After receiving the last newsletter, this link https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/wha...x.1364158/ ,and seeing the conversation didn't start I'm calling dib on this thread.

What would the world be without Unix?

I think this implies what you would personally be doing and what the world would look like, as in what tech would be affected.
For sure the mobile world would be different.

Maybe it would be wise to summarize whatever was already mentioned in that thread:

Quote:* Some wouldn't be working in the same field
* The telephone system would be different
* No C programming -> A lot implies from that
* A lot of the backbone of many OS is inspired by Unix so it would have a lot of ramifications

I wonder if the GNU project would have started but on a different basis.

Also for the first part we already had a thread related to that: https://nixers.net/showthread.php?tid=284
I would personally be doing more art, gardening, and psychology.

C programming would not necessarily disappear. It is very likely, but it is possible that C could exist anyways.

The question about GNU is interesting. Maybe it would also have been DOS based?

Besides this, I think the intellectual heritage of the original UNIX conception would really be missed. Although it is not executed so often, it is still something a lot of programmers have in their head and what is influencing the style of programming of a lot of people.

(23-10-2017, 07:34 AM)asyncial Wrote: Besides this, I think the intellectual heritage of the original UNIX conception would really be missed. Although it is not executed so often, it is still something a lot of programmers have in their head and what is influencing the style of programming of a lot of people.

The question also doesn't imply that Multics wouldn't have existed.
Multics would be there, maybe Plan9 would be there too, maybe something else.

(23-10-2017, 07:45 AM)venam Wrote: Multics would be there, maybe Plan9 would be there too, maybe something else.

This doesn't change much, Multics was a dying project and Plan9 wouldn't have existed without Unix.

TCP/IP originated in BSD though. The interesting question is if BSD would have been possible without Unix, e.g. based on OS/whatever instead.

If UNIX was not there, there would be something else taking the place.

A similar question covered by A. Tanenbaum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86_BkFsb4eI

"The world without his very own MINIX" (is that off topic? it's still a *nix after all).

(23-10-2017, 03:44 PM)jkl Wrote: TCP/IP originated in BSD though. The interesting question is if BSD would have been possible without Unix, e.g. based on OS/whatever instead.

BSD created an implementation of the specs from a request/contract issued by DARPA, I think TCP/IP would still be present, someone else would have got the contract and implemented them.

(24-10-2017, 12:31 AM)venam Wrote: BSD created an implementation of the specs from a request/contract issued by DARPA, I think TCP/IP would still be present, someone else would have got the contract and implemented them.

So basically we would have TCP/IP on some of the early OS that didn't take off but would have in this case (maybe some very object oriented and corporate lingo), GNU+Corporation.