On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 5:59 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018, Arthur Krewat wrote:

I would imagine that Windows wouldn't be what it is today without UNIX. Matter of fact, Windows NT (which is what Windows has been based on since Windows ME went away) is really DEC's VMS underneath the covers at least to a small extent.

I thought that NT has a POSIX-y kernel, which is why it was so reliable? Or was VMS a POSIX-like system? I only used it for a couple of years in the early 80s (up to 4.0, I think), and never dug inside it; to me, it was just RSX-11/RSTS-11 on steroids.

The design of the original NT kernel was overseen by Dave Cutler, of VMS and RSX-11M fame, and had a very strong and apparent VMS influence. Some VAX wizards I know told me that they saw a lot of VMS in NT's design, but that it probably wasn't as good (different design goals, etc: apparently Gates wanted DOS++ and a quick time to market; Cutler wanted to do a *real* OS and they compromised to wind up with VMS--).

It's true that there was (is? I don't know anymore...) a POSIX subsystem, but that seemed more oriented at being a marketing check in the box for sales to the US government and DoD (which had "standardized" on POSIX and made it a requirement when investing in new systems).

Now days, I understand that one can run Linux binaries natively; the Linux-compatibility subsystem will even `apt-get install` dependencies for you. Satya Nadella's company isn't your father's Microsoft anymore. VSCode (their new snazzy editor that apparently all the kids love) is Open Source.

Note that there is some irony in the NT/POSIX thing: the US Government standardized on Windows about two decades ago and now can't seem to figure out how to get off of it.

A short story I can't resist telling: a couple of years ago, some folks tried to recruit me back into the Marine Corps in some kind of technical capacity. I asked if I'd be doing, you know, technical stuff and was told that, since I was an officer no, I wouldn't. Not really interested. I ended up going to a bar with a recon operator (Marine special operations) to get the straight scoop and talking to a light colonel (that's a Lieutenant Colonel) on the phone for an hour for the hard sell. Over a beer, the recon bubba basically said, "It was weird. I went back to the infantry." The colonel kept asking me why I didn't run Windows: "but it's the most popular operating system in the world!" Actually, I suspect Linux and BSD in the guise of iOS/macOS is running on a lot more devices than Windows at this point. I didn't bother pointing that out to him.

Would VMS become what it was without UNIX's influence? Would UNIX become what it later was without VMS?

Would UNIX exist, or even be close to what it became without DEC?

I've oft wondered that, but we have to use a new thread to avoid embarrassing Ken :-)

The speculation of, "what would have happened?" is interesting, though of course unanswerable. I suspect that had it not been for Unix, we'd all be running software that was closer to what you'd find on a mainframe or RT-11.

- Dan C.