UNIX: Difference between revisions

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[[File:dilbert_unix_5611.png|link=Dilbert|frame|This strip (06/24/1995) is [[Shout-Out|on the cover]] of the popular textbook ''Advanced Programming in the UNIX® Environment'']]

{{quote|"It's a UNIX system! I know this!"~~|'''Lex''', ''[[Jurassic Park]]''}}~~

{{quote|"It's a UNIX system! I know this!"

|'''Lex''', ''[[Jurassic Park]]''}}

Quirky, often counter-intuitive, but incredibly flexible, UNIX has gone from a little-known research operating system in the 1970s to an entire design philosophy. In its experimental days, UNIX stood in the background, influencing OSes but not making much noise on its own; that changed starting in the mid-1980s, when the first commercial UNIX products appeared, and exploded in the mid-1990s, as OSes either based directly on UNIX or following its principles came to the forefront via the World Wide Web.

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Science-fiction writer [[Neal Stephenson]] wrote of Unix, in his essay "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" in January 1999:

{{quote|"Windows 95 and [[Mac OS]] are products, contrived by engineers [[Money, Dear Boy|in the service of specific companies]]. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our [[The Epic of Gilgamesh|Gilgamesh epic]].}}

{{quote|"Windows 95 and [[Mac OS]] are products, contrived by engineers [[Money, Dear Boy|in the service of specific companies]]. Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our [[The Epic of Gilgamesh|Gilgamesh epic]].

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What made old epics like Gilgamesh so powerful and so long-lived was that they were living bodies of narrative that many people knew by heart, and told over and over again--making their own [[Throw It In|personal embellishments]] whenever it struck their fancy. The bad embellishments were shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, [[Ascended Fanon|incorporated into the story]]. Likewise, Unix is known, loved, and understood by so many hackers that it can be re-created from scratch whenever someone needs it."}}

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~~{{quote|~~What made old epics like Gilgamesh so powerful and so long-lived was that they were living bodies of narrative that many people knew by heart, and told over and over again--making their own [[Throw It In|personal embellishments]] whenever it struck their fancy. The bad embellishments were shouted down, the good ones picked up by others, polished, improved, and, over time, [[Ascended Fanon|incorporated into the story]]. Likewise, Unix is known, loved, and understood by so many hackers that it can be re-created from scratch whenever someone needs it."}}

== Multics for the rest of us ==