Computer archaeology lovers among the audience are in for a rare treat in these challenging times. Remember that Unix v4 tape ...

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at a PDP-11. Peter Hamer [CC BY-SA 2.0] Last week the computing world celebrated an important anniversary: the UNIX operating system turned 50 years old. What was ...

In the intricate landscape of operating systems, two prominent players have shaped the digital realm for decades: UNIX and Linux. While these two systems might seem similar at first glance, a deeper ...

Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created. In August 1969, Ken Thompson, a programmer ...

Unix died because of endless incompatibilities between versions. Linux succeeded on servers and everywhere else because it ...

One of the files that the average Unix sysadmin rarely looks at, almost never changes and yet depends on every time he or she reboots a system is the /etc/inittab file. This modest little file ...

It probably shouldn’t, but it routinely astonishes me how much we live on the Web. Even I find myself going entire boots without using anything but the Web browser. With such an emphasis on Web-based ...