Ritchie provides a detailed explanation of the development of the Unix operating system that was developed at Bell Laboratories during the late sixties and early seventies.
In 1968-69 Bell commissioned the development of a precursor software called Multics. The project was enormously expensive and failed to deliver the usable features promised during development. The technical research conducted by Ritchie, Thompson, and Canaday on Multics did, however, prove fruitful as a preliminary design for the filing system rolled out in Unix.
The first part of this early design was PDP-7 Unix file system. This system consisted of an i-list, directories, and special files describing devices. Unlike the current system, PDP-7 had no path names, configurations were hard to change, and there was a lack of path names. Processes existed early in this system such as system calls fork, exec, wait, and exit.
A new disk allowed for the first PDP-11 system to be created. Unlike PDP-7, this system was dedicated to word processing. Due to it only running on a single .5 MB disk, every new program required care and boldness because the system could easily crash.
Throughout this article also ran a string of social aspects to go along with the technical history that Ritchie provided. For example, though Ritchie describes the downfall of Multics, he also adds that he and the group were able to use the operating system just between them, saying, “what we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form” (Ritchie, 2). It seemed odd to find these types of sentences interwoven with the more technical aspects, as the document itself seems to naturally focus on the changes made to and the problem-solving of the operating system itself. These interesting additions to the text all culminate at the end of the document, where Ritchie ends on a nostalgic note, even including the phrase “rosy glow.” At the same time, Ritchie is describing a process that involved many idea proposals and rejections and versions of the final product.
- Sean → wrote the first two paragraphs
- Luis → wrote the second two
- Kate → wrote the final paragraph
