DARPA standardizing on VAX 780 computers running Berkeley UNIX with it's TCP/IP software for their US Defense Department research projects. DARPA was tired of buying different expensive proprietary Mainframe Computers for different research projects and then having to buy and additional proprietary Mainframe if they wanted to share research tools with another project at a different location.
Indeed. As with most things the first challenge was deciding how to limit the scope within the constraints of the assignment while keeping my audience in mind. As for the original application of UNIX, the fine gentlemen over at the Vintage Unix Enthusiasts group on FB completely eviscerated my first draft during what I now refer to as my, "peer-review" period lol. But yes, you bring up some wonderful points!
Also don't forget Illumos, the kernel spinoff from when Sun open-sourced Solaris and was formerly known as OpenSolaris. Loved the video! Wow - didn't know about the proliferation of the video games on the PDP-7.
@MF Nickster it's the same storyline of corporate greed. All of the Big Pharma take public-funded research, patent them barring everyone else from using it and sell the drugs they produce using the research at 10,000% markup! Leeches all of them!
@@ehowton There are way too many important things to cover. I was surprised Unix 6 and PWB (Programmer's Work Bench) was not mentioned, there was also a subsequent UNIX 7 and PWB 2). The other little known but what I considered seminal event was Dr. Bob McClure being the first to port UNIX to a desktop microprocessor system (A Zilog Z8000, Dr. McClure was also the first one to write a C compiler for a non PDP system, a Data General Nova). The machine was built for the company Onyx, Scott McNealy was over at Onyx at the time and of course, he became one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.
You forgot Digital Equipment Corporation, at it’s day it was the second largest computer company after IBM. DEC had their BSD system 4.2 allied Ultrix that ran on the VAX platform and MIPS R3000 series, later they produced a system V release called OSF1 for their Alpha chip.
The BSD variants are my favorite Unix descendant notably FreeBSD and OpenBSD. You did mention NetBSD, but you forgot to mention DragonflyBSD which is a fork of FreeBSD. It's a smaller project, but extremely capable and has it's own filesystem called the Hammer filesystem.
Wow! I had no idea. I knew they were still supporting 11 but didn't know they were actively developing Solaris. I wonder who Oracle plans to sell it to lol. Thanks!
@@ehowton You!! That is Oracle will sell you a license for their latest Solaris....just like Microsoft will for their Windows. You should note there was a fork of Solaris branched out from when Solaris was open-sourced. I can't remember the name but it starts with the letter I....so if you want Solaris, but don't want to pay for it, that is also an option.
Fun video! Thanks for posting! In college, I used SunOS. Once I started working professional, I got to use HP-UX, Solaris (on SPARC), AIX and z/OS. We had access to "OpenEdition" but I never used it. :)
UNIX/Linux has been a significant part of my life. Started out with a SunOS shell account in the early 90s, quickly installed Linux... parlayed that experience into a career as a UNIX admin, doing work with many flavors... AIX, HP-UX, DEC, IRIX. Thanks.
I got my start with HP/UX 9.05 and have since touched everything except DEC; I have a line on one of those but my own AIX box still alludes me. They did however just release the hobbyist license for openVMS 9 for x86 so I hope to start playing with that soon :D
This seems an odd view of the history of Unix. Most of the the early proprietary versions of Unix - the ones installed on expensive workstations designed for high-end users - faded away long ago. What's interesting about Unix is how it morphed into Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android - thereby becoming a core part of devices used by billions of people. One of the interesting chapters in that history, not mentioned in the video, is role of Steve Jobs and NeXT Inc. in pushing Unix-based computing forward. Another is the role of DEC minicomputers in early development of Unix. (I began using Unix at UC Berkeley in 1980. I began using a Mac computer in 1984. One of my colleagues got one of the early NeXT cubes. Other colleagues used Unix workstations from Sun, etc. I was surrounded by Unix throughout the 1980s and continuously thereafter. In 2023 all of my computing devices have still Unix under the hood.)
Would love to have played with NeXT! I wistfully see them on eBay from time to time. Alas. And yes! Several commenters seem to have their own, personalized view of the history of unix as they've experienced it so can only assume mine is equally as personalized and unique as well.
I logged on to my first Unix shell in 1986, an NCR tower to which 32 terminals had been attached running System V. Coming from an IBM system 36/38 background (and Microsoft of course) I saw what could be. It was a great career, after NCR, I ran a national network of 400 terminals in 30 cities running Burroughs BTOS systems hosting a Unix guest, my first VM experience. I learned to repair file systems using fsdb, which no one else could do. From there to a SCO Open Desktop network running TVP/IP, replacing a mainframe app. After grad school to a Sun shop right at the beginning of the commercialism of the nascent Internet. I never really saw the winners in the game being a broke father of four just trying to put dinner on the table but Unix has been very very good to me, easy engaging work for exceptionally good money. Today I have some Macs and Linux boxes, and one (Gag) Windows box for a game I never play. It’s an impossible operating environment.
Thank you for mentioning Mac OS X which, as you mentioned, is indeed a flavor of UNIX at its core. That is probably the core reason MAC OS X is so much more robust and secure than Windows can ever be. And, having that command line terminal that gets you right into UNIX on the Mac is a true gift for the very few who explore it.
@MF Nickster Filename extensions never bothered me that much. They have always existed even before OS X but, were hidden. To this day, Mac users rarely if ever need to concern themselves with them. The same is true with the Terminal; you really never need to access it unless you wan't to specifically do something in it or, are a developer who needs to dig into it in the process of developing an app. Scientific research apps and deep-diving into esoteric networking stuff may also find the Terminal much more expedient than working with a GUI. For some system-level stuff, working in the Terminal can also be faster and more eficiant but, for the vast majority of users, even some pretty high-level, sophisticated users, will never have to access it.
@MF Nickster True. I do vaguely remember dealing with those issues back when OS X was first introduced. I turned on file extensions visibility and got used to using file extensions. Wow, I had completely forgotten about ResEdit. Those were the days, huh?
thats why I have stuck to MacOS for the last 15 years or so. Unix that I learned in college mostly works. In the few places it doesn't like networking it's because Apple did something specific, or because the shell I learned in college was different than Bash. Which is funny because now MacOS is ZSH.
I sometimes wish Apple will release the latest version of Darwin as a stand alone minimal UNIX OS. Perhaps they will do something like that when they reenter the server blade market. Shipping them with a neat Darwin and not the full consumer macOS might enable them to price aggressively while not worrying about cannibalising sales from their consumer macs.
@@mfnickster9754 The open version of Darwin is old though. The current version of Darwin is like 20+ and the open version was < version 10. It doesn't have to be open source to be a publicly available unix though.
While at at&t, I used unix system 5 which was on their 3b2, pdp11/70 systems. I really liked the command line interface as compared to gui's. Interesting video. I study unix even now that I'm retired. Thank you for this video.
Rob Pike complained about how UNIX history leaves out real UNIX in favor of commercial products: "I consider v8 v9 v10 to be worth of attention, even influential, but to hear this list talk about it - or discussions just about anywhere else - you'd think they never existed." -- Rob Pike
I've also been messing around with Chimera Linux over the past few months. I will admit it's very cool (BSD userland, LLVM/Clang, musl libc - all on top of the Linux kernel), but I'm afraid it's so niche that it will also go the way of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.
I've always been in love with risc procs. also i was 90s gamer they were in at the time. i had a fascination with old powerpc archs cuz they risc. but alas i grew up in an x86 Windows/Dos world. it was the only affordable option as a kid. then i was introduced to Linux running on x86 and took a fascination with that. seeing these platforms disappear for a while was sad. home computers stopped using risc chips, and ms dominated the market. then one day i heard about osx and it was running on risc chips. i was tickled pink to see Unix finally become a consumer OS. i think every one was, even the Linux geeks-even if they denied it. 8D then apple introduced ios with iPhones and i had instant future shock. a unix kernel running in the palm of my hand on risc archs. i still get a novelty out of using mobile devices like old iphones(jobs era), android devices. risc, linux, unix has finally dominated a corner of the computer market. and that's just cool to me.
I just got my first M-series, the M2 Pro; System on a Chip. The architecture is fascinating, and its performance mind-blowing. An ARM processor utilizing RISC-V chips as co-processors. I can't wait to see where they go with that!
@Eric Howton I very much enjoyed the content of this video, as I love computing history. Well done. I would submit, though, that the "shaking" of the text and background was extremely distracting. At one point, I had considered not finishing the remaining portion of the video, but I finished watching it, though with my laptop's lid nearly closed. Please continue making excellent content for your channel, though if you were to look into alternative/less distracting video effects, that would make me eternally grateful. Many thanks, Paul Williams.
I understand, and thank you for your feedback. I used video templates to make the video because making my own templates is just another project I don't know if I have the time or brain power for, and most of the "tech" templates include the "glitch" effect by default - at least the ones from the sites I can afford.
You show a picture of an IBM zEnterprise 114. AIX didn't run on that box but there were plenty of SuSE and REd Hat images running on z/VM on those machines. I looked after Linux on zSeries machines for years.
I took every photograph in the presentation which was not AI generated, and sadly do not have my own AIX hardware in which to shoot *sadface* but I did grab a pretty awesome pic of that SystemZ at SUSEcon in 2012 :D
I thought in JP it was a Mac on the desktop but the screen showed an SGI interface? Great quick history of UNIX! I love the final note regarding MacOS! I still have my NeXT stored away but bring it out from time to time to display my geekness!
So that was fun! I’d always missed those! On Nedrey’s station he’s got two Macintosh Quadra 700’s he used [for his programming] (Mac OS 8.0?) while the SGI Monitor to his right is connected to an Iris Crimson; This is what Lex sits down to when using SGI’s 3D File System Navigator to turn the park systems back on. There’s also an Indigo Elan as the weather monitor at another station, and a handful of CM-5 supercomputers presumably running on SPARC processors! wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_mac_quadra700.png wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_sgi_iris_crimson.png wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_sgi_FSN.png wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_sgi_indgo_elan.png
Great video! I really like your cool retro term config, any chance you can tell me what background and foreground colors are? There is also an option to export the profile as JSON so you could upload that to pastebin or something like that too
wilddamntexan.com/kids/CRT_Settings.json Thanks! The other console I used was the now-defunct Cathode for macOS. I don't know why it was removed from the App Store but I kept a copy of it and it works across both Intel and Apple silicon.
@@ehowton Thanks! it seems this is one of the default configurations though, i should have been more clear, i was talking about the cyan on dark blue one, when you were showing IRIX, was that on Cathode, or is that CRT too?
Nope. Same reason people ask why those same effects are DOS-based and not UNIX-based: It was what I could find. Most of the "tech" templates use, "glitch" and show DOS commands (at least on the site I can afford - Adobe Stock may have them, but I don't pay for that). Now, were I smarter, I could make my own After Effect templates! Alas.
According to my blog I installed Slackware 15 March of last year but as I recall that's as far as I got. I know some people who swear by Slackware to this day! (ehowton.livejournal.com/890954.html)
From what I understand Apple's OS is the most POSIX compliant OS in existence or at least it was 10 years ago. Is this true? Was it ever? Thank you for the interesting presentation. It is very interesting to see the evolution and adoption of these technologies as we move forward. The idea that the first Unix developers had to write their own assembler, file system and so on is truly inspiring. We really are standing on the shoulders of giants
I believe OSX had a late start to POSIX compliance. I could be mis-remembering, but their earlier BSD-based Darwin kernel was not, it was only after they incorporated more SYSV stuff - somewhere around 10.5 IIRC.
Nice video. I don't know why you kept showing DOS commands in graphics overlays. DOS is not at all Unix. Also, I don't know why you showed a terminal program and window decorations which looked like they came from MacOS. MacOS is based on Unix, but is not Unix. You could have shown the Unix "ls" and "uname" command listings instead of the DOS commands, and a KDE or Gnome terminal instead of a MacOS one, for example. Also, although AIX is IBM's version of Unix, it typically does not run on the System z computer you showed. Instead AIX runs on IBM System p.
The DOS commands were packaged into an After Effects template I used. Believe you me, if I were talented enough to also do those myself, I would have - and if there are actual *unix* terminal templates for After Effects that are as eye-catching, I didn't find them. Then again, I don't pay for Adobe Stock, so who knows. And yes, I could have done a great many things, but macOS suited my purpose just fine for easily grabbing remote access vids. And I don't think any of my linux VMs will work with the M-architecture chip anyway, having recently upgraded from the i7 Mac, so I need to figure that out at well at some point. Very nearly all of the images in the video are either my own, of my own hardware, or created with Stable Diffusion. As AIX is one of the few boxes I don't have, I grabbed the next best thing, a photo I took of the SystemZ at SUSEcon'12 in Orlando - so good eye, and thanks for watching!
@@MartinMenge OK. Great. Let's take an open source MacOS GUI application program, and recompile it to run on a different Unix platform. Simple, right? No, it is not. So many MacOS-proprietary APIs. That is my point. MacOS is not Unix.
@@MartinMenge I am saying that I worked for a company which sold Unix workstations and servers. Apple was never considered one of our competitors. I would imagine that no company which was considering buying Unix computers said, well, let's consider Apple. By your standards which you try to impose on me and everyone else, Android is just another Linux distro. At least Android runs the Linux kernel. MacOS does not even run a typical Unix kernel. Lol.
Don't forget Doug McIlroy... Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie might have done the actual programming but in many ways, Doug was "the brains of the outfit". Your slides could have been better researched... there's lots of DOS and PC-BIOS screenshots in there.
All slides outside After Effects were my own photographs, many of my own systems, or AI generated from my own prompts in Stable Diffusion. The only x86 stuff I’m aware of in there is one upside down Pentium and the openbsd VM logging into Solaris 10 x86 (my SPARC box was down at the time of this project, but my HP/UX box and Irix box were both up). Thanks for watching!
@@ehowton >>"... or AI generated from my own prompts in Stable Diffusion." How much of the *script* was AI generated? It didn't mention some of the more important things about UNIX that you'd expect, mentioned other things that aren't very relevant overall, and didn't mention where Linux came from, implying it was somehow just another variant of UNIX.
@@ehowton Interesting response. You didn't answer, how much of the script was AI-generated, so I assume at least some of it was. I hope at some point there will be a requirement to disclose that.
@@Lea_D. I apologize. None (0%) of the script, text, notes, research, or paper was generated by AI. I only used Stable Diffusion for the images I did not take myself, excepting the BSD daemon - I believe it was the only image I download from the web. I was trying to convey that any errors or foibles or misunderstandings were my responsibility entirely.
Good video and good memories. I love Plan 9 because UNIX (not kidding) ;-) I found Solaris the most better "modern" UNIX in the early 2000s but I really think the true spirit of UNIX is now in the *BSD flavours (aka OpenBSD or FreeBSD). Even Microsoft was in the UNIX market with Xenix, at the time. We're missing the point with "modern" UNIX clone (aka Linux, which is not UNIX) in the current times.
@@editingsecrets I tried to explain that Linux sucks compared to UNIX. I have no problems with modern UNIX but with Linux (you known, systemd, several sound frameworks, poor drivers, fragmentation, and so).
The rest of the documentary sounds really good, even though I guess a 10-minute video would never be enough to cover the whole history of Unix. In any case, I guess any history/tech enthusiast would have rectified by themselves regarding the date. Keep it going!
ummmm... You include a few things that are debatable, and you leave a few out. As one example ~ you mention at the end that one of these UNIXs is still maintained and it is POSIX compliant. This is true, but RHEL is also POSIX complaint and almost any other Linux system that wanted to go through and make the necessary adjustments, could also be POSIX compliant. It's not really all that hard, it's just tedious and exacting. POSIX is a very detailed standard, very rigorous, but what it really asks, is "Am I UNIX?" Peers in the US military network, must be POSIX compliant. Windows cannot be made POSIX compliant ~ not even close. But Linux can be, and RHEL for one, is POSIX compliant. That's why IBM paid US $37 billion some years back to own RedHat. Another detail, I saw an interview done in the late '90s, of Richie, Kernigan and Thomson, and the interviewer asked the 3 what they though of Linux. He was obviously surprised when all three laughed and said it was the best UNIX yet. That was clearly not what he was angling for. The men who invented UNIX are (were) all rather big fans of Linus Torvalds. As far as they were concerned, Linux was just another flavour of UNIX ~ this one written (slightly revised) to evade copyright laws.
Limiting the scope (for me) is sometimes the most difficult part of a presentation of this length especially with such a rich history to cover while keeping my target audience in mind - and there are certainly many things I would do differently now freed from the constraints of time (not to mention cleaning up a handful of mistakes I made in the script). That's lol about Ritchie, et. al.; thanks for watching!
"written (slightly revised) to evade copyright laws." Actually Linus has clearly said it was to learn about operating system development in a from-scratch process rather than using Tannenbaum's system as a given starting point.
It's a dam sight easier if you do however. If I was forced to use Windows to manage the hundreds of servers that make up the HPC system at work I would be refreshing my CV pronto.
@@ericwelsh4853 Loads of ways. So random bit of proprietary software has a graphical installer. Me on a Linux desktop can just SSH in and forward the display to my local machine. I can have focus follow mouse and middle button paste (how people manage with click to focus I have no idea). I can just randomly mount file systems on my servers with sshfs. I could go on and on. Sure you can kludge all this on a Windows machine or a Mac but it is a kludge. But hey I have only been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for over 30 years, and manage hundreds of Linux servers in an HPC system so what do I know.
Very few people remember to include that point in a documentary about computer operating system development in the 1970s. If not for you, it would have been totally overlooked in discussions of the compiler and CPU architectures.
I took all of the photographs and most are of my own systems and sadly, (as of yet) still do not have an AIX. That SystemZ IBM brought to SUSECon'12 however, made a fantastic inclusion from a visual standpoint, despite perhaps being a poor example. Sometimes you just have to work with what you have (and I'll bet 100% of the CIS students missed it lol).
It's as much a history of UNIX as anything, your declarative statement notwithstanding. I recorded the decades in which I was a part, and did my best to encapsulate the parts in which I wasn't around as an introduction into the mandatory 10-minute limit. It sounds like you would've approached it differently, which is certainly your prerogative.
Total BS comment. The chain of original work from the Bell Labs guys is indisputible. It was not a knock-off or clone or anything else, and used a lot of original and highly ingenious ideas.
It's based off FreeBSD, not Linux. Remember, Apple likes closed sourcing their software and the GPL would prevent that. The BSD license is much more forgiving because it's basically a gift for all to use in any way.
Darwin is not the kernel. It is the whole base OS and can be a standalone OS (often used as such in-house). It is basically like base GNU/Linux that different linux distros are built on top of. The Kernel Darwin uses is XNU, which stands for X is not Unix, which is ironic because it is UNIX (any "distro" that Apple has submitted to the Open Group with Darwin as its base without restrictions on top of Darwin, has been registered as UNIX 3).
Not based on Linux at all, but on BSD from Apple's acquisition of NeXT. Darwin is Apple's subsequent release of a portion of the non-GUI layer of the system for free.
@@editingsecrets You are right, Darwin is the whole Unix layer (a whole standalone Unix OS) on its own but only Darwin up to version 8 was released on its own. We are on version 22 already. I think they might release Darwin as a standalone OS again if they decide to enter the server blade market again. Sell the chipsets for cheap without the whole macOS so that they don't cannibalise their consumer/professional workstation market.
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My cousin 3 times removed was Alexander Graham Bell, so I can't help but only use Arch Linux today and have an utter fascination with everything UNIX.
Your cousin is Alexander Graham Bell so you choose to use a Unix clone?
@@JoeyGarcia I prefer to use the most bleeding edge of software.
@@mf4071 fair enough! It's true, the actual Unix descendants are slower moving when it comes to adopting or incorporating new tech.
Now there's someone who's found his true calling
Lmao😂😂😂
What a weird view of the history of UNIX. Focused on many things that are more niche and missing many major innovations that came from UNIX. Berkeley UNIX gave UNIX TCP/IP networking and virtual memory. SunOS gave us NFS and NIS, the Network File System and Network Information Service. NFS is still in widespread use. SUSE Linux was and still is a niche flavor of Linux. Cray's glory days are before their computers ran any flavor of UNIX. By the time Cray started building cluster based super computers, they were just one of many vendors doing the same think. Much of the cluster work originated with Project Beowulf.
You missed the original application of UNIX was as text formatting system for laying out Bell Labs Systems Journal articles. Remember "troff"?
The initial commercial success of UNIX was due the DARPA standardizing on VAX 780 computers running Berkeley UNIX with it's TCP/IP software for their US Defense Department research projects. DARPA was tired of buying different expensive proprietary Mainframe Computers for different research projects and then having to buy and additional proprietary Mainframe if they wanted to share research tools with another project at a different location.
Indeed. As with most things the first challenge was deciding how to limit the scope within the constraints of the assignment while keeping my audience in mind. As for the original application of UNIX, the fine gentlemen over at the Vintage Unix Enthusiasts group on FB completely eviscerated my first draft during what I now refer to as my, "peer-review" period lol. But yes, you bring up some wonderful points!
And I can't BELIEVE I missed NFS!!
Also don't forget Illumos, the kernel spinoff from when Sun open-sourced Solaris and was formerly known as OpenSolaris. Loved the video! Wow - didn't know about the proliferation of the video games on the PDP-7.
@MF Nickster it's the same storyline of corporate greed. All of the Big Pharma take public-funded research, patent them barring everyone else from using it and sell the drugs they produce using the research at 10,000% markup! Leeches all of them!
@@ehowton There are way too many important things to cover. I was surprised Unix 6 and PWB (Programmer's Work Bench) was not mentioned, there was also a subsequent UNIX 7 and PWB 2). The other little known but what I considered seminal event was Dr. Bob McClure being the first to port UNIX to a desktop microprocessor system (A Zilog Z8000, Dr. McClure was also the first one to write a C compiler for a non PDP system, a Data General Nova). The machine was built for the company Onyx, Scott McNealy was over at Onyx at the time and of course, he became one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.
So not only AIX is still developed today. but all BSDs including MacOS.
You forgot Digital Equipment Corporation, at it’s day it was the second largest computer company after IBM. DEC had their BSD system 4.2 allied Ultrix that ran on the VAX platform and MIPS R3000 series, later they produced a system V release called OSF1 for their Alpha chip.
I always thought Sun had such a clever logo.
The BSD variants are my favorite Unix descendant notably FreeBSD and OpenBSD. You did mention NetBSD, but you forgot to mention DragonflyBSD which is a fork of FreeBSD. It's a smaller project, but extremely capable and has it's own filesystem called the Hammer filesystem.
I've heard of it but wasn't familiar with it. Awesome to hear there's a new fs out there!
HP, SUN and SGI all started out on Motorola 68x00 CPUs with their Unix flavors. HP-PA, SPARC and MIPS only came later.
At 8:05
"Only AIX is being developed today...."
I am unsure about HP-UX, but I know for a fact that Solaris is still being developed.....
Wow! I had no idea. I knew they were still supporting 11 but didn't know they were actively developing Solaris. I wonder who Oracle plans to sell it to lol. Thanks!
@@ehowton
You!!
That is Oracle will sell you a license for their latest Solaris....just like Microsoft will for their Windows.
You should note there was a fork of Solaris branched out from when Solaris was open-sourced. I can't remember the name but it starts with the letter I....so if you want Solaris, but don't want to pay for it, that is also an option.
Illumos
Excellent. TY!
I've been with UNIX since the days of PDP11-5. Visited languages and hardware of many types as a result.
Long Live UNIX! 👍
Wow, all my professional infancy and teenage years in 10 minutes ! And I learned so much, great job @Eric !
Fun video! Thanks for posting! In college, I used SunOS. Once I started working professional, I got to use HP-UX, Solaris (on SPARC), AIX and z/OS. We had access to "OpenEdition" but I never used it. :)
UNIX/Linux has been a significant part of my life. Started out with a SunOS shell account in the early 90s, quickly installed Linux... parlayed that experience into a career as a UNIX admin, doing work with many flavors... AIX, HP-UX, DEC, IRIX. Thanks.
I got my start with HP/UX 9.05 and have since touched everything except DEC; I have a line on one of those but my own AIX box still alludes me. They did however just release the hobbyist license for openVMS 9 for x86 so I hope to start playing with that soon :D
@@ehowton Haha I saw that... I had to use VMS in college. Wonky. I applied for the hobby license but haven't heard anything back.
This seems an odd view of the history of Unix. Most of the the early proprietary versions of Unix - the ones installed on expensive workstations designed for high-end users - faded away long ago. What's interesting about Unix is how it morphed into Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android - thereby becoming a core part of devices used by billions of people. One of the interesting chapters in that history, not mentioned in the video, is role of Steve Jobs and NeXT Inc. in pushing Unix-based computing forward. Another is the role of DEC minicomputers in early development of Unix. (I began using Unix at UC Berkeley in 1980. I began using a Mac computer in 1984. One of my colleagues got one of the early NeXT cubes. Other colleagues used Unix workstations from Sun, etc. I was surrounded by Unix throughout the 1980s and continuously thereafter. In 2023 all of my computing devices have still Unix under the hood.)
Would love to have played with NeXT! I wistfully see them on eBay from time to time. Alas. And yes! Several commenters seem to have their own, personalized view of the history of unix as they've experienced it so can only assume mine is equally as personalized and unique as well.
I logged on to my first Unix shell in 1986, an NCR tower to which 32 terminals had been attached running System V. Coming from an IBM system 36/38 background (and Microsoft of course) I saw what could be. It was a great career, after NCR, I ran a national network of 400 terminals in 30 cities running Burroughs BTOS systems hosting a Unix guest, my first VM experience. I learned to repair file systems using fsdb, which no one else could do. From there to a SCO Open Desktop network running TVP/IP, replacing a mainframe app. After grad school to a Sun shop right at the beginning of the commercialism of the nascent Internet. I never really saw the winners in the game being a broke father of four just trying to put dinner on the table but Unix has been very very good to me, easy engaging work for exceptionally good money. Today I have some Macs and Linux boxes, and one (Gag) Windows box for a game I never play. It’s an impossible operating environment.
This is one hell of a resume
Where did that "mad men" style commercial illustration come from? It was awesome.
Stable Diffusion: wcobystyle (AtomPunkStyleSD15:1.0) (masterpiece:1.5) (painting:1.1) (best quality) (detailed) (intricate) (8k) (HDR) (wallpaper) (cinematic lighting) (sharp focus) retro vintage datacenter
Well done! I loved that little gotcha at the end that shows to the world that Apple runs on Unix.
Short and sweet. Thank you!
Wait what? so the SUN from THAT Sun Microsystem used to be part of Standford University? now that's interesting, i had no idea.
Thank you for mentioning Mac OS X which, as you mentioned, is indeed a flavor of UNIX at its core. That is probably the core reason MAC OS X is so much more robust and secure than Windows can ever be. And, having that command line terminal that gets you right into UNIX on the Mac is a true gift for the very few who explore it.
@MF Nickster Filename extensions never bothered me that much. They have always existed even before OS X but, were hidden. To this day, Mac users rarely if ever need to concern themselves with them. The same is true with the Terminal; you really never need to access it unless you wan't to specifically do something in it or, are a developer who needs to dig into it in the process of developing an app. Scientific research apps and deep-diving into esoteric networking stuff may also find the Terminal much more expedient than working with a GUI. For some system-level stuff, working in the Terminal can also be faster and more eficiant but, for the vast majority of users, even some pretty high-level, sophisticated users, will never have to access it.
@MF Nickster True. I do vaguely remember dealing with those issues back when OS X was first introduced. I turned on file extensions visibility and got used to using file extensions. Wow, I had completely forgotten about ResEdit. Those were the days, huh?
thats why I have stuck to MacOS for the last 15 years or so. Unix that I learned in college mostly works. In the few places it doesn't like networking it's because Apple did something specific, or because the shell I learned in college was different than Bash.
Which is funny because now MacOS is ZSH.
I sometimes wish Apple will release the latest version of Darwin as a stand alone minimal UNIX OS. Perhaps they will do something like that when they reenter the server blade market. Shipping them with a neat Darwin and not the full consumer macOS might enable them to price aggressively while not worrying about cannibalising sales from their consumer macs.
@@mfnickster9754 The open version of Darwin is old though. The current version of Darwin is like 20+ and the open version was < version 10. It doesn't have to be open source to be a publicly available unix though.
The MIPS processor was developed by MIPS Computer Systems, not SGI.
MIPS processors were used by several companies, including SGI and DEC.
Yes! I forgot that. Didn't they partner (for lack of a better word) with NEC for manufacturing or parts? I don't recall off the top of my head.
While at at&t, I used unix system 5 which was on their 3b2, pdp11/70 systems. I really liked the command line interface as compared to gui's. Interesting video. I study unix even now that I'm retired. Thank you for this video.
What a wonderful perspective to have been on the ground floor!
@@ehowton yes, these systems were quite interesting.
Have you ever tinkered with a raspberry pi? You can have zillions of Linux distributions
@@nosuchthing8 actually no. But I've thought about it recently but haven't had alot of opportunity lately.
Retired at 71 I still mostly use CLI, faster and scriptable, although today I mostly use Bard to write them for me in Python.
Rob Pike complained about how UNIX history leaves out real UNIX in favor of commercial products:
"I consider v8 v9 v10 to be worth of attention, even influential, but to hear this list talk about it - or discussions just about anywhere else - you'd think they never existed." -- Rob Pike
That Swedish speaking Finnish guy is somehow missing in this.
lol
I've been playing with Chimera Linux recently. Cool project. I hope it gets the same love from the community as it does from the creator.
I've also been messing around with Chimera Linux over the past few months. I will admit it's very cool (BSD userland, LLVM/Clang, musl libc - all on top of the Linux kernel), but I'm afraid it's so niche that it will also go the way of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.
Great video!! Your promotion at the end was mindblowing too haha keep it up!
kudos for the ascii Voyager on the belanna box :)
Beautiful video. Touches on so much great information that can branch off and be independently researched.
I've always been in love with risc procs. also i was 90s gamer they were in at the time. i had a fascination with old powerpc archs cuz they risc.
but alas i grew up in an x86 Windows/Dos world. it was the only affordable option as a kid.
then i was introduced to Linux running on x86 and took a fascination with that.
seeing these platforms disappear for a while was sad.
home computers stopped using risc chips, and ms dominated the market.
then one day i heard about osx and it was running on risc chips. i was tickled pink to see Unix finally become a consumer OS. i think every one was, even the Linux geeks-even if they denied it. 8D
then apple introduced ios with iPhones and i had instant future shock.
a unix kernel running in the palm of my hand on risc archs.
i still get a novelty out of using mobile devices like old iphones(jobs era), android devices.
risc, linux, unix has finally dominated a corner of the computer market.
and that's just cool to me.
I just got my first M-series, the M2 Pro; System on a Chip. The architecture is fascinating, and its performance mind-blowing. An ARM processor utilizing RISC-V chips as co-processors. I can't wait to see where they go with that!
Those AI generated photos are trippy.
At 8:45
Why did you forget to mention that most people could just pull out their cell phone, and have a Linux machine in their hand??
For better or worse, the focus of my presentation was the history of unix.
@Eric Howton I very much enjoyed the content of this video, as I love computing history. Well done. I would submit, though, that the "shaking" of the text and background was extremely distracting. At one point, I had considered not finishing the remaining portion of the video, but I finished watching it, though with my laptop's lid nearly closed. Please continue making excellent content for your channel, though if you were to look into alternative/less distracting video effects, that would make me eternally grateful. Many thanks, Paul Williams.
I understand, and thank you for your feedback. I used video templates to make the video because making my own templates is just another project I don't know if I have the time or brain power for, and most of the "tech" templates include the "glitch" effect by default - at least the ones from the sites I can afford.
The only thing that I know that Unix and Linux are operatingssystems and that I worked with those.
The AI images are an interesting idea but a bit unsettling.
lol indeed they are
You show a picture of an IBM zEnterprise 114. AIX didn't run on that box but there were plenty of SuSE and REd Hat images running on z/VM on those machines. I looked after Linux on zSeries machines for years.
I took every photograph in the presentation which was not AI generated, and sadly do not have my own AIX hardware in which to shoot *sadface* but I did grab a pretty awesome pic of that SystemZ at SUSEcon in 2012 :D
I thought in JP it was a Mac on the desktop but the screen showed an SGI interface? Great quick history of UNIX! I love the final note regarding MacOS! I still have my NeXT stored away but bring it out from time to time to display my geekness!
I’ll have to revisit the movie to verify and see if I can grab a still, thanks!
So that was fun! I’d always missed those! On Nedrey’s station he’s got two Macintosh Quadra 700’s he used [for his programming] (Mac OS 8.0?) while the SGI Monitor to his right is connected to an Iris Crimson; This is what Lex sits down to when using SGI’s 3D File System Navigator to turn the park systems back on.
There’s also an Indigo Elan as the weather monitor at another station, and a handful of CM-5 supercomputers presumably running on SPARC processors!
wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_mac_quadra700.png
wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_sgi_iris_crimson.png
wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_sgi_FSN.png
wilddamntexan.com/kids/jp_sgi_indgo_elan.png
So what did Linus Torvalds do with it. ?
Short but sweet. Good introduction
Excellent video! Thanks.
Appreciate it!
Great video!
I really like your cool retro term config, any chance you can tell me what background and foreground colors are? There is also an option to export the profile as JSON so you could upload that to pastebin or something like that too
wilddamntexan.com/kids/CRT_Settings.json
Thanks! The other console I used was the now-defunct Cathode for macOS. I don't know why it was removed from the App Store but I kept a copy of it and it works across both Intel and Apple silicon.
@@ehowton Thanks! it seems this is one of the default configurations though, i should have been more clear, i was talking about the cyan on dark blue one, when you were showing IRIX, was that on Cathode, or is that CRT too?
@@illegalcoding Ah, yes that would be Cathode:
photos.smugmug.com/Tech/i-4hr3XTn/0/2f488efa/X3/_DSF4923-X3.jpg
@@ehowton Ah, i see. Thank you though!
Great video, maybe adjust your mic a little but awesome video!
why do you use distortion effects in your video? to disturb and distract watchers?
Nope. Same reason people ask why those same effects are DOS-based and not UNIX-based: It was what I could find. Most of the "tech" templates use, "glitch" and show DOS commands (at least on the site I can afford - Adobe Stock may have them, but I don't pay for that). Now, were I smarter, I could make my own After Effect templates! Alas.
Cool treatment ! Thank you.
Tho u did leav out da Phreaking part.
;)
Cool
Hi...I would like to know...what do you think about Slackware 14.0? Thanks.
According to my blog I installed Slackware 15 March of last year but as I recall that's as far as I got. I know some people who swear by Slackware to this day! (ehowton.livejournal.com/890954.html)
You forgot FreeNAS/TrueNAS , probably the second most popular consumer Unix
Yep! I have one in my lab. Those run FreeBSD 😃
These guys have privileged minds, to create a such an operational environment that changed they way we see the world nowadays.
👍
This is the weirdest "History of Unix" video I've ever seen. I just don't know what to think of this. 😕
There's no rush - take as long as you need
good
❤
From what I understand Apple's OS is the most POSIX compliant OS in existence or at least it was 10 years ago. Is this true? Was it ever?
Thank you for the interesting presentation. It is very interesting to see the evolution and adoption of these technologies as we move forward. The idea that the first Unix developers had to write their own assembler, file system and so on is truly inspiring. We really are standing on the shoulders of giants
I believe OSX had a late start to POSIX compliance. I could be mis-remembering, but their earlier BSD-based Darwin kernel was not, it was only after they incorporated more SYSV stuff - somewhere around 10.5 IIRC.
@@ehowton Yes, it was 10.5. Also, AIX, HP-UX, OpenServer (nee SCO UNIX) , UnixWare, VxWorks and z/OS are current O/S certified as POSIX compliant.
OSX definitely isn't very POSIX compliant.
@@4cps777 It's actually certified UNIX compliant, which definitely makes it POSIX compliant.
@@robgrainger5314 Are you trying to add to my comment or refute it?
Nice video. I don't know why you kept showing DOS commands in graphics overlays. DOS is not at all Unix. Also, I don't know why you showed a terminal program and window decorations which looked like they came from MacOS. MacOS is based on Unix, but is not Unix. You could have shown the Unix "ls" and "uname" command listings instead of the DOS commands, and a KDE or Gnome terminal instead of a MacOS one, for example. Also, although AIX is IBM's version of Unix, it typically does not run on the System z computer you showed. Instead AIX runs on IBM System p.
The DOS commands were packaged into an After Effects template I used. Believe you me, if I were talented enough to also do those myself, I would have - and if there are actual *unix* terminal templates for After Effects that are as eye-catching, I didn't find them. Then again, I don't pay for Adobe Stock, so who knows. And yes, I could have done a great many things, but macOS suited my purpose just fine for easily grabbing remote access vids. And I don't think any of my linux VMs will work with the M-architecture chip anyway, having recently upgraded from the i7 Mac, so I need to figure that out at well at some point. Very nearly all of the images in the video are either my own, of my own hardware, or created with Stable Diffusion. As AIX is one of the few boxes I don't have, I grabbed the next best thing, a photo I took of the SystemZ at SUSEcon'12 in Orlando - so good eye, and thanks for watching!
macOS is not just based on Unix, it is literally a UNIX 3 certified product, along with HP-UX and AIX.
@@MartinMenge OK. Great. Let's take an open source MacOS GUI application program, and recompile it to run on a different Unix platform. Simple, right? No, it is not. So many MacOS-proprietary APIs. That is my point. MacOS is not Unix.
@@georgeh6856 So what you're telling me is that macOS does not conform to what YOU think Unix should be.
@@MartinMenge I am saying that I worked for a company which sold Unix workstations and servers. Apple was never considered one of our competitors. I would imagine that no company which was considering buying Unix computers said, well, let's consider Apple.
By your standards which you try to impose on me and everyone else, Android is just another Linux distro. At least Android runs the Linux kernel. MacOS does not even run a typical Unix kernel. Lol.
Don't forget Doug McIlroy... Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie might have done the actual programming but in many ways, Doug was "the brains of the outfit".
Your slides could have been better researched... there's lots of DOS and PC-BIOS screenshots in there.
All slides outside After Effects were my own photographs, many of my own systems, or AI generated from my own prompts in Stable Diffusion. The only x86 stuff I’m aware of in there is one upside down Pentium and the openbsd VM logging into Solaris 10 x86 (my SPARC box was down at the time of this project, but my HP/UX box and Irix box were both up). Thanks for watching!
@@ehowton >>"... or AI generated from my own prompts in Stable Diffusion."
How much of the *script* was AI generated? It didn't mention some of the more important things about UNIX that you'd expect, mentioned other things that aren't very relevant overall, and didn't mention where Linux came from, implying it was somehow just another variant of UNIX.
@@Lea_D. Anything missing, or vague, or uninteresting, or irrelevant was 100% me. Come to think of it, AI might have done a better job!
@@ehowton Interesting response. You didn't answer, how much of the script was AI-generated, so I assume at least some of it was. I hope at some point there will be a requirement to disclose that.
@@Lea_D. I apologize. None (0%) of the script, text, notes, research, or paper was generated by AI. I only used Stable Diffusion for the images I did not take myself, excepting the BSD daemon - I believe it was the only image I download from the web. I was trying to convey that any errors or foibles or misunderstandings were my responsibility entirely.
Well I am lacking now a Unix book that I bought, who stole that one ? Well eh ? Saskia F.J.H. van Houtert engineer/office-manager.
I swear it wasn't me!
Good video and good memories. I love Plan 9 because UNIX (not kidding) ;-)
I found Solaris the most better "modern" UNIX in the early 2000s but I really think the true spirit of UNIX is now in the *BSD flavours (aka OpenBSD or FreeBSD). Even Microsoft was in the UNIX market with Xenix, at the time. We're missing the point with "modern" UNIX clone (aka Linux, which is not UNIX) in the current times.
What do you see as the point we're missing? What's inadequate or insufficient in the BSDs, Linux, or Mac OS compared to brand-name UNIX?
@@editingsecrets I tried to explain that Linux sucks compared to UNIX. I have no problems with modern UNIX but with Linux (you known, systemd, several sound frameworks, poor drivers, fragmentation, and so).
@@IbanNieto I missed that post from you. I'm using MX Linux, a distribution with systemd present but disabled by default.
@@editingsecrets Good for you. systemd... its a nightmare (or may be I'm getting too old xD)
@@IbanNieto It was sure a learning curve. My initial complaint was why oh why did they shuffle the syntax from init commands? smdh.
Impressive bottled documentary!
0:21 1809? Seriously? 😞
Ugh, was supposed to have been 1889.
The rest of the documentary sounds really good, even though I guess a 10-minute video would never be enough to cover the whole history of Unix. In any case, I guess any history/tech enthusiast would have rectified by themselves regarding the date. Keep it going!
He's a full century ahead of the Unix date rollover bug, that's how up to date he is
ummmm... You include a few things that are debatable, and you leave a few out.
As one example ~ you mention at the end that one of these UNIXs is still maintained and it is POSIX compliant. This is true, but RHEL is also POSIX complaint and almost any other Linux system that wanted to go through and make the necessary adjustments, could also be POSIX compliant. It's not really all that hard, it's just tedious and exacting.
POSIX is a very detailed standard, very rigorous, but what it really asks, is "Am I UNIX?" Peers in the US military network, must be POSIX compliant. Windows cannot be made POSIX compliant ~ not even close. But Linux can be, and RHEL for one, is POSIX compliant. That's why IBM paid US $37 billion some years back to own RedHat.
Another detail, I saw an interview done in the late '90s, of Richie, Kernigan and Thomson, and the interviewer asked the 3 what they though of Linux. He was obviously surprised when all three laughed and said it was the best UNIX yet. That was clearly not what he was angling for. The men who invented UNIX are (were) all rather big fans of Linus Torvalds. As far as they were concerned, Linux was just another flavour of UNIX ~ this one written (slightly revised) to evade copyright laws.
Limiting the scope (for me) is sometimes the most difficult part of a presentation of this length especially with such a rich history to cover while keeping my target audience in mind - and there are certainly many things I would do differently now freed from the constraints of time (not to mention cleaning up a handful of mistakes I made in the script). That's lol about Ritchie, et. al.; thanks for watching!
"written (slightly revised) to evade copyright laws." Actually Linus has clearly said it was to learn about operating system development in a from-scratch process rather than using Tannenbaum's system as a given starting point.
1809?
Typo. Which I read aloud lol. Two mentions here and someone else messaged me a couple days back. Got an, "A" on the assignment though!
iComix model?
Stable Diffusion: wcobystyle (AtomPunkStyleSD15:1.0) (masterpiece:1.5) (painting:1.1) (best quality) (detailed) (intricate) (8k) (HDR) (wallpaper) (cinematic lighting) (sharp focus) retro vintage datacenter
IOS is UNIX❤
And, no, sysadmins don't need to run Unix or Linux on their workstations in order to manage Unix or Linux servers.
I prefer macOS to manage mine :D
@@ehowton which is UNIX 3
It's a dam sight easier if you do however. If I was forced to use Windows to manage the hundreds of servers that make up the HPC system at work I would be refreshing my CV pronto.
@@jonathanbuzzard1376 How so?
@@ericwelsh4853 Loads of ways. So random bit of proprietary software has a graphical installer. Me on a Linux desktop can just SSH in and forward the display to my local machine. I can have focus follow mouse and middle button paste (how people manage with click to focus I have no idea). I can just randomly mount file systems on my servers with sshfs. I could go on and on. Sure you can kludge all this on a Windows machine or a Mac but it is a kludge. But hey I have only been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for over 30 years, and manage hundreds of Linux servers in an HPC system so what do I know.
The issue is not an black actress as Cleopatra, but saying that Egypt was a southwest African civilization.
I think you commented on wrong video pal.
But I do agree with you.
Very few people remember to include that point in a documentary about computer operating system development in the 1970s. If not for you, it would have been totally overlooked in discussions of the compiler and CPU architectures.
@@editingsecrets 🤣
Any SUSErs here? 4:40
I’m currently a SysAdmin for an enterprise ERP landscape all running SLES4SAP 😃
@@ehowton Good to know that. Im an OpenSUSEr. quite loving its speed and stablity with its Tumbleweed version.
Not very good. example: Talking about IBM AIX and showing a Mainframe. 🙄
I took all of the photographs and most are of my own systems and sadly, (as of yet) still do not have an AIX. That SystemZ IBM brought to SUSECon'12 however, made a fantastic inclusion from a visual standpoint, despite perhaps being a poor example. Sometimes you just have to work with what you have (and I'll bet 100% of the CIS students missed it lol).
This is not a history of UNIX. This is revisionist.
It's as much a history of UNIX as anything, your declarative statement notwithstanding. I recorded the decades in which I was a part, and did my best to encapsulate the parts in which I wasn't around as an introduction into the mandatory 10-minute limit. It sounds like you would've approached it differently, which is certainly your prerogative.
Sebenarnya biasa saja..
Tak perlu exaggerating..
Bagian mana?
I can't stand the typing sounds while speaking. Not going to watch all of it.
AT&T Unix... the ripoff OS.
Total BS comment. The chain of original work from the Bell Labs guys is indisputible. It was not a knock-off or clone or anything else, and used a lot of original and highly ingenious ideas.
OSX Is X86 Darwin kernel base on linux .
Are you sure? I haven't touched a Mac. in over 10 years. But last time I looked it was BSD without the slightest sniff of Linux to be seen.
It's based off FreeBSD, not Linux. Remember, Apple likes closed sourcing their software and the GPL would prevent that. The BSD license is much more forgiving because it's basically a gift for all to use in any way.
Darwin is not the kernel. It is the whole base OS and can be a standalone OS (often used as such in-house). It is basically like base GNU/Linux that different linux distros are built on top of. The Kernel Darwin uses is XNU, which stands for X is not Unix, which is ironic because it is UNIX (any "distro" that Apple has submitted to the Open Group with Darwin as its base without restrictions on top of Darwin, has been registered as UNIX 3).
Not based on Linux at all, but on BSD from Apple's acquisition of NeXT. Darwin is Apple's subsequent release of a portion of the non-GUI layer of the system for free.
@@editingsecrets You are right, Darwin is the whole Unix layer (a whole standalone Unix OS) on its own but only Darwin up to version 8 was released on its own. We are on version 22 already. I think they might release Darwin as a standalone OS again if they decide to enter the server blade market again. Sell the chipsets for cheap without the whole macOS so that they don't cannibalise their consumer/professional workstation market.