I suspect unix at this point in time is a "my grandfathers axe" kind of thing.

The concepts are there, and a lineage may be traced, but little of the original parts still exists.

This because the basic concepts that define unix allows it to be modular and adaptable.

Neal Stephenson's analogy from 'In the Beginning was the Command Line' is pretty good:

"Unix, by contrast, is not so much a product as it is a painstakingly compiled oral history of the hacker subculture. It is our Gilgamesh epic.

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 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, 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."

Here's one from the book The Art of UNIX Programming[0]: "The Unix philosophy is bottom-up and not top-down. It is pragmatic and grounded in experience."

[0] http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Profes...

That book - TAOUP - is quite good, though written in ESR's typical style (somewhat heavy and maybe overuse of relatively complex and less-used words).

One concept or principle mentioned in the book - the X Windows concept - of "provide mechanism, not policy" [1] - is, IMO, one of the reasons for Unix's longevity and success, even as it has morphed through various versions - from the original Bell Labs ones through Sun, HP, IBM's versions, and then Linux, the BSDs, etc., and up to Android and Mac OS X and iOS. I commented somewhere recently on a blog post about this.

[1] To make it clear, the principle name is slightly misleading. It does not mean "don't provide at all". It just means, let the lower layers of a software stack (such as X Windows) provide only the mechanism, and leave it to higher layers (such as, say, KDE or GNOME), to decide the policy.

Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_mechanism_and_po...

Predating those two are:

UNIX as literature http://theody.net/elements.html

Life with UNIX by Don Libes http://minnie.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/Books/Life_with... (from the author's website)

I'm only part way through the 1st chapter but the Don Libes book is quite good. Having been written in 1989 it's an interesting perspective of Unix before Linux.

Thanks for sharing!

Started reading the Don Libes book, good stuff, brings back memories of my Unix work / days; thanks for sharing.

> "The Unix philosophy is bottom-up and not top-down. It is pragmatic and grounded in experience."

Something that seems to be lost on a solid portion of the current custodians of that legacy...

Unix history certainly has aspects of the "grandfather's axe". Few users of unixoid systems today are running original 70ies Unix code.

But Unix is not just code. The concepts introduced by Unix - or at least the flavor given to certain concepts - lives on to this day. Basically all of the userspace-kernel interface, the system calls, are still there and work in largely the same way. These concepts and interfaces are parts of the axe too and they haven't been replaced.

C is the language of the virtual machine know as Unix.

I think being a Unix is analogous to being a member of the set of axes, rather than any specific unix implementation or install, which would be equivalent to a specific axe.

"... Unix is not just an operating system, but also a style of approaching problems."

[0] http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/returning.html

"The API is more important than the implementation." If you extend the definition of API to include things like standard command line tools, etc

If I'm not mistaken there's still a lot of the original Unix code in the BSD distros, but I haven't studied it enough to be sure of that.

Not sure about "original" as in AT&T, but certainly lots of files going back to the 80's and 90's. Lots of Sun's legacy to be found.

The Linus myth makes an appearance. Nobody's heard of GNU.

Yeah, it's mind-blowing that a guy who refers to himself as a "UNIX Historian" doesn't mention Stallman even once.

Maybe because GNU's, uhh, Not Unix?

Well, the author claims that Linus Torvalds single-handedly created an operating system; which simply isn't true, regardless of whether GNU is Unix.

Didn't Linus develop the first versions of the Linux kernel by himself?

A kernel does not make an operating system, you need an userland for it to be useful.

And that was GNU.

Ah ok, I see what you mean. I've always thought of "operating system" as the kernel itself (and some set of user land tools as a "distribution") but I can see how it could be interpreted differently.

I mean, what counts as the "operating system" is not the point here. It's that, whatever "UNIX" is (operating system, distribution, or whatever you want to call it), is more than just the kernel, and can't meaningfully be said to be replicated by Linux without mentioning GNU.

I have found the easiest way for people to understand it is: Android runs a Linux kernel. The systems we often call "Linux" systems are really Linux + GNU + X to get to the same kind of place.

That is an interpretation at odds with UNIX history, and basically only applicable to Linux, which is the exception to the rule. I suggest reading this article, it's written for FreeBSD but applies very similarly to Solaris etc.

https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/03

Linux Isn't No UniX either.

wink wink, nudge nudge ... say no more!

Which is why I personally use the term GNU/Linux. Not because the only other component in the system is GNU, but because it preserves the history of the system. It doesn't help than Linus calls his kernel an operating system.

Citation please? I don't remember Linus calling the kernel an operating system.

The first line of his 1991 announcement comes to mind. He has called it an operating system more recently, but I can't find a link right now.

> I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

This video shows how Unix was mathematically more efficient than Multics, which goes a very long way at explaining its success and longevity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ea3pkTCYx4

Great read, another link along side under Related...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/inventing-unix

Also very entertaining. RIP Mr. Ritchie!

edit: wrong link, too many tabs. :-)

I find UNIX amazing. What Thompson, Ritchie and McIllroy did was invaluable to the world of computing . I'm still to get well versed about the early days of it but its amazing how it transcended down to modern day

Needs a (2011)

Thanks, added.