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GUI Operating Systems Programming Software Unix IT Technology

Ask Unix Co-Creator Rob Pike 479

Posted by Roblimo from the in-the-beginning-was-the-command-line dept.
Today we return to our Slashdot interview roots with a "Call for questions" for Rob "Commander" Pike, who has been involved in the development of many modern programming concepts, GUI advances, character sets, and operating systems. We'll email 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated questions to Rob and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.
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Ask Unix Co-Creator Rob Pike More

Ask Unix Co-Creator Rob Pike

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  • How do I (Score:2, Funny)

    by techsoldaten ( 309296 ) *
    How do I get to my C:\ drive on a Unix box?

    M

  • Plan9 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:01PM (#10441244) Journal
    Plan 9 was supposed to go even further than Unix went, does it really looks like to you that it's been conceived according to a similar approach ???

    • Thoughts on Bell Labs. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geeber ( 520231 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:09PM (#10442263)
      Plan 9, Unix and so many other great things came out of Bell Labs. Since the crash of the internet bubble, telecom companies have suffered immensely. One of the results of this is that Lucent has systematically dismantled one of the worlds greatest industrial research facilities. You spent a great part of your career at Bell Labs. What are your thoughts about the history and future (if any) of Bell Labs, and how did the culture of the Labs influence the growth of Unix?

    • Re:Plan9 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Spyffe ( 32976 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:45PM (#10442764) Homepage
      Rob,

      Right now, there are a large number of research kernels. Plan 9, Inferno, AtheOS, Syllable, K42, Mach, L4, etc. all have their own ideas about the future of the kernel. But they all end up implementing a POSIX interface because the UNIX userland is the default.

      The kernel space needs to be invigorated using a new userland that demands new and innovative functionality from the underlying system. Suppose you were to design a user environment for the next 30 years. What would the central abstractions be? What sort of applications would it support?

  • Biggest problem with Unix (Score:5, Interesting)

    by akaina ( 472254 ) * on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:04PM (#10441289) Journal
    Recently on the Google Labs Aptitude Test there was a question: "What's broken with Unix? How would you fix it?"

    What would you have put?

    • Re:Biggest problem with Unix (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:24PM (#10441588)
      If you know what's wrong and know how to fix it, why don't you fix it already! The source is out there.

    • Re:Biggest problem with Unix (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:57PM (#10442074)
      Recently on the Google Labs Aptitude Test there was a question: "What's broken with Unix? How would you fix it?"

      I saw this google labs apt question, and while I've become numb to most of UNIX's issues and cannot think of a generic across the board (ie, cross vendor) "broken" thing except why the hell is UNIX so picky about 1) unmounting filesystems "that are in use" and 2) why the hell there is a 'D' run state that is completely uninterruptable?* The 2nd one really baffles me, and the first is just annoying, and fuser or some vendor specific tool can (sometimes) point you to the offending process that is using the filesystem. I found out today that fuser does not work on linux with the kernel NFS daemon sharing a filesystem and I try to unmount it. Annoying, but not as fundamentally broken as #2 in my opinion.

      Another thing that I see as "broken" in UNIX is that there is no normal/standardized/sane way of installing software. Debian gets it the closest, but the LSB picked RPM for some insane reason for package mismanagement on Linux.

      * For those that don't know, if there is something wrong with a disk subsystem, and a process tries to access that disk subsystem, the process is in an uninterruptable "disk wait state", that cannot be corrected without rebooting the computer. One can ususally safely ignore the processes stuck in this state, but its kinda irritating because it can often bring the system load up by one for each stuck process, yet it does not appear to hurt performance any.

    • Re:Biggest problem with Unix (Score:4, Informative)

      by CondeZer0 ( 158969 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:32PM (#10442589) Homepage
      I think that he and the Bell Labs folks already answered those questions over 10 years ago:

      http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html [bell-labs.com]
      (See specially the first section: Motivation)

      uriel
    • Given that Rob Pike works for Google [bell-labs.com], I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote that question himself...

    • Recently on the Google Labs Aptitude Test there was a question: "What's broken with Unix? How would you fix it?"

      The moment I saw that question I said it must be a trick. UNIX develops by evolution, not by dictation. Whenever an individual change is dictated it almost never survives on its merits.

      UNIX is beyond the comprehension of any one. One can introduce a change, but it is up to NATURAL LAW to ultimately decide if the change lives or dies.

      That said, pttys, fifos and ioctls do in fact blow.

  • OK, here's the obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)

    by w.p.richardson ( 218394 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:04PM (#10441293) Homepage
    Looking back, what would you have done differently? Anything?

  • resolv.conf (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flashbck ( 739237 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:05PM (#10441298)
    why was the 'e' ever removed from resolv.conf?!!?!?

  • Apple and Unix (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:05PM (#10441302)
    What are your thoughts on Apple's use of Unix.

  • The future? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xenostar ( 746407 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:06PM (#10441318)
    What do you see in the far future of operating systems, now that great advances in the way we think about computers, such as quantum computing, have been made.

  • Is Linux "unix"? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:06PM (#10441321) Homepage Journal
    Is Linux "unix"? What did Unix get wrong, but was too late to change by the time that you realized it, that Linux can still get right, while it's still young?

  • Are you suprised at the longevity of Unix? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sgant ( 178166 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:06PM (#10441323) Homepage Journal
    When you were creating it, did you in your wildest dreams ever think that 30 years people would still be using it on a daily basis? Was it designed from the beginning to grow and be added onto?

  • Unix co-creator? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hruntrung ( 89993 )
    Pardon my ignorance, but I was under the impression that Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson created Unix (Unics), on disused hardware at Bell Labs.

    Am I incorrect in this belief? Someone, kindly, clarify the matter.

  • Languages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by btlzu2 ( 99039 ) * on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:07PM (#10441341) Homepage Journal
    Hello!

    Maybe this is an overly-asked question, but I still often ponder it. Does object-oriented design negate or diminish the future prospects of Unix's continuing popularity?

    I've developed in C (which I still love), but lately, I've been doing a lot of purely object-oriented development in Java. Using things like delegation and reusable classes have made life so much easier in many respects. Since the *nixes are so dependent upon C, I was wondering what future you see in C combined with Unix. Like I said, I love C and still enjoy developing in Unix, but there has to be a point where you build on your progress and the object-oriented languages, in my opinion, seem to be doing that.

    Thank you for all your contributions!!!

  • Obvious (and probably redundant) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:08PM (#10441350) Homepage Journal
    What do you think of the Evil called SCO?

  • Emacs or Vi? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 )
    nt

  • View on linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by noselasd ( 594905 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:08PM (#10441362)
    What are your views on the free/OpenSource Unix like operating systems, such as Linux and the *BSDs ?

  • Backtracking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Antony-Kyre ( 807195 )
    Is it possible to design a computer so you can backtrack in progress? A method where it records perhaps the last three minutes, and you could click on something, and rewind your computer just like a video? And the hard drive would be at that state? Perhaps with intervals of five seconds. This would go way beyond RAID. (Not sure if I explained this properly.)

  • Language for new OS's (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:09PM (#10441377)
    The C programming language was written for and spread by the Unix operating system. While it's still a useful tool, and far better than the wholly untyped BCPL that preceded it, C is really starting to show its age. Is there an existing programming language that you would recommend for the implementation of operating systems? Would you recommend creating a new language for a new OS, as was done with Unix? Would you recommend the creation of new OS's at all?
    • Yep, good question. When you think about it, conceving an OS, and the language which will build it at the same time must be something totally mind blowing.
      Given the power computers have today, the omniprecense of networks, OO and so on, i'm pretty sure that if one conceived an OS that way today and tried to rethink everything from the beginning, he could end up with concepts we don't even dream of.After all we all still think inside concepts which were found 40 years ago, even in network terms.
      Things lik

  • Innovation and patents (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:11PM (#10441405) Homepage
    With so many of your ideas being used with such ubiquity in modern operating systems, what is your stance on the issue of patenting of software and other "intellectual property" concepts? Assuming that business isn't going to let IP patents go away as they strive to build patent stockpiles reminiscent of the nuclear arms buildup during the cold war, how would you like to see the issue resolved?

  • CLI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:11PM (#10441410) Homepage
    Has the Command Line Interface become outdated? What are your thoughts on the CLI and if you had to 'do it all again' would the CLI be as prevalent?

    • Re:CLI (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@ps g . com> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:55PM (#10442048)
      The command line was the ONLY interface when unix was first developed. X came long after the CLI and even if you're running Windows you still use the command line from time to time. If you don't you're just not using the power of your system, in my opinion.

      raw text is the only true inter-system communication protocol. my cats and my computer understand a lot of the same words. my cat can't type but i can, and my computer can't understand the noises my cat makes, but i do - command pipes! where would we be without those, and those ONLY work in the CLI! we would be in the stone ages of computing without the CLI.

      • Power (Score:5, Insightful)

        by schon ( 31600 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @03:32PM (#10443301)
        True. CLI is the equivalent of spoken or written language, and the GUI is the equivalent of pointing at something and grunting.

        Spoken/written communication is much more powerful (easier, faster, more effective) when both parties understand the language, and the idea is a complex one ("I would like a job at your pie shop.")

        Rudimentary communication is easier with point-and-grunt (answering the question "which pie would you like to purchase?" - you point to the one you want)

        If the parties don't understand the same language, complex concepts are *much* harder. Learning to communicate by pointing is easier, but the true power of communication comes from spoken/written languages.

        Think I'm wrong? Write a detailed response *without* using your keyboard.

  • Systems research (Score:5, Interesting)

    by asyncster ( 532683 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:14PM (#10441444)
    In your paper, systems software research is irrelevant [bell-labs.com], you claim that there is little room for innovation in systems programming, and that all energy is devoted to supporting existing standards. Do you still feel this way now that you're working at Google?

  • the old school (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Triumph The Insult C ( 586706 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:14PM (#10441450) Homepage Journal
    what modern OS reminds you the most of your old school OS hacking days? what OS do you think keeps closes to the *nix spirit?

  • One tool for one job? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:15PM (#10441463)

    Given the nature of current operating systems and applications, do you think the idea of "one tool doing one job well" has been abandoned? If so, do you think a return to this model would help bring some innovation back to software development?

    (It's easier to toss a small, single-purpose app and start over than it is to toss a large, feature-laden app and start over.)

  • Back in The Day (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:15PM (#10441467) Homepage Journal
    Were programmers treated as hot-pluggable resources as they are today? There seems to be a mystique to the programmer prior to about 1995. From reading the various netnews posts and recollections of older programmers, it seems like the programmer back then was viewed as something of a wizard without whom all the computers he was responsible for would immediately collapse. Has anything really changed or was it the same back then as it is now? I'm wondering how much of what I've read is simply nostalgia.
  • What do you think of the work Hans Reiser is doing [namesys.com] with file systems? How does it differ from and/or improve upon Plan 9? What do you think of his theory that (nearly) all database functions should be done by the file system? What do you think about being able to treat files as directories in order to get to special (or not special) info? Is it useful to be able to treat a tarball as a file when you want to and as a directory when you want to? How about file metadata? Data forks? Do you think Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X will come up with the better database/search-enhanced file system?

  • Since you now work for Google... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by anonymous cowherd (m ( 783253 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:21PM (#10441551) Homepage
    How can search as a concept become better integrated into the desktop? Are projects like dashboard [nat.org] the next killer app?

  • Is systems research really dead? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:22PM (#10441568) Homepage
    After reading your presentation on the death of systems research [bell-labs.com], I was rather disappointed at the dismal situation presented. Has anything changed since you presented that talk, or have your thoughts changed about the matter? As someone who is interested in systems research, what do you think is the most promising direction that is emerging today?

  • Why did it take Linux to popularise Open Source? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:23PM (#10441571) Homepage Journal
    The GNU movement started on old Unix computers, and was aimed in part at them; so why do you think it is that the first wave of unix users were so resistent to the concept of Open Source?

  • Plan 9/OS insights from Google? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jwjr ( 56765 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:24PM (#10441594)
    Do you find any role for Plan9 at Google? Does Linux (or Linux with whatever customizations, extensions, and metamorphoses Google imposes on it) do everything Google needs or wants out of an OS platform? Does your experience with operating systems research pay off directly in contributing to the shape of the Google platform, whether for individual machine OS's, or for co-operation and clustered operation on the network?

  • Driving force of OS' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cpfeifer ( 20941 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:24PM (#10441599) Homepage
    What will drive the next crop of OS'? Is it in hardware innovations, new programming languages?

  • Article theft (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zedrick ( 764028 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:26PM (#10441626)
    The operating systems link goes to encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com, which is a scam-site that steals articles from other sites, in this case from Wikipedia. The only thing they've added are ads. The original can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9

  • The future of *NIX (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mbonig ( 727002 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:27PM (#10441648) Homepage
    As *NIX and linux become increasingly popular in the business place people are looking to push Microsoft out of the field, replacing servers and workstations with free alternatives like Linux and some BSDs. This is causing kernels and OS designed for server performance to progress to desktop solutions. Do you feel that *NIX should stay in the server marketplace and focus solely on that market, or do you think moving the OS/kernel into a desktop role is "A Good Thing"??

  • Xanadu, Google, & Plan9 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:31PM (#10441712)
    Computing has advanced so much in the past ten years that it seems it's impossible to go back and correct any origional mistakes in the way we think about computers. With the amount of money behind the corporate machine, it really seems as if incredible ideas like Plan 9 and Xanadu are now things of the past--once good ideas that could have changed the way we approach computing, that simply missed their time. Do you see hope for these ideas and projects, or any other new or old computing paradigms that have potential for big change, but would require scrapping, say, the past several years of stagnant and unorigional work? -Ryan

  • Microkernel vs. Monolithic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ransak ( 548582 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:32PM (#10441736) Homepage Journal
    In the marketplace, monolithic OSes seem to be dominating, despite the advantages of microkernel OS design. I know this is straying into many other issues but from your point of view, why are monolithic OSes still viable in the marketplace - and why hasn't the public (ie, the 'programming public') demanded more?

  • What are you doing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mark Wilkinson ( 20656 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:33PM (#10441745) Homepage
    Google employees are apparently allowed to work on their own projects 20% of the time. Given that you probably can't comment on what you're doing for Google, what are you doing to fill the other 20%?

  • The Year 2038 Bug (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:34PM (#10441761)
    End of the World, or not?

  • The Google Operating System (Score:3, Interesting)

    by andyfaeglasgow ( 782943 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:53PM (#10442006)

    Can you comment on the speculation about a new Operating System [kottke.org] being created by Google?

  • Many different design strategies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @01:59PM (#10442107) Homepage Journal
    Plan 9, from my understanding, is essentially a microkernel with a blend of ideas from Unix and MULTICS. However, it follows the same core concept that most Operating Systems use, which is that the machine has a central processing system, plus devices to which instructions/data should be farmed.


    In today's computing environment, this isn't always strictly the case. Multi-CPU boards are becoming more common, and clusters are inexpensive and powerful. Devices are also (returning) to a more "intelligent" state, with higher-end peripherals having comparable computing power to the main processor.


    It would seem logical, then, to have a kernel which was more evenly distributed over the system, rather than hogging one specific resource. However, many attempts to do this are crude. Beowulf and MOSIX clusters, for example, run the whole kernel on all the nodes in the cluster, rather than just the bits of the kernel that are actually needed. This eats resources and limits the scalability of such solutions.


    Do you have any plans for a distributed Plan 9? And, if so, what would you do differently to the other solutions people have adopted?

  • Lack of variety in operating systems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:01PM (#10442145)
    Most people graduating with computer science degrees are only familiar with Windows and a handful of UNIX-variants: Linux, BSD, OS X. Is it good that stable technology is becoming the standard, thus allowing developers to focus their attentions elsewhere, or was this tremendous reduction in variety premature?

  • Revolution Needed? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:08PM (#10442249)

    When Unix came out, it was written in the highest level language of any operating system: C. Why do you feel that operating systems are still implemented using the oldest, lowest-level languages?

    With recent advances in high-level application languages like Java (low-latency garbage collection, dynamic inlining, etc), it seems to me that an operating system based on such a language would offer far more opportinuty for a vastly different kind of operating system more akin to an operating environment. Haven't attempts to add object-oriented features, such as in Plan 9 or to a limited extend Mach, failed due to the choice of implementation language?

    It's just painful to see all the disgusting machinations necessary to implement a filesystem, network stack, scheduler, etc in C/C++...

    • Correction, when UNIX "came out," it was written in the lowest level language of any operating system. Everything else was either written in straight assembly or a sane language, like Lisp or PL/I. Furthermore, Lisp had all those lovely features in 1975.

      It's also worth noting that many the problems we have today are based in the concept of the "operating environment" -- today's software and hardware design paradigms are rooted in C. Implementing any language other than Algol-derivatives on top of C ce

  • probably redundant by this point... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guano_Jim ( 157555 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:10PM (#10442276)
    emacs or vi?

  • Silver medal in Archery at the 1980 olympics? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:10PM (#10442277)
    Your bio at bell labs and most other bios writen about you, mention that you won the silver medal in archery at the 1980 Olympics.

    First, the US and Canada boycotted those olympics.
    Second, Boris Isachenko, URS(BLR) won the silver medal at those olympics.

    Is this an example of a joke that now has become folklore? Is it a way to "prove" to people that they should check their sources? Or is it just puffing up one's resume?

    It seems strange in an era of quick and dirty research that you would still post this on your bio at bell labs. It only took a quick "I'm feeling lucky" google search on "1980 Olympics archery" to pull that info up.

    So my question is, why do you keep that on your bio?
    • For anyone curious, this is the bio in question, with commentary from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RobPike [c2.com]:

      RobPike wrote the following mostly-serious but slightly tongue-in-cheek bio for his 1994 Usenix paper presentation on Acme: "RobPike, well known for his appearances on ``Late Night with David Letterman'', was also a Member of Technical Staff at BellLabs, where he has been since 1980, the same year he won the Olympic silver medal in Archery. In 1981 he wrote the first bitmap window system for Unix systems,

  • Bitterness about Linux from older developers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:11PM (#10442295)
    Among a certain crowd, Linux is viewed at the savior of computing--a young, hip operating system for the new century. But at the same time, there have been definite twinges of bitterness from a more old-school crowd, including people like Brian Kernighan, Jaron Lanier, and possibly even you. This bitterness appears to stem from the horror of a 25 year old operating system returning to the forefront of computing (for anyone vehemently disagreeing, consider if clones of VMS or OS/360 were suddenly all the rage). Who is right? What's your take?

  • An old grudge, an new liscense? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by emil ( 695 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:16PM (#10442368)

    Two questions:

    1. Dave Cutler, mastermind of the Windows NT kernel, once described UNIX as a "junk OS designed by a committee of Ph.D.s." [winnetmag.com].

      Given two important facts:

      • Windows NT is mostly written in C and C++, both Bell Labs innovations, and
      • IE/Mediaplayer integration has turned the Windows NT codebase into a security disaster

      How would you respond to Cutler's assertions, and how would you rate the code quality of the NT kernel (assuming that you might have perused the recent leaked NT4 source)?

    2. While UNIX-like operating systems are growing in popularity, actual Bell Labs code is rarely encountered in free operating systems because of licensing issues [neohapsis.com] (with a few notible exceptions [bell-labs.com]).

      This is a frustrating situation for all of us. Do you see any possibility that major portions of UNIX and Plan 9 source being released under licensing that major distributions would find acceptable?

    Please also accept my personal thanks for your work in the field of computer science. The influence of the community of researchers at Bell Labs will be felt for many generations to come.

  • starting from scratch today? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nerkles ( 819341 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:22PM (#10442454)
    If you were just starting out with today's computers, what would you do differently or the same?

  • Freeness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by identity0 ( 77976 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:25PM (#10442513) Journal
    How much do you think UNIX's success has been shaped by the relatively light restrictions placed on its use, distribution and modification?

    The original UNIX, BSD, and now Linux seem to have been 'freeer' than other OSes of the time, do you think they would have been successful without this?

    Finally... vi or Emacs? ; )

  • Hindsight (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stuffduff ( 681819 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:25PM (#10442518) Journal
    If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? Why?

  • Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SwansonMarpalum ( 521840 ) <redina.alum@rpi@edu> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:27PM (#10442536) Homepage Journal
    Rob, When you were engineering UNIX, processors weren't as beefy, memory was grotesquely expensive, and storage was a premium. These days all of these resources have largely become commodities and can be frittered away wastefully by neglectful programmers. Do you think that in an alternate world where UNIX hadn't been conceived as early in the progression of hardware as 1970, rather had come along at this stage in the timeline where hardware vastly outpaces all but the most glaringly negligent software, it would have been as compact, fast and efficient? Thanks! -Alex R.

  • HURD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:41PM (#10442708)
    Someone please put together a good question about The HURD and his views on the project, if I do it, it won't get modded up, I'm bad at expressing myself in english.

  • Plan9 advantages over Linux and *BSD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Florian ( 2471 ) <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de> on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:48PM (#10442790) Homepage
    In which areas would you say is Plan9 (still) ahead of Linux/GNU and *BSD, the two operating systems which represent the most contemporary iteration of the original Unix design?

  • Would you consider Mac OS X a version of Unix? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_webmaestro ( 570338 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @02:56PM (#10442913)
    What do you think of Mac OS X? Have you used it? Would you consider Mac OS X a 'version' of Unix? Would you consider using it as your main operating system? What do you loave about it? What do you hate about it?

  • Schemas for UNIX (Score:5, Interesting)

    by generalphilips ( 816053 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @03:29PM (#10443269)
    Unix suffers today from a proliferation of file and output formats that makes integration between the CLI/config files and the GUI awkward at best. For example, a common idiom for Unix GUI tools is to parse output from a CLI program and present it visually. This would be greatly simplified and much smoother if those programs produced structured output rather than raw text. The same holds for programs that read configuration files, like resolv.conf. Do you think UNIX would benefit from standardization of formats that coalesce around XML? What do you think of the idea of developing schemas for OS objects? What about schemas for common application-level objects - the idea behind WinFS?

    I realize the question needs work, but I hope you get the idea.

  • Intellectual Property (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lordvdr ( 682194 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @04:18PM (#10443909)
    The US (and to some extent, the EU) are facing mounting issues from Software Patents (The idea of patenting an idea opposed to an implementation). What do you think about the current state of Intellectual Property laws?

    What limits should be placed on Software Patents? Should they be eliminated entirely? Should all patents be moved to a trademark like system where if they are not enforced, the holder loses the trademark?

    What is the fix and what is needed to make it happen? Will it ever be fixed?

  • If you could write a new OS from scratch (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @04:40PM (#10444179) Homepage Journal
    What would it be like. Would it still be unix like?
    What would you write it in? I mean if you had the time, money , and a mandate to create the best OS ever and you did not have to care about backward compatability what would you come up with.

  • Your Biggest Mistake we're still suffering from? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bsdnazz ( 114881 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @05:34PM (#10444836)
    What's the biggest mistake (design, paradigm, API) you've made that we're still suffering from. And I don't mean leaving the e off creat()!

  • X11 in the future (Score:4, Interesting)

    by moath ( 151844 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @05:43PM (#10444937)
    Do you see X-Windows (in whatever form) as a viable platform for GUI technologies in the future or is it approaching the point of diminishing returns?

  • Fess up (Score:3, Funny)

    by carcosa30 ( 235579 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @06:11PM (#10445213)
    You stole the source code for UNIX from SCO, didn't cha?

  • Language based operating systems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stevedekorte ( 214387 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @06:15PM (#10445247)
    Do you see a future for language-based operating systems like the old Smalltalk and LISP machines or the Newton?

  • Database filesystems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by defile ( 1059 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @10:51PM (#10447133) Homepage Journal

    The buzz around filesystems research nowadays is making the UNIX filesystem more database-ish. The buzz around database research nowadays is making the relational database more OOP-ish.

    This research to me sounds like the original designers growing tired of the limitations of their "creations" now that they're commodities and going back to the drawing board to "do things right this time". I predict the reinvented versions will never catch on because they'll be too complex and inaccessible.

    Of course, this second system syndrome isn't just limited to systems. It happens to bands, directors, probably in every creative art.

    I think what we've got in the modern filesystem and RDBMS is about as good as it gets and we should move on. What do you think?

  • Redundant Array of Inexpensive CPUs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cardbox ( 165383 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @12:17PM (#10451483) Homepage

    Mainstream operating systems were designed when electronics were expensive and programs had to treat the computer system as a shared resource. Hence timesharing, multitasking, shared filesystems, and the rest, with all the combinatorial problems of N programs interacting with N other programs.

    Now that CPU-plus-memory is so much cheaper, do you see a phase change coming where it is better/more secure/simpler to have one CPU per application? What impact would this have on operating system design?

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