[Technical] Notebooks for New Staff - DET needs to help

[Con Zymaris]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 03:10:24PM +1100, Clark, Ian C wrote:
> >
> > OS/360 has few visible influences nowdays outside mainframes.
> 
> You are mistaking the word "influential" for "dominant".
> 
> "Influential" doesn't mean "top dog right now", it means "the top dogs
> now were shaped by it".

Correct. And most mainstream operating systems now were influenced by 
Multics, not OS/360. 

My point was that Multics was hugely influential, not that it was either
successful or dominant.

> > The Xerox Alto was influential primarily for its desktop 
> > interface and hardware input/output, not its underlying OS.
> 
> As Mac and Windoze users gratefully acknowledge, the OS *was* also the
> WYSIWYG desktop, the GUI, the networking, the output to the first laser
> printers. The Netware IPX/SPX protocols are almost unchanged from the
> original Xerox design. Where would LDAP be without the pioneering work
> of Xerox's Grapevine?

And IPX/SPX is now essentially dead. 

But TCP/IP, which came from the same groups which hubbed around the
creation of Multics and DARPA and Unix, reigns supreme. Which had more 
influence? ;-)

> > 
> > And what influenced MINIX, pray tell? ;-)
> 
> Now you're going round in circles, Con ... 
> 
> Multics may have been the grandmother of Minix, but we've said enough
> now to show that we can't take seriously your two quotes: "Multics ...
> the 'idea' mother of most modern Oses", and "Those who don't understand
> UNIX are doomed to reimplement it. Poorly".

Howso?

Multics had dramatic design influences on pretty much all common
non-mainframe OS platforms in use today, including all Unix and Unix-like
systems, which includes all of Solaris, HP-UX, Minix, Linux, Mac OS X's
BSD kernel, BSD Unix etc. - perhaps 50 operating systems in all. 

Further, Multics'immediate predecessor was a direct influence on VMS,
which in turn was a major influence on Windows NT.

more here:
 http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch03s02.html

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
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