The Rise of Unix. The Seeds of its Fall.
Asianometry・2 minutes read
Scientists collaborated on the "Multiplexed Information and Computing Service" project in 1965 to develop a time-sharing operating system, leading to the creation of Unix by Ken Thompson and the team at Bell Labs, which was later adopted globally due to its affordability and accessibility. Unix's expansion continued with the development of the Berkeley variant, further evolving with virtual memory capabilities and contributing to the Internet's development, eventually transitioning into a commercial industry with companies like Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and NeXT commercializing Unix.
Insights
- The development of Unix originated from a collaborative project involving Bell Labs, MIT, and General Electric, focusing on creating a time-sharing operating system with innovative concepts like virtual memory, leading to the creation of a space game called "Space Travel" and ultimately evolving into a platform for software development.
- Unix's widespread adoption was facilitated by the AT&T Consent Decree, which mandated AT&T to make its inventions available to the academic community, resulting in Unix's global expansion in the early 1970s. This expansion was further propelled by the Berkeley Unix variant, introducing key features like a Pascal implementation and virtual memory capabilities, solidifying Berkeley's position as a leading provider of Unix releases and supporting the development of the Internet.
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Recent questions
What was the initial purpose of the "Multiplexed Information and Computing Service" project?
To create a time-sharing operating system for multiple users to share computer resources.
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Summary
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Evolution of Unix: From Bell Labs to BSD
- In 1965, scientists at Bell Labs, MIT, and General Electric collaborated on the "Multiplexed Information and Computing Service" project, aiming to create a time-sharing operating system for multiple users to share computer resources.
- The project evolved into a communications tool with user profiles and innovative concepts like virtual memory, allowing computers to handle more data than their RAM capacity.
- Despite Bell Labs pulling out of the project in 1969 due to financial constraints, a team led by Ken Thompson continued working on it, resulting in the creation of a space game called "Space Travel."
- Thompson then developed a new file system for the GE 635 computer, abstracting away hardware differences and enabling users to make changes to files on any device, which became a key feature of Unix.
- By the summer of 1969, Thompson had rewritten the project into a separate platform for software development, later named Unix in 1970 by team member Brian Kernighan.
- Unix was initially developed on the outdated PDP-7 minicomputer but was later rewritten for the DEC PDP-11, offering a text editor and a typesetting markup language called "roff."
- Unix's popularity grew due to its affordability, written in the higher-level programming language "C," and its availability to universities for a few hundred dollars, contrasting with other software companies' practices.
- The spread of Unix beyond Bell Labs was facilitated by the AT&T Consent Decree, which required AT&T to make its inventions available to the academic community, leading to Unix's global adoption in the early 1970s.
- Unix's expansion continued with the Berkeley Unix variant, developed by students and professors at UC Berkeley, which introduced features like a Pascal implementation and a wysiwyg text editor, leading to the creation of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).
- BSD further evolved with the addition of virtual memory capabilities by Bill Joy and Ozalp Babaoglu, solidifying Berkeley's role as a leading provider of Unix releases and supporting DARPA's efforts to consolidate to a single computing environment, contributing to the development of the Internet as we know it today.
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Unix's Commercial Success and Industry Growth
- 4.2 Unix was highly successful, with over a thousand licenses issued within a month of its April 1983 release, surpassing all previous distributions combined, indicating a significant acceleration in momentum.
- Bill Joy left CSRG in the summer of 1982 to co-found Sun Microsystems, driven by the belief that BSD needed to transition into a commercial activity. Sun Microsystems, known for pioneering workstation computers, developed their own Unix variant, SunOS, based on 4.2BSD, leading to their rapid growth in Silicon Valley. Other companies like Mt. Xinu, Santa Cruz Operation, Onyx Systems, Microsoft with Xenix, and NeXT with NeXTSTEP, also commercialized Unix, marking the shift towards Unix becoming a commercial industry from its initial hobbyist roots.
