They don't say in the comic, but it seems like maybe they named it Unix as a cheeky nod to the "Multics" being too complex so a "simpler Multics" would naturally be "Unics"
Am I correct on this?
Am I correct on this?
UNICS started out on way way way less capable hardware to play with some concepts that were developed on Multics, so while there were some improvements, a lot of things are the way they are because of limitations enforced by 13 bit address space of PDP-7 and later 16bit moby style memory management on PDP-11
The move to PDP-11 was related to how some programs developed for Unix found interest among other teams at Bell Labs, and the budget for PDP-11 came from supporting secretaries working on patent documents with troff and related programs.
> Although it was not until well into 1970 that Brian Kernighan suggested the name ‘Unix,’ in a somewhat treacherous pun on ‘Multics,’ the operating system we know today was born.
I like this paper for its thorough description of the very earliest versions of the operating system.
It is both fascinating and amusing to note that significant innovation came from talented peoples' frustration with software-development complexity, bureaucracy, and paralysis.
Are we any better, half a century later?