Re: [TUHS] X and NeWS history (long)

ron minnich writes: It's amusing to me how many of the topics on this list I've included in my book in process because I feel that they're important. I look at the systemd problem slightly differently. In short, I was coming into work one night at BTL when Ken was heading out the door for his sabbatical at UCB with a stack of mag tapes under his arm. I see that as a pivotal moment in computer history. Students could learn from an actual real computer system; they had source code access. And, they had the ability to modify and contribute to that code. A lot of students from that era went out to do great things. Years later, the lower cost of PCs resulted in students using them for their work. Not only was MS-DOS not as advanced a system as UNIX, but source code access was gone. Students had to learn from contrived projects, and didn't have the ability to play with the guts of the operating system that they were using. While there are exceptions, I don't feel like students from the PC era are nearly as good. While Linux has sort of brought us back to the golden age of source access many of the people working on it are from the PC era and are trying to wedge their Microsoft-nonsensibilities into Linux. That's where things like systemd come from. Jon