Questions tagged [multics]
For questions about the Multics operating system.
10 questions
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What was the complete list of overstrikes supported by Multics APL?
APL famously has a lot of "characters" that are really two other characters overstruck. I was surprised to read in this Multics APL manual from 1985 that this extended even to overstriking F ...
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What is the earliest filesystem that is case-sensitive for filenames?
Among operating systems in usage nowadays, filenames in mostly unices (except macOS/iOS APFS, and Android) are case-sensitive, while filenames in Windows is case-insensitive. Unices are influenced by ...
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Why did so many OS names end in "x?" [closed]
This was asked by @ilkkachu in comments, but I've always wondered about it myself.
Unix, Posix, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Minix, Ultrix, Xenix... not to mention Active-X and Xbox.
I know it all began ...
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First operating system with system calls [closed]
Which first operating system implemented system calls? It should answer to the following characteristic I guess: resident program which exposes low level services (doesn't matter what be it read the ...
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How did Multics make library calls available as shell commands?
I was reading Pouzin's comments on the early Multics shell, and I'm a bit confused about this passage:
In the same vein, I also felt that commands should be usable as
library subroutines, or vice ...
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What are the major technical difference between Multics and Unix?
From the naming of operating system only i.e Unix = Uniplexed Information and Computing Service vs Multics = Multiplexed Information and Computing Service, I was first having a misconception that the ...
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When was the term Multics (operating system) coined and by whom?
From the history of Multics, I found that Project MAC was established on July 1, 1963 by MIT for the development of the Multics operating system and later GE (General Electric) and AT&T's Bell ...
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When did Multics begin using '>' as a pathname separator?
As described in this question, Multics used > as the separator between components in pathnames, and < as a parent directory indicator in relative paths.
However, an early paper describing the ...
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Why did Unix use slash as the directory separator?
The Unix designers came from the GE/MIT Multics project, and Multics inspired some Unix features. In particular, Multics has a hierarchical filesystem, and so does Unix.
On Multics, pathnames were of ...
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Are there runnable Multics systems available?
I've always read that Multics was a failed precurser of Unix, and was interested in seeing how it looks (as in, what features did Unix remove that Multics had, and did more modern Unixen bring them ...
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