No UNIX?

Nicole · Aug 9, 2010

Unix has been one of the most influential operating systems around... so what if it never existed? I suppose one way to do this is to have Bell Labs remain in the Multics project, but there are certainly others as well...

It seems like one benefit Unix had early on was that due to AT&T being forbidden to compete in the computer business, they instead made the OS more widely licensed... so even if another company comes up with something similar, would it have had the same success?

DuQuense · Aug 9, 2010

some thing like the original BSD, or Solaris would take it's place.

Nicole · Aug 9, 2010

DuQuense said:
some thing like the original BSD, or Solaris would take it's place.

BSD and Solaris are both outgrowths of Unix, aren't they? My understanding was that BSD grew out of Unix code licensed by Berkeley, and Solaris was Sun's proprietary version of Unix System V.

DuQuense · Aug 9, 2010

opps
Then whe have Amiga TRIPOS, Risc, Authur, or the BBCMasterOS.

Max Sinister · Aug 10, 2010

A world where all servers are Window$? A horror. Crackers would have a field day.

Or maybe VMS becomes the OS of choice for big irons and servers instead?

Mark-ITSOT · Aug 10, 2010

DuQuense said:
opps
Then whe have Amiga TRIPOS, Risc, Authur, or the BBCMasterOS.

If you mean Acorn RISCOS and Arthur the latter is the predecessor of the former.

No Unix would also, probably, mean no Linux (which was an attempt to write a Unix-like system that could run on x86 processors) as there'd have been nothing like Minix to inspire Torvalds to write it.

Elidor · Aug 10, 2010

Interesting.

Without UNIX to inspire things like file and directory structure, pipes, switches, environment variables and various UNIX utilities to set a paradigm for how a computer interface should be, they way they use computers TTL will be vastly different. Maybe an earlier adoption of the GUI?

Also, C will never get popularized. Fortran will probably be the most popular programming language followed by....

lisp?

All in all, The New Jersey style will not inform software development but instead, the MIT style. This will have interesting implications-- not all of which are bad. In fact, ITTL people who write programs, are much more likely to be professors rather than "hackers".

Nicole · Aug 10, 2010

Max Sinister said:
A world where all servers are Window$? A horror. Crackers would have a field day.

Or maybe VMS becomes the OS of choice for big irons and servers instead?

Isn't Windows NT architecturally similar to VMS? I thought Microsoft had gotten chief programmers from DEC to design it...

Elidor said:
Interesting.

Without UNIX to inspire things like file and directory structure, pipes, switches, environment variables and various UNIX utilities to set a paradigm for how a computer interface should be, they way they use computers TTL will be vastly different. Maybe an earlier adoption of the GUI?

Also, C will never get popularized. Fortran will probably be the most popular programming language followed by.... lisp?

All in all, The New Jersey style will not inform software development but instead, the MIT style. This will have interesting implications-- not all of which are bad. In fact, ITTL people who write programs, are much more likely to be professors rather than "hackers".

I think Lisp would definitely have a better shot here...

Elidor · Aug 15, 2010

Imajin said:
I think Lisp would definitely have a better shot here...

It very well might. That will be a very interesting POD in itself.

The AI winter and the ultimate demise of AI will still occur (too many impossible goals to be met), but it will be somewhat delayed. And the influence of AI research will be more strongly felt on modern programs. Besides that imagine Lisp machines being sold in mass quantities in 2010!

Workable Goblin · Aug 16, 2010

Elidor said:
It very well might. That will be a very interesting POD in itself.

The AI winter and the ultimate demise of AI will still occur (too many impossible goals to be met), but it will be somewhat delayed. And the influence of AI research will be more strongly felt on modern programs. Besides that imagine Lisp machines being sold in mass quantities in 2010!

Well, the Lisp machines were doomed by increases in the speed of mass-produced "regular" processors, so that they could actually run Lisp software faster than the specialized hardware of the machines. As that is a recurring theme in computer engineering (some function is pushed to a specialized bit of hardware--said hardware increases in complexity while the GP hardware speeds up--eventually someone notices the "specialized" hardware is nearly GP in of itself and doesn't offer much speed advantage, and folds it back in to the GP hardware, perhaps as a co-processor or some such), I can't really see them avoiding it.

A world without Unix is practically unimaginable, at least to me; you might as well ask about a world without cars! It has had a massive influence on software design out of all proportion to its beginnings, so eliminating it is going to have truly massive repercussions.