Unix

“ Term used for {shell} code, so called because of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the output of one program to the input of another. Under Unix, user utilities can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time, and the capability is considered one of Unix's major winning features. A few other OSs such as IBM's VM/CMS support similar facilities. ”

“ The widely used Apples have their own operating systems—one for the Apple II series and another for the Macintosh.
There’s also UNIX. Ma Bell developed it originally, AT&T Information Systems now supports it, and Microsoft sells a microcomputer version called XENIX. The gurus say UNIX could be the operation system of the future. With it programmers can more easily write software for machines of different brands and sizes and “port” their programs from one computer to another. UNIX may also be good for micros with many people using them at once. ”

“ Nowadays, like many operating systems, UNIX hides behind a graphical user interface like the X Windows system. Occasionally—and networking is unfortunately one of those occasions— its quirks like file-naming and directory hierarchy peek through.
This Appendix gives you just enough UNIX to avoid some pitfalls and issue commands needed to transfer files. The basic commands you need to know for any system are how to display directories and list the contents of files, how to name files, and how to get help about the system. ”

“ And the Internet is only one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic.
Usenet is not a Unix network, nor even an ASCII network.
Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a Unix machine. There are Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, and MS-DOS PCs reading and posting to Usenet. And, yes, some of them use (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore them if you like, but they're out there.
Usenet is not software. There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package can be called "the Usenet software." ”

“ Ken Thompson, co-inventor of Unix, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original Unix kernel's preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over {brittle} `smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that OS. Like so many other tradeoffs in software design, the choice between brute force and complex, finely-tuned cleverness is often a difficult one that requires both engineering savvy and delicate esthetic judgment. ”

“ The hack may qualify as `Unix brain damage' if the program conforms to published standards and the Unix program in question does not. Unix brain damage happens because it is much easier for other (minority) systems to change their ways to match non-conforming behavior than it is to change all the hundreds of thousands of Unix systems out there.
An example of Unix brain damage is a {kluge} in a mail server to recognize bare line feed (the Unix newline) as an equivalent form to the Internet standard newline, which is a carriage return followed by a line feed. ”

“ Netsys was not a stand-alone machine, but part of the globe-spanning "UUCP" cooperative network. The UUCP network uses a set of Unix software programs called "Unix-to-Unix Copy," which allows Unix systems to throw data to one another at high speed through the public telephone network. UUCP is a radically decentralized, not-for-profit network of UNIX computers. There are tens of thousands of these UNIX machines. Some are small, but many are powerful and also link to other networks. ”

“ Recital A defines Novell's UNIX and UnixWare "Business" to include the development of a line of software, the sale of binary and source code licenses to the various versions of UNIX and UnixWare, the support of such products, and the sale of other products which are directly related to UNIX and UnixWare. Recital B defines the "Acquisition" contemplated by the parties to mean that Santa Cruz would "acquire certain of the assets of, and assume certain of the liabilities of [Novell] comprising the Business." ”

“ Similarly, the UNIX world is split into the "BSD" workstations and "System V" (i.e. "5") workstations.
The three worlds are reflected somewhat in networking. The Internet is dominated by minicomputers and workstations running UNIX and VMS, with an ever increasing influx of PCs running MS-DOS and Macs. Machines running other operating systems often put a "UNIX-like" foot forward, so the user can almost believe he or she is dealing with UNIX machines. There is a certain sense that the UNIX software is the standard for the Internet. ”

“ This may be the most remarkable hacker project in history — an entire clone of Unix for 386, 486 and Pentium micros, distributed for free with sources over the net (ports to Alpha and Sparc-based machines are underway) . This is what {GNU} aimed to be, but the Free Software Foundation has not (as of early 1996) produced the kernel to go with its Unix toolset (which Linux uses) . Other, similar efforts like FreeBSD and NetBSD have been much less successful. ”

“ UNIX (pronounced "you-nicks") is a powerful, flexible computer operating-system, for multi-user, multi-tasking computers. In 1969, when UNIX was created in Bell Labs, such computers were exclusive to large corporations and universities, but today UNIX is run on thousands of powerful home machines. UNIX was particularly well-suited to telecommunications programming, and had become a standard in the field. Naturally, UNIX also became a standard for the elite hacker and phone phreak. Lately, Prophet had not been so active as Leftist and Urvile, but Prophet was a recidivist. ”

“ The foundation software of a machine, of course; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around its host machines. Hacker folklore has been shaped primarily by the {{Unix}}, {{ITS}}, {{TOPS-10}}, {{TOPS-20}}/{{TWENEX}}, {{WAITS}}, {{CP/M}}, {{MS-DOS}}, and {{Multics}} operating systems (most importantly by ITS and Unix) . ”

“ A derogatory term for anyone who engages in uncritical praise of Unix. Often appearing in the context "stupid Unix weenie". See {Weenix}, {Unix conspiracy}. See also {weenie}.
:unixism: /n./ A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory Unix systems. Common {unixism}s include: gratuitous use of `fork (2) '; the assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of Unix libraries such as `stdio (3) ' are supported elsewhere ”

“ Although it would take a few years to be recognized by Stallman, the explosiveness of Linux development conjured flashbacks of Emacs. This time around, however, the innovation triggering the explosion wasn't a software hack like Control-R but the novelty of running a Unix-like system on the PC architecture. The motives may have been different, but the end result certainly fit the ethical specifications: a fully functional operating system composed entirely of free software. ”

“ More compilation album than operating system, it was comprised of a hacker medley of greatest hits: everything from GCC, GDB, and glibc (the GNU Project's newly developed C Library) to X (a Unix-based graphic user interface developed by MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science) to BSD-developed tools such as BIND (the Berkeley Internet Naming Daemon, which lets users substitute easy-to-remember Internet domain names for numeric IP addresses) and TCP/IP. The arch's capstone, of course, was the Linux kernel—itself a bored-out, super-charged version of Minix. ”

“ Used of people only.
:dd: /dee-dee/ /vt./ [Unix: from IBM {JCL}] Equivalent to {cat} or {BLT}. Originally the name of a Unix copy command with special options suitable for block-oriented devices; it was often used in heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "Let's `dd' the root partition onto a tape, then use the boot PROM to load it back on to a new disk". The Unix `dd (1) ' was designed with a weird, distinctly non-Unixy keyword option syntax reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD `Dataset Definition' specification for I/O devices) ”

“ Even companies that once laughed it off as software socialism have come around to recognize the benefits. Linux, the Unix-like kernel developed by Finnish college student Linus Torvalds in 1991, is licensed under the GPL, as are many of the world's most popular programming tools: GNU Emacs, the GNU Debugger, the GNU C Compiler, etc. Together, these tools form the components of a free software operating system developed, nurtured, and owned by the worldwide hacker community. ”

“ The best way to learn about almost any computer program is by using it. Most people find that reading a book without using the program isn’t beneficial. The best way to learn about Unix and GNU/Linux is by using them. Use GNU/Linux for everything you can. Feel free to experiment!
Debian isn’t as intuitively obvious as some other operating systems. You will probably end up reading at least the first few chapters of this book. GNU/Linux’s power and complexity make it difficult to approach at first, but far more rewarding in the long run. ”

“ Dubbed Unix, a play on an older, more academically respectable operating system called Multics, the software system was available to any programmer willing to pay for the cost of copying the program onto a new magnetic tape and shipping it. Not every programmer participating in this culture described himself as a hacker, but most shared the sentiments of Richard M. Stallman. If a program or software fix was good enough to solve your problems, it was good enough to solve somebody else's problems. ”

“ Unix-like systems are multiuser, and so you have your own electronic identity as a user on the system. Type finger yourusername to look at some of the information about you that’s publically available. To change the name and shell listed there, you can use the commands chfn and chsh. Only the superuser can change your login (username) and directory. You’ll notice that it says “No plan.” A “plan” is just some information you can make available to others. To create a plan, you put whatever information you want people to see in a file called .plan. ”

“ A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load-average statistics, etc. Under ITS, many terminals displayed a list of people logged in, where they were, what they were running, etc., along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise) , which was generated by the `name dragon'. Usage: rare outside MIT —- under UNIX and most other OSes this would be called a `background demon' or {daemon}. The best-known UNIX example of a dragon is `cron (1) '. ”

“ Used to refer to the Unix operating system (a trademark of AT&T, then of Novell, then of SCO, and then of Caldera) in writing, but avoiding the need for the ugly (TM) typography. Also used to refer to any or all varieties of Unixoid operating systems. Ironically, lawyers now say that the requirement for the trademark postfix has no legal force, but the asterisk usage is entrenched anyhow. ”

“ Remember that the build environment of a derivation contains nothing but its declared inputs. So there’s an obvious chicken-and-egg problem: how does the first package get built? How does the first compiler get compiled?
The GNU system we are building is primarily made of C code, with libc at its core. The GNU build system itself assumes the availability of a Bourne shell, traditional Unix tools provided by GNU Coreutils, GNU Awk, Findutils, sed, and grep. Furthermore, our build programs are written in Guile Scheme. ”

“ Software Tool & Die offers The World, a public access Unix system: The basic rates are $2 per hour and a $5 monthly account fee. Services offered by The World include internet electronic mail, USENET news, ClariNet -UPI, AP, and satellite news services, real-time chat, Unix Software, Archie, the Online Book Initiative (a publicly accessible repository for freely redistributable collections of textual information, a net-worker's library.) AlterNet Access - Users have access to AlterNet via ftp/telnet. The World can also be accessed over the Compuserve Packet Network. ”

“ The ASCII LF character (0001010) , used under {{UNIX}} as a text line terminator. A Bell-Labs-ism rather than a Berkeleyism; interestingly (and unusually for UNIX jargon) , it is said to have originally been an IBM usage. (Though the term `newline' appears in ASCII standards, it never caught on in the general computing world before UNIX) . 2. More generally, any magic character, character sequence, or operation (like Pascal's writeln procedure) required to terminate a text record or separate lines. ”

“ By the rampant, explosive standards of software piracy, AT&T UNIX source code is heavily copyrighted, well-guarded, well-licensed. UNIX was traditionally run only on mainframe machines, owned by large groups of suit-and-tie professionals, rather than on bedroom machines where people can get up to easy mischief. ”