The Computer Chronicles - UNIX (1985)

I've said this in a few of these videos, but it's very apparent here. Gary Kildall was the perfect co-host for this show. Here is a guy that invented personal computer operating systems as we know it. And here he is talking to a couple of UNIX guys about Top View, Concurrent DOS etc. Not once does he talk down to anyone he interviews or carry on like a know it all. And the fact that his products had pretty much lost out to competitors by this stage and yet he still demonstrates a love of technology just shows what a great guy he was. Gary Kildall will forever be one of my heroes.

11:04 - "You can't plug every computer into the same network but I think that's something to watch in the future". That must have sounded like the ramblings of a mad man back in those days when 2400 baud modems were the gold standard!

Gary Kildall, what a pioneer but ultimate sad and tragic story. God rest his soul. It is great to have these videos to preserve his memory.

In 1985 Gary Kildhal said that Unix will replace CP/M The father of all DOS systems. His vision is becoming a reality after almost fourty years. He was one of those who were born way before their time.

Gary Kildall, John Mashey and Bill Joy - wow, three legends.

It is funny to hear them talking about the reliability of UNIX. Remember that they are comparing UNIX to other mainframe operating systems like IBM OS/360 and its descendants, certainly not to MS-DOS or its descendants. In OS/360, the system stays running even if a CPU burns out.

When a teenager (late seventies -- early eighties) I had my first encounters with UNIX in the engineers that worked for my father who used UNIX and were very enthusiastic about it. Then at Uni I had my first look at it in the form of an Apollo Workstation. After that, SUN workstations with which I fell in love -- but couldn't afford for personal use. Then I had to wait for Linux to become really usable, in the early naughts. Around 2013-14 I wiped Windows off my work laptop and never looked back. Proving Mr. Schindler completely wrong. We have only one Windows computer in the house: the school laptop my oldest son uses.

The moment we had minix in college, I fell in love with it. The basic architecture of everything is a file is elegant and makes it so simple to develop complex applications, basically if you could read and write to a file you could do 80% of integration already. Only IP was a bit of a framework but even those calls were nicely standardized by then early 90s. I developer in the mid 90s on Linux and moved it to SCO and at the most had minuscule changes. Then we moved to Tru64 and I just ran make and we were on 64bits.

Imagine living in the world where Microsoft word is 2nd to IBM Writing Assistant and DOS is spoken about 2nd to UNIX, if you did.. you really lived at the peak of civilization

The final news segments are a fascinating look into the history of that period. "Of the 17,000 DoD computers, Only 30 of them are adequately protected from unauthorized entry" "they are currently vulnerable to any mentally unbalanced 16 year old" One would hope a lot of progress has been made since then.

"Why on earth would you want to feature a eunuch on the show?" That gave me a chuckle.

1985: UNIX is too resource intensive for microcomputers. 2008: A Unix-like operating system runs on a computer within your computer.

Gary was the humblest dude. He had the chance to mention CP/M but didn’t. Paul Schindler with his usual mega bad take attempting to predict the future.

"unix will be used by scientists and engineers for some time" 2020 checking in, unix is still the king of science and engineering

I only use Macs, and it's easy to forget but when I'm in the Terminal its there, the spirit of DMR and UNIX it's there. Thank you to all those people we enjoy such a wonderful OS.

3:02 never knew Bill Murray was a UNIX systems admin? All kidding aside, I loved this show. Remember watching it in the 80’s. Could never do it today, because most tech people do not own a tie.

Blink and you'll miss the reference about Nintendo showing off their new "game playing robot". This was ROB, the robot included with the Nintendo Entertainment System as part of their marketing strategy to say "look, it's not a 'game console', it's a toy and an 'entertainment system'".

UNIX touches me through the telephone... every day.

Oh man, what a great program! Thank you for uploading all of these. Man, what a time machine.

Funny that Bill Joy made that remark about UNIX missing an office suite. By acquiring, porting and then Open-Sourcing staroffice - OpenOffice - LibreOffice etc, he like no other removed that particular obstacle.