I've said this in a few of these videos, but it's very apparent here. Gary Kildall was the perfect co-host for this show. Here is a guy that invented personal computer operating systems as we know it. And here he is talking to a couple of UNIX guys about Top View, Concurrent DOS etc. Not once does he talk down to anyone he interviews or carry on like a know it all. And the fact that his products had pretty much lost out to competitors by this stage and yet he still demonstrates a love of technology just shows what a great guy he was. Gary Kildall will forever be one of my heroes.
Gary lost the plot, ended up getting battered after a skinfull and that’s the story of one of the greatest minds and innovators in the entire history (70 years?) of computers. He’s an 80s equivalent of Babbage or Ada Lovelace or Alan T. I guess his next incarnation was Steve jobs (after the rehiring). And now we have …… um….. oh shit…… we’re fucked!
@@AcornElectron comparing Jobs and Kildall is doing Gary great injustice. For one, there's not a single person that I head of that had anything but praise for Gary Kildall. Not just in terms of his professional career but his personality, he was an outstanding guy. Jobs was a moron who treated people with contempt and hate.
11:04 - "You can't plug every computer into the same network but I think that's something to watch in the future". That must have sounded like the ramblings of a mad man back in those days when 2400 baud modems were the gold standard!
Not really, the internet was pretty robust at that time, most universities were connected to it, and a lot of students were using it. We were already well on the way to connecting every computer to the same network.
@@oldtwinsna8347 No, @mrsleep0000 is kind of right. Those weren't *just* terminals connected to mainframes in isolation. I mean there _were_ terminals connected to mainframes (and minicomputers, and workstations) for sure, but a lot of those machines were connected to the early internet in 85. TCP/IP was already a thing and by then there were already a couple thousand machines online in the US and Europe for sure. Even some personal computers would have probably been able to connect to the net with some hassle; the support for it wouldn't have been there yet. But the writing was on the wall for sure,for most people dealing with UNIX in an institutional setting would have been able to tell you that distributed computing over networks was going to be a big thing. It wasn't any wild prediction.
He lost his life all because he went into an MC ran bar wearing leathers, not realizing some hardcore MC's dont take kindly to doing so if your not in an actual MC. The more I think about it and Garys personality, I imagine he stopped into the bar seeing the bikes parked outside and assumed he would be among friendly people. It pains me to say Kildall is the Tesla of personal computing. Depression is a mutha..... still I think he would have made it out of his personal slump had the bar incident never happened. I think all the time what big tech would be like today with Gary still with us.
Sorry, but this video shows what a major a**hole Kindall was. His rip on Commodore was totally uncalled for. In reality, Commodore did have a Unix machine ready to ship which could have made Unix a house hold OS. Commodore killed it to promote the Amiga.
In 1985 Gary Kildhal said that Unix will replace CP/M The father of all DOS systems. His vision is becoming a reality after almost fourty years. He was one of those who were born way before their time.
Funny that Information Week guy hated the concept of UNIX in micro computers just like today. However let's not forget MacOS (ex OSX) is even UNIX certified.
@@rugcutter284 Not Unix, but Unix-like. That was the goal, as Linus Torvalds (creator of the Linux OS) said. And via Linux, the whole idea of the Unix has conquered the world. You can always scrap the Linux and use some other OS if you want, for some cases it doesn't change much if anything, but that is not the opposition, as even that is the spirit of the Unix that UI and programs are easily portable regardless what OS you run.
It is funny to hear them talking about the reliability of UNIX. Remember that they are comparing UNIX to other mainframe operating systems like IBM OS/360 and its descendants, certainly not to MS-DOS or its descendants. In OS/360, the system stays running even if a CPU burns out.
@@alfredklek I would say every smart phone runs on an UNIX-like or UNIX-derivate system - > Android = Linux and iOS = BSD (Darwin, the kernel of iOS is a BSD-derivate).
The final news segments are a fascinating look into the history of that period. "Of the 17,000 DoD computers, Only 30 of them are adequately protected from unauthorized entry" "they are currently vulnerable to any mentally unbalanced 16 year old" One would hope a lot of progress has been made since then.
When a teenager (late seventies -- early eighties) I had my first encounters with UNIX in the engineers that worked for my father who used UNIX and were very enthusiastic about it. Then at Uni I had my first look at it in the form of an Apollo Workstation. After that, SUN workstations with which I fell in love -- but couldn't afford for personal use. Then I had to wait for Linux to become really usable, in the early naughts. Around 2013-14 I wiped Windows off my work laptop and never looked back. Proving Mr. Schindler completely wrong. We have only one Windows computer in the house: the school laptop my oldest son uses.
UNIX was the obvious victim of greed, ambition and corrupted competition of companies. UNIX was in spirit, a ground-breaking invention that changed our experience of computing in a way, lifestyle-wise. Its impact can be compared with transistors in hardware. Yet it founded a standard we will certainly adapt far forward.
Gary was the humblest dude. He had the chance to mention CP/M but didn’t. Paul Schindler with his usual mega bad take attempting to predict the future.
Bad take? He nailed it on the head. Did UNIX take over the desktops from MS DOS? Nope, eventually it even got pushed out of the server space by Linux. And before you say Mac OS, try porting an actual UNIX application to Mac OS (or vice versa, a Mac OS app to some non-Apple UNIX) and then tell us how Mac OS has a lot to do with UNIX. Today, legally, UNIX simply means that an OS passed a certain certification process, which hasn't got anything to do with code origin, architecture etc, as long as it ticks a certain number of boxes: and Mac OS ticks some of those boxes in a rather trivial way - stubs for certain functionality are there, but they don't do anything; and that's how Mac OS is a certified UNIX. BTW, a distribution of Linux can also be UNIX certified, although almost nobody cares to do that (but it's been done at least once). Are we now going to start arguing that Linux is UNIX?
Did you see the episode on Windows 3.0? Before they could even talk about Windows, Gary had to talk about GEM, his GUI operating system. I got the impression that he felt upset at the success of Windows. That show must have been rough for him.
Windows exists. It can run any program written for it from the last 25 years. And no, Android and iOS are not UNIX, don't have portable programs either, their software become completely obsolete every few years.
The moment we had minix in college, I fell in love with it. The basic architecture of everything is a file is elegant and makes it so simple to develop complex applications, basically if you could read and write to a file you could do 80% of integration already. Only IP was a bit of a framework but even those calls were nicely standardized by then early 90s. I developer in the mid 90s on Linux and moved it to SCO and at the most had minuscule changes. Then we moved to Tru64 and I just ran make and we were on 64bits.
Imagine living in the world where Microsoft word is 2nd to IBM Writing Assistant and DOS is spoken about 2nd to UNIX, if you did.. you really lived at the peak of civilization
Pretty much everything today runs a form of UNIX. You iPhone's OS based on UNIX. Same for Mac OS. Android is Linux (another form of UNIX). 80% of the Web runs on Linux servers. Your car's computer(s) run a form of UNIX...
@@ianmorgadovillasenor215 So much confusion but yeah when this was going on, I remember hearing their babble, but I was programming my spectrum in machine code - had no idea of reality fun times
Blink and you'll miss the reference about Nintendo showing off their new "game playing robot". This was ROB, the robot included with the Nintendo Entertainment System as part of their marketing strategy to say "look, it's not a 'game console', it's a toy and an 'entertainment system'".
3:02 never knew Bill Murray was a UNIX systems admin? All kidding aside, I loved this show. Remember watching it in the 80’s. Could never do it today, because most tech people do not own a tie.
This show would be sofa king awesome if it were still on today! Id love to do a reboot of the show and literally use the original set, wardrobe, and cameras/music. Have people on Like Lisa Su in huge ass 80s shoulder pads or Jensen Huang in some gigantic 80's glasses Yeah, that be fuckin great, id watch every week!
20:37 Interprocess communication I thought would be a big one: the ability to pipe data directly between running processes, rather than having to go through temporary files.
I actually interviewed with Gary at Digital Research around ‘85 or ‘86. He was not a believer when it came to UNIX and the Santa Cruz operation a few miles up the coast managed to eat his lunch.
Funny that Bill Joy made that remark about UNIX missing an office suite. By acquiring, porting and then Open-Sourcing staroffice - OpenOffice - LibreOffice etc, he like no other removed that particular obstacle.
That Schindler guy was right about UNIX though, and I think Linux took over the world because it managed to solve all of those problems that UNIX had that he was talking about. Especially in being more user friendly by way of it's open licensing, and more portable.
People would be very surprised how many companies still run UNIX based main/mini-computer systems to run their legacy systems. Some companies just keep patching their old systems and refuse to do a data migration and equipment upgrade. Almost all government systems have some UNIX based equipment.
Thats what the Sparc division from Oracle still lives on (aka ex Sun Microsystems computer division). The entire Oracle business model basically is to live off from those customers! If there is one dying company which in 40 years wont exist anymore it is definitely Oracle, the writing has been on the wall for ages, well before the Sun merger!
That "if it ain't broke" business mentality isn't strictly limited to OS/software. When I worked at the local phone company 20 years ago, the only reason they would replace switching equipment was due to the lack of available replacement parts - some systems were over 30 years old before they'd be decommissioned due to lack of parts.
In 2020 I use sco UNIX everyday to support customers on the "legacy" system, it's a great OS and when you see at times customer servers with uptimes in the multiple of years you know it's doing something right. I won't lie when I first saw it and only being in my early 30s sitting in front of a terminal it was a learning curve but really worthwhile.
SCO System V had some really annoying quirks, the package system was terrible for example and it was always lacking on security. But it was stable for sure and probably the first full on Unix on Intel machines. I programmed C++ on it through Telnet on my customer’s development system :)
People calling UNIX user unfriendly, computer security still vulnerable to 16-year-olds, a million UNIX-derivatives and distributions created regularly, Word still one of the most popular text processors, automation making jobs redundant, Nintendo still toying with weird game ideas. Not much has changed
haha Exactly! Like not even a day passed since then. Sadly products are in most cases successful depending their popularity, regardless if they are good or better than others.
@@jessihawkins9116 Which generation is that? Video games took off with Gen-X'ers in the '70s and '80s, and they're old enough to be grandparents. Even a fair number of boomers play video games now. Nika, mentioned six relevant, things, of which only _one_ was a offhand reference to Nintento, and _that_ was enough to trigger you into shaking you first at some vague generation which could be any from the last 60 years, probably including your own? Ever think this might be less a generational thing and more just a _you_ problem?
I didn't get my first taste of Unix until around 2002-2003. One of my friends was a contributor to the FreeBSD project and he wouldn't stop talking about it, it was my first unix OS.
Weird, would have expected one of you / us other nerds to by now say "And now most of the internet runs on Linux (yes yes and GNU tools) - Open Source Unix, effectively." Whole many many square miles of datacenters across the world. Linux. I installed it in 1997 and it prompted me to login. I was wondering what the hell this was all about. Then I did. And got on IRC. And even though I was a DOS power-user, this had all this depth and beauty. I kinda saw it like the difference in wonder between an above ground pool and a beach on Hawaii. Is that the same, though, even though it kinda seems the same? DOS only had a shallow dimension but this could do _everything well_ and better than DOS, and, that was the tough part about it. "So wait you can just put a disk on a path? What about device letters? "Device letters dont exist, but only in your mind." "whoa man I might need to sleep on that for a year". And I think I kinda had to. When your young and havent learned to be open and the world is 1 or 0, this was rough.
I used Minix in college in 1991 and in 1995 I installed Linux 0.99, I was thrilled! I always loved the basic architecture of: “everything is a file”. It’s simple and elegant. And it shows how right they were because it still holds up (mostly). It makes it so easy to program.
I only use Macs, and it's easy to forget but when I'm in the Terminal its there, the spirit of DMR and UNIX it's there. Thank you to all those people we enjoy such a wonderful OS.
I was a Unix sysadmin in the 90s and the killer apps were RDBMS and TCP/IP services especially web servers. Interesting how Bill Joy didn't predict that despite delivering TCP/IP into Unix. The internet going public in 94 was the catalyst.
and 36 years later I'm watching this on a laptop running linux, but alsocould have watched it on my phone, also running linux... not exactly unix, but close enough
Most of the times he was wrong. But he is spot on with Unix. It didn't replace MSDOS. It ran on Minis (servers) and it's still hostile to the average user. I'm a Linux user myself and Linux, considering it as the natural successor of Unix, it still has a very small user base on desktops. For those who say but Android is Linux... It could be whatever. People just want to do things and they don't care what's the core of their system. Same applies with Apple's macOS and it's BSD core. What both Android and macOS have in common though is a fully functional and supported desktop environment.
Here is Silicon valley all the Retailers have vanished... ComputerLand/BusinessLand/ Frys/ Micro Center / and even the used and recycled... Weird Stuff and many many small stores. Only place left is over priced Target/Walmart/BestBuy. The flea market DeAnza Electroncis Flea Market is near death of Covid ... Not easy building your own or doing a project. Its a Hobby long long gone by now.
25:00 If only that Unix-hating guy knew that you could do everything in that fancy $10 crossword puzzle helper with the words file and grep command found for free in every version of Unix and its derivatives
Dave Cutler in his CHM interview said something like "the UNIX guys were running around with all their unique competing versions, and it was GREAT for us" (Windows NT).
Love that they're saying that new user interfaces as applications make Unix better to use, but I still use command line functions (including those that they were saying should be made simpler) every day... :)
That discussion and analysis of Unix as an alternative to other microcomputer operating systems reminds me of similar discussions regarding Linux as an alternative to Windows for PCs 5-15 years ago.
I read about UNIX back in the mid 1980s when there was even a software engineering company that sought to create a variation of UNIX that resembles Windows, but I believe that specific variation ended up getting discarded for there were problems trying not to get into trouble with IBM, Xerox, Microsoft and/or Apple.
@24:38 I remember reading about that back in the day. It was supposed to be the future of computing. Seems they never made a breakthrough with optical transistors that made them better then plain old electrical transistors. Wonder if research is still being done on that technology.
Yes their is still work being done on optical elements but much is done to help with the bandwidth issues in the CPU, GPU, and RAM moving data between the 3 parts of the computer.
22:53 This was true. Deliberate vendor-introduced incompatibilities between different Unix platforms was what killed it. But it also allowed Linux to step into the breach. And conquer the entire computing world.
13:53 “Open source code”? Never. In fact, AT&T sued the BSD people just a few years later over their inadvertent inclusion of a few lines of Unix source .
Seems like "Open Source" was something different from "Free (as in Freedom) Software", even in that era (and (unfortunately)still is). Classic Unix although being open source, was never free software! (Neither as in freedom, nor as in beer). :-) Not to be confused with BSD variants, which are truly free.
Again, please do not confuse "Open Source" with "Free Software". Unix wasn't free software, but it was open source. You could buy a source license and tweak the code and build your own programs based on it (open source). You couldn't redistribute it and actually you couldn't redistribute even your own programs (that was based on Unix code), because it wasn't free software. Please also, take a look at: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V5S8kFvXpo4.htmlm32s (for details at Unix licensing) and also these: opensource.com/article/17/11/open-source-or-free-software www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html (for details about the difference between open source and free software).
+Γιώργος Κωστόπουλος Classic Unix wasn't open source. The source code was available under a restrictive paid license, which was about as good as you could get in those days, but it was never open source.
Guys, please keep your timelines straight in this discussion. Remember that the term "open source" as we use it NOW was first proposed in 1998. In 1985, it was just the opposite of "closed source" (source code is NOT available in any way), and nothing more.
22:00 - haha. Pretty much everything today runs a form of UNIX. You iPhone OS: based on UNIX. Android: is Linux (another form of UNIX). 80% of the Web runs on Linux servers. Your car's computer(s) run a form of UNIX...
I know, Paul Schindler’s opinion are always wrong. Paul strikes me as a smart ass that portrays himself as someone who knows a lot but knows very little.
@SteelRodent POSIX isn't a UNIX clone, rather it's a set of standards from IEEE that help with the portability of software across different types of systems. If you wrote software to the POSIX spec, then you were supposed to be able to easily port that software to operating systems that implemented those POSIX interfaces. Think of it as a standardized API.
Well, Paul Schindler was wrong, Unix is has become one of the most popular OS. Probably most popular if you count embedded systems and phones. It’s all running some form of a Linux kernel.
I am using a computer with Linux Mint Cinnamon OS which in my opinion is better than Windows OS. And it came from Unix. It's quite mind boggling to see how great Unix systems have become since then.
I'm coming in from Linux Min Debian Edition (LMDE), on an i3 and it's solid, fast and stable. I worked at an embedded computer company in the 90s and thought they were a bunch of geniuses with new languages, multitasking and calculating. Then I worked for a company and a developed came from a Microsoft house and ridiculed that we used 'free software.' Then I finally got more intro Linux and realized that both of those outfits were simply applying *nix.
10:35 One important difference, which still remains true to this day, is that on Unix and Linux systems, process creation is carefully designed to be a very low-overhead operation. Thus, a shell script can spawn any number of processes to implement the stages of a pipeline, run concurrent background tasks etc, and do so quickly and easily. Whereas on other common systems, including Windows, process creation remains expensive and complicated. Thus, when software originally developed on Linux is ported to Windows, it tends to work less well and less reliably for this among other reasons. Even the Mac, supposedly a Unix system, has had performance issues with multitasking.
22:08 still has a valid point 30 years later - granted it did become the ultimate microcomputer OS but the quote of it being a user hostile OS with a lack of software has changed somewhat but still rings a degree of truth.
Well, this program was made 34 years ago and not much has changed regarding UNIX in desktop use! It's still an "up and coming" alternate operating system that will never really get there, as Paul Schindler said... Of course at least UNIX now "exists" for PCs and has it's place but it's still only a niche system in regular desktop use.
9:30 How could he not mention "buggy programs don't hang the computer", and "it breaks the 640K barrier"? (Though typical RAM sizes were probably 512K at that time.)
@@Xenotypic Do you even understand the question and the answer I gave? I didn't say computers never hang, I said it was no issue. I a multitasking environment, protecting the system from app crashes is useful because it prevents a single application causing more extensive data/production loss. In a single-task environment, it doesn't matter if the computer hangs or not - in both cases you only lose the unsaved data from the crashed application. So "buggy programs don't hang the computer" is not an advantage of Unix, it only prevents Unix from having a disadvantage. Oh and before you go "yeah so Unix had an advantage over Mac, so surely it was worth mentioning?" note that Steward specifically asked for advantages *over MS-DOS*, check 9:05.
Paul Schindler was definitely correct here. Unix is "user-hostile" and will never succeed in anything smaller than minicomputers! Unix definitely won't be cloned by a Finnish student into an open-source OS called Linux. And Unix will never be the basis for home computer operating systems like Linux or MacOS. Furthermore, a "user-hostile" OS like Unix will never be the basis for phones and even wristwatches running iOS or Android.
Gary is very animated here! Anyone guess why? Yes, he knows UNIX has the capability to crush Gates and his empire. Nothing would please Gary more after IBM and Gates short changed his CP/M. Gates knew this and was one of the first ones to jump in UNiX with XENIX.
Amazing how technology has advance in the last past 30 year's I remember back in the 80s era When computers beginning to take over , lots of people thought that This new event would eventually crash.. because of the poor understanding and proper use of the same. Now I'm here watching this 80s video on my cellphone . I must to be 13 years old when I first have my first cassette tape Sony Walkman ..I thought was pretty cool.. Then..jump into the CD player I consider my self lucky to experience the beginning and transition of technology as we know it. Now imagine 30 years from now. We Will be so much smaze on what the human race have accomplish . I predict hologram technology,and so Much smaller and compact computering . I find this very amazing Now we have cars that can drive and or Park it selfs. Electric ,and More sufficient technology, robotics , Flying crafts operated by computers. Medicine also is involved, 95% of our daily lifes required computer work. Gas stations,Hospitals , Banks, shopping, everybody now in 2020 Needs one..it's getting to were now everyone Needs a computer Or else you are Not part of the present social life. It's becaming a need rather than luxury. Well, I hope this technology computer life doesn't impact us negative and cost an interference on 0ur Human touch. But I have the feeling that it will Sadly it will happen i don't know when but it Will. Hopefully this comment remain in the system,for future generations to read. And maybe , maybe a positive outcome Will rise outut of of this. Personally I think in About 100 years,Humans will think computer Instead of going to The Park and enjoy a beautiful day. I Mark my words.
Well it did crash and kept crashing since the Japanese dumbed products below their own cost to produce and killed the US and European Manufacturing. Such tactics are now used in other industries across the glob. Thus deflation has been a big problem.
The views are different When 2 people are facing each other , either one can't see what the other is seeing . It's called different views Both individuals are in the same circle. And even though Like that, there's no agreement on points of view..do to the situation My opinion is.. we think we moving on forward, My view is simply, technology as we knowi it,, , its Killing our world In many super Way's.. that people who strongly believe in it.. can't simply see it.. reason is.. because they don't have the best view. Think on what I believe.. and refresh your thoughts. Everything that we as people have invented, has cost life's, pain,and continues harm to the earth and Humans .. you all know that part is true !! And even though,it's there presented, we ignore and we pretend it's what we have to pay for it. That is wrong, and it's no need for me to high light it.. !! My views are simply simple. I rather seat at the park and enjoy what OUR creator give me.. Life is more complex than your contaminated vies. Maybe some people should stop thinking that life progress is pollution. You !!! Who are responsible for All Contaminated, polluted, invaroment , will respond to a higher domain.. That my friends whether you believe or not.. is what it's going to happen to you. Or you just thinking that You are a life because you wake up this morning ? Ignorance is not a. Crime.. it's a shame . Walking this Earth with polluted views. . It doesn't take a college person to realize that. And let this msg. Remain in The sistem..so those who have clean views, can see you are not alone We are the real people.. we are here to love this place because we have life.. but others have no intention to keep it real Because they are afraid. And they rather not think like that Because there scared. Scared of life. Pretend to be in different level of mind.. excuses on we need progress. Brain wash, is other way of putting out. Funny !!!!!!! I'm using your technology to respond to your thoughts... But if there was no such thing, I would never know , and I would never think that, there's people who is willing to destroy the earth for " progressive Life".
Shout out to John Mashey who comes off as awkward but now reads as confident. He's doing his best trying to think 30 years ahead of his time. It even looks like he was forced to wear a suit.
Corporate greed is good for computer development unfortunately, the fine balance between open source linux people who would have technologies develop slowly and logically and microsoft which lives on constant growth created this world we live in. Bill Gates was the asshole who gave us all the PC world we enjoy today, and I for one have enjoyed it. It's not about right or wrong, it's about might.
Livin' in the 80's is so stressful, all this new technology. I'm stickin' with my trust Selectric typewriter, thank you very much. Sigh, I miss the 70's, life was so much simpler then... and the music was better.
