[X Newbies] he said, she said.

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 11:36 PM -0400 7/24/03, Florin Alexander Neumann wrote:
>it was eventually adopted by many manufacturers, who distributed and 
>supported their own variants or version, to the extent that nowadays 
>the term "Unix" (originally spelled "UNIX") means a family of 
>related operating systems, rather than any specific one.

At 11:36 PM -0400 7/24/03, Florin Alexander Neumann wrote:
>Linux (a contraction of "Linus Unix") was originated by an engineer 
>from Finland, Linus Torvalds, who re-wrote a Unix kernel

====== <http://ragib.hypermart.net/linux/>
"The other dedicated camp of computing was the Unix world. But Unix 
itself was far more expensive. In quest of big money, the Unix 
vendors priced it high enough to ensure small PC users stayed away 
from it. The source code of Unix, once taught in universities 
courtesy of Bell Labs, was now cautiously guarded and not published 
publicly. To add to the frustration of PC users worldwide, the big 
players in the software market failed to provide an efficient 
solution to    this problem.

A solution seemed to appear in form of MINIX. It was written from 
scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a Dutch    professor who wanted to 
teach his students the inner workings of a real operating system. It 
was designed to run on the Intel 8086 microprocessors that had 
flooded the world market.

As an operating system, MINIX was not a superb one. But it had the 
advantage that the source code was available. Anyone who happened to 
get the book 'Operating System' by Tanenbaum could get hold of the 
12,000 lines    of code, written in C and assembly language. For the 
first time, an aspiring programmer or hacker could read the source 
codes of the operating system, which    to that time the software 
vendors had guarded vigorously. A superb author, Tanenbaum captivated 
the brightest minds of computer science with the elaborate and 
immaculately    lively discussion of the art of creating a working 
operating system. Students    of Computer Science all over the world 
poured over the book, reading through the codes to understand the 
very system that runs their computer.

And one of them was Linus Torvalds."


====== 
<http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid39_gci878891,00.html>
"Torvalds became interested in MINIX , a small Unix-like operating 
system  developed for educational purposes by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a 
Dutch professor who wanted to teach his students the inner workings 
of a real operating system. Minix was designed to run on Intel 8086 
microprocessors and had source code that was readily available for 
study. Torvalds decided to develop an operating system that exceeded 
the Minix standards. He called it Linux , a contraction for Linus' 
Minix."


====== <http://www.li.org/linuxhistory.php>
"From: torvalds at klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541 at klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.  This has been brewing
since April, and is starting to get ready.  I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
I'd like to know what features most people would want.  Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds at kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS.  Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. "



====== <http://www.computerhope.com/history/unix.htm>
"By April 1969, AT&T made a decision to withdraw Multics and go with 
GECOS. When Multics was withdrawn Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie 
needed to rewrite an operating system in order to play space travel 
on another smaller machine (a DEC PDP-7 [Programmed Data Processor 4K 
memory for user programs). The result was a system which a punning 
colleague called UNICS (UNiplexed Information and Computing 
Service)--an 'emasculated Multics'. "

-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]