Came across this amazing link, on Dennis Ritchie's home page. It's a collection of Unix ads dating from 1981. Just take a look, and you will realize that Unix (and computing) have come a long way. It boasts of 2000 Unix installations, and today we have millions of GNU/Linux installations, not even counting *BSD and proprietary Unix systems. It talks about supporting 48 programmers simultaneously, today's Unix derivatives support hundreds (and maybe thousands) of simultaneous users. It also warns that Unix comes 'as-is and with no technical support'. But this has spawned an entire industry of commercial support for Unix like systems and many a people have made quite a fortune in that niche (And you will also notice that there is no email address in contact information, no sonny, these are old days). Also notice the ad for 'Microsoft Xenix'. The love affair seems to have ended (if you doubt this, search for 'Halloween Documents'), but now after the M$-Novell deal, we may again see something of this sort.
But Unix has transcended the computing world, (ok at least the Unix name), just take a look at this. A bunch of disparate 'things', somehow named Unix. So you have Unix nails, Unix TV antennas and even Unix trash cans.
But you will notice this kind of variety in the Unix computing world as well. So we have Unix like systems that run on watches and Unix like systems running Supercomputers. No other operating system can boast of such a colorful history, and no other operating system has stood the test of time so well.
Consider all this and I am reminded of Neal Stephenson's words,
But Unix has transcended the computing world, (ok at least the Unix name), just take a look at this. A bunch of disparate 'things', somehow named Unix. So you have Unix nails, Unix TV antennas and even Unix trash cans.
But you will notice this kind of variety in the Unix computing world as well. So we have Unix like systems that run on watches and Unix like systems running Supercomputers. No other operating system can boast of such a colorful history, and no other operating system has stood the test of time so well.
Consider all this and I am reminded of Neal Stephenson's words,
"Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history."
2 comments:
The ads are really good thinking the market at that time. I have also heard somewhere that Unix is considered as the best software ever written. Considering the tools that you are given, this is certainly true.
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