From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To: Andrew Warkentin <andreww591@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2019 22:06:11 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANCZdfqNXrFuT6PByf3P9XAHrgBWLMC0Z3sQCJKuSONZ_Z9QRA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAD-qYGrGY+J0Bw9=OPU1m9O48vRR9yk9iCA8uGJYQLfs8poRPQ@mail.gmail.com>
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I had two aha moments.
First was that I really didn't want the filesystem to do logical name
translation. It was simple enough to do in the program. So no way to have
the kernel expand /usr/share/fubar/$USER/fu. While VMS' logical names were
a cool wart on its filename stuff, the whole ball of wax had too many
special cases for different device types, permission areas of logical
names, logical name table nesting rules, etc. Simpler was better.
The second was the simplicity of the install... boot one file to prep the
disk, one to copy a fs to the future swap system and a final one to get the
ball rolling... for booting off of tape, on systems with no real memory,
this kept what wound up in memory small enough to live in the sub Megabyte
systems ot needed to work on... though once there was a lot more, this was
left behind when you could just load one kernel with a ran disk to do all
the setup... the different pieces of the install acted as a Koan for how
Unix worked...
Warner
On Mon, Oct 14, 2019, 7:19 PM Andrew Warkentin <andreww591@gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't really have a single "Aha" moment, but I remember borrowing
> some books on Unix from the library and realizing it was more powerful
> than anything else I'd used (up until then, I'd only really used
> DOS/Windows, classic Mac OS, and Apple II systems; as you can probably
> tell, I'm quite a bit younger than many other people on this list).
> Shortly afterwards, I installed Linux (initially Mandrake 8.2, but I
> replaced it with Debian 3.0 shortly thereafter; I still have my
> original Debian 3.0 install around as a VM that I use from time to
> time) and never really looked back. I did keep a Windows dual boot
> around for a while but that eventually went away (although I still do
> have Windows VMs around). Soon after that, I decided I was going to
> put together my own Unix-like OS; initially I was going to put
> together a NeXTStep/OS X-like Linux distribution, but then later
> decided I was going to write a QNX-like microkernel-based OS instead.
> I still don't have anything that is actually useful at the moment,
> although now I am making a bit better progress than in the past (I
> changed my mind on several parts of the design and was quite busy with
> other projects for a while).
>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-10-15 4:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 124+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-10-15 0:28 Pat Barron
2019-10-15 1:19 ` Andrew Warkentin
2019-10-15 4:06 ` Warner Losh [this message]
2019-10-15 4:27 ` [TUHS] Simple Unix install? (was: What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-10-15 9:03 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-16 3:20 ` Warner Losh
2019-10-16 8:20 ` Matt Rudge
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-10-22 13:36 [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment? Noel Chiappa
2019-10-22 14:22 ` Abhinav Rajagopalan
2019-10-22 20:08 ` Warren Toomey
2019-10-21 12:34 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-21 12:10 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-21 16:50 ` Angelo Papenhoff
2019-10-20 19:25 Norman Wilson
2019-10-20 20:12 ` Sean Dwyer
2019-10-21 2:31 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS
2019-10-21 2:37 ` Warren Toomey
2019-10-22 5:25 ` Peter Jeremy
2019-10-22 6:29 ` Sean Dwyer
2019-10-21 2:40 ` Bakul Shah
2019-10-21 2:45 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-21 10:45 ` jason-tuhs
2019-10-21 11:55 ` William Corcoran
2019-10-22 5:19 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-16 14:39 Doug McIlroy
2019-10-14 16:45 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-14 15:32 Doug McIlroy
2019-10-15 8:42 ` Thomas Paulsen
2019-10-13 16:07 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-13 16:25 ` Richard Salz
2019-10-13 3:45 Rudi Blom
2019-10-13 1:57 Jon Steinhart
2019-10-12 13:55 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-12 14:51 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-12 4:42 Doug McIlroy
2019-10-12 6:12 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-12 10:05 ` Steve Nickolas
2019-10-12 12:49 ` Doug McIlroy
2019-10-12 14:26 ` Steve Nickolas
2019-10-10 20:55 Warren Toomey
2019-10-10 21:11 ` SPC
2019-10-10 21:25 ` Jim Capp
2019-10-10 21:33 ` greg travis
2019-10-10 21:13 ` Michael Parson
2019-10-10 21:15 ` Matt Rudge
2019-10-10 21:31 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-10-10 21:34 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-10 23:10 ` Seth J. Morabito
2019-10-10 23:23 ` Brian L. Stuart
2019-10-10 23:28 ` George Michaelson
2019-10-10 23:35 ` Bakul Shah
2019-10-10 23:49 ` David
2019-10-11 1:44 ` Gregg Levine
2019-10-11 1:45 ` Gregg Levine
2019-10-11 10:55 ` Leah Neukirchen
2019-10-11 12:04 ` Tyler Adams
2019-10-13 19:46 ` Peter Jeremy
2019-10-14 2:13 ` Lawrence Stewart
2019-10-14 2:32 ` Rico Pajarola
2019-10-14 9:49 ` Michael Kjörling
2019-10-14 18:36 ` Nemo Nusquam
2019-10-14 21:10 ` Jim Geist
2019-10-14 22:22 ` Warren Toomey
2019-10-14 22:56 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-14 23:44 ` Jim Geist
2019-10-14 23:47 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-14 23:54 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-15 0:03 ` Henry Bent
2019-10-14 23:54 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-15 0:04 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-15 0:06 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-15 0:27 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-15 0:07 ` George Michaelson
2019-10-15 0:10 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-14 23:52 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-11 12:53 ` KatolaZ
2019-10-11 16:44 ` Pete Wright
2019-10-11 17:13 ` Jim Geist
2019-10-11 17:20 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-11 17:40 ` Jim Capp
2019-10-11 17:48 ` Larry W. Cashdollar via TUHS
2019-10-11 21:56 ` Tomasz Rola
2019-10-12 2:41 ` ricercar
2019-10-12 3:01 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-12 14:37 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-10-12 16:12 ` David
2019-10-12 17:59 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-12 19:10 ` Jon Forrest
2019-10-13 21:45 ` Steve Johnson
2019-10-14 0:36 ` Jon Forrest
2019-10-14 2:08 ` Lawrence Stewart
2019-10-16 13:29 ` Pierre DAVID
2019-10-12 3:23 ` Richard Salz
2019-10-12 3:34 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-12 21:32 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-10-12 8:55 ` Wesley Parish
2019-10-12 10:17 ` Naveen Nathan
2019-10-12 11:54 ` markus schnalke
2019-10-12 19:33 ` Michael Kjörling
2019-10-12 22:38 ` Gregg Levine
2019-10-13 1:37 ` Dan Cross
2019-10-13 15:00 ` Robert Brockway
2019-10-13 15:33 ` arnold
2019-10-13 15:41 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-13 15:47 ` David Potesta
2019-10-18 1:49 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-10-18 12:07 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-21 16:16 ` Dario Niedermann
2019-10-23 5:13 ` Gilles Gravier
2019-10-23 6:19 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-23 15:08 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-23 15:11 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-23 15:26 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-23 15:33 ` Dan Cross
2019-10-23 16:19 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-23 15:17 ` Richard Salz
2019-10-23 15:22 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-23 16:45 ` Will Senn
2019-10-23 22:19 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-24 17:32 ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS
2019-10-26 0:33 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-10-25 20:58 ` John S Quarterman
2019-10-25 22:11 ` Will Senn
2019-10-26 0:57 ` William Corcoran
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