40 years of Unix

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8205976.stm
40 years of Unix

By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News



The computer world is notorious for its obsession with what is new - largely thanks to the relentless engine of Moore's Law that endlessly presents programmers with more powerful machines.

Given such permanent change, anything that survives for more than one generation of processors deserves a nod.

Think then what the Unix operating system deserves because in August 2009, it celebrates its 40th anniversary. And it has been in use every year of those four decades and today is getting more attention than ever before.

--snip--

The best part is that most versions of *NIX are free.

I use it. It works.

still love bringing up VI and making edits (fuck EMacs).

It uses vi as a backend.

It just needs a good text editor.

:)

There is a quote by Jeremy Anderson:

"There are two major products that
come out of Berkeley: LSD and
BSD. We don't believe
this to be a coincidence."

That being said, it's still my favorite!

Most Linux distros are retarded in one way or another, but they're much better than any commercial operating system I've tried.

:thumbsup:

And it has certainly proven to be a very wise decision as this computer I am currently typing on (10.5.8 MacBook Pro) not only is the most stable multi-tasking system i have ever used but since I am a web developer it is also the best platform I have ever developed on as it makes developing for the web almost painless, at least all of my main tools are built in and free e.g. Apache, MySql, BIND, etc. =)

Happy Birthday Unix :toast:

... and Unix won.

Open source; democracy in action.

I've made a good living for 30 years with *nix. Run Fedora at home after trying several other flavors. I've even got a rusty-trusty HP9000 in the corner I don't use much because it slurps power. But all my boxen are totally stable. No viruses, no hassles. The desktops just work and work. That's all I ask. I do db admin and web development for a day-job and I'm a wedding officiant on evenings and weekends. I've got all my development tools plus all the office tools I could ever want. Want an app? Add/Remove Software (on Fedora, apt or pkgman elsewhere) will usually grab what you want and install it with zero hassle. Don't like it the app you just installed? Uninstall it and it will come out clean.

You can't say that for Windoze. I threw that shit out of my house about a decade ago when I got tired of fixing everyone's machines more than I was working on my own. You can't run a business (or in my case, a set of them) if you're busy fixing busted windoze stuff all the time. No windoze, I suddenly have tons of time to devote to making my businesses go. Whaddaya have to know.

Unfortunately there was a time when X-Windows threatened to work with Unix to make it more of a dominant desktop OS as well we got drug into a distracting battle of Motif vs. Open Look, and Windoze won that battle unfortunately. I was very much drug in the trenches through that battle. Too bad religion steered us in the wrong direction there... At least Apple has put a good front end to it now and showed what a decent desktop can do with UNIX as its guts! Far less prone to viruses, etc. Still remembering avoiding the pre-OS/X Apple boxes like the plague in the days of having to use copy doubler on top of it to do background file copies... Thankfully Apple has put those days behind them.

but there are no jobs in it in Los Angeles, so I sit here typing this while upgrades to my Linux boxes are yumming away.

At one time, it was a great place to work.

and yes, it was.

:beer:

If the people who spend the money go with proprietary software on MS Windows platforms, they will overspend by hundreds of millions of dollars on software licenses, will wind up beholden to closed source companies for maintenance and upgrades, and will be using an unstable platform vulnerable to thousands of attacks from viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, and plain data theft.

The only way to get a stable, maintainable, cost effective system is to develop the proposed medical records system using open source software.

Since Linux or its variants will run on practically every hardware platform (from IBM mainframes, to VAXen, to older PC's), interoperability would be less of a problem. Clinics and hospitals could, in many cases, use existing hardware as Linux can be tailored to run on computers having slower processors and less memory.

There are tons of open source applications including office suites, web browsers, web servers, graphics programs, multimedia programs, mail readers, software development systems in several computer languages, and database programs. The cost of using open source software licensed under the GPL or one of its variants: zero dollars. The cost of upgrades to the software under one of these licenses: zero dollars. The quality of most of these programs is very high. The immediate savings from using open source software over a certain company's proprietary software: hundreds of millions of dollars. Over ten years, the savings from using open source software: billions of dollars.

Party like it's 999,999,999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/dot_life/1300744.stm

CentOS and Ubuntu is preferred, but most distro's rocks! :toast:

Volkswagon is a big patch contributor to linux.

An old school buddy makes his living writing linux code for photocopies.

I'm looking at buying a new synthesizer (Korg OASYS) that runs on linux.

I wonder how they would have run on Windows?

Not very well.

Because that is all they have to sell.

Although, a sound, safe operating system is clearly the most important issue we face;)

Seriously, if this can be done with UNIX, why not citizen efforts on alternative energy, peace in hot spots, resource allocation, 'best practices' in various professions. Nobody has a big rake off in the collective
effort but the benefits that ensue from this are huge and quite reward.

Excellent post k*r