X-NEWS: spcvxb alt.folklore.computers: 6523 Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0 13.10.90 VAX/VMS V5.4; site spcvxb.spc.edu Path: spcvxb.spc.edu!njin!princeton!udel!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!milton!Tomobiki-Cho!mrc Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: the jargon file Message-ID: <13419@milton.u.washington.edu> From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) Date: 24 Dec 90 00:32:02 GMT Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu References: <1YqWpR#1YnZJF2ktJM020ODXT8YVbVG=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> <13268@milton.u.washington.edu> Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi Lines: 64 In article lennox@stratus.com writes: >For the benefit of those of us who weren't at MIT 15 years ago and >never used ITS, could someone concisely explain this ITS/UNIX war? The "war" was more general than that. It was between those who favored the PDP-10 computer and its various operating systems vs the Unix fanatics. It was not confined to MIT; it was nation-wide, if not worldwide. It took place in the 70's and early 80's. Any one of the PDP-10 operating systems were orders of magnitude friendlier, better-designed, and with more powerful system calls than Unix. However, they were all written in assembly language and thus died when the manufacturer of PDP-10 computers decided not to build any more in 1983. >What is/was it about UNIX that caused such distress and resentment in >the MIT hacking community, and what settled it? It was "settled" only by the fact that Unix was the only option to go to that didn't involve going to bed with another manufacturer that would stab you in the back like DEC did in 1983. Everybody had their own favorite reasons for hating Unix. I would not presume to speak for the MIT/ITS community since my contact with them is too stale and their reasons were different from those of the community (TOPS-20) I was in. A very brief listing of the problems I have with Unix: terrible user interface (cryptic commands, single-character case-dependent switches, poor handling of wildcards), weak system calls, massive security holes, vulnerable filesystem, lack of file/memory mapping in most implementations, lack of file versions, lack of file undelete, lack of file author (as opposed to owner), lack of other file attributes, inconsistent I/O (different system calls for the network), lack of process/process memory mapping (shared memory), excessively simplistic scheduler, no breakdown of privilege levels (either you are root or you are not, nothing inbetween). All this is just off the top of my head, I could come up with many more if I thought about it. "Gaijin" is Japanese for "foreigner", but it is a perjorative much as "Negro" is in North America. This was a conversation between me and an obnoxious little boy who was pointing at me and calling me "gaijin": >> "Gaijin! Gaijin!" => kid: Foreigner! Foreigner! >> "Gaijin ha doko?" => me: Where's the foreigner? >> "Niichan ha gaijin." => kid: You're the foreigner. >> "Chigau. Omae ha gaijin." => me: Wrong. You're the foreigner. >> "Iie, boku ha nihonjin." => kid: No, I'm Japanese. >> "Souka. Yappari gaijin!" => me: Is that so? As I thought, you're a foreigner! >> Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanaku temo shiranai yo. Boy, anyone who tries to use UNIX deserves to lose! [Lit. "Eh, if you use something like UNIX, if it doesn't go well I can't be held responsible!" For you Nihongo students, "shiranai" ("don't know") means an unwillingness to say whether or not things will go well.] _____ | ____ ___|___ /__ Mark ("Gaijin") Crispin "Gaijin! Gaijin!" _|_|_ -|- || __|__ / / R90/6 pilot, DoD #0105 "Gaijin ha doko?" |_|_|_| |\-++- |===| / / Atheist & Proud "Niichan ha gaijin." --|-- /| |||| |___| /\ (206) 842-2385/543-5762 "Chigau. Omae ha gaijin." /|\ | |/\| _______ / \ FAX: (206) 543-3909 "Iie, boku ha nihonjin." / | \ | |__| / \ / \MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU "Souka. Yappari gaijin!" Hee, dakedo UNIX nanka wo tsukatte, umaku ikanaku temo shiranai yo.