Unix Quotes - Page 2

• Huh? Windows was designed to keep the idiots away from Unix so we could hack in peace. Let's not break that.

  Tom Christiansen

  Idiot, Window, Break

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• Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.

  Rob Pike

  Smell, Programming, Starting

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• Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention.

  Larry Wall

  Wheels, Reinvention

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• GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.

  Richard Stallman

  Writing, Names, Giving

  Richard Stallman (2002). “Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman”, p.27, Lulu.com

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• Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.

  Neal Stephenson

  Operating Systems, Oral History

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• Many say that DOS is the dark side [from Star Wars], but actually UNIX is more like the dark side: It's less likely to find the one way to destroy your incredibly powerful machine, and more likely to make upper management choke.

  Lore Sjoberg

  Stars, Powerful, War

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• In my experience, telling someone to switch Unix shells for ease of use is like telling him to switch cigarette brands for his health.

  Chris Espinosa

  Use, Shells, Ease

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• Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.

  Larry Wall

  Feet, Hey, Tolls

  Usenet article "Script to center text", groups.google.com. August 13, 1992.

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• For the first time, individual hackers could afford to have home machines comparable in power and storage capacity to the minicomputers of ten years earlier - Unix engines capable of supporting a full development environment and talking to the Internet.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Home, Talking, Years

  Eric S. Raymond (2001). “The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”, p.13, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

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• Unix in particular is very poor at network printing.

  Michael Sweet

  Printing, Poor, Particular

  "Engineers approve standardization of Internet Printing Protocol" by Carolyn Duffy Marsan, www.cnn.com. July 12, 2000.

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• When we take a top-tier view of the amount of code showing up inside of Linux today that is either directly related to our Unix System 5 that we directly own or is related to one of our flavors of Unix that we have derivative works rights over--we don't necessarily own those flavors, but we have control rights over how that information gets disseminated--the amount is substantial. We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred [sic] of thousands of lines of code.

  Darl McBride

  Rights, Views, Talking

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• C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new

  Dennis Ritchie

  Different, Machines, Portability

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• What I actually admire in Perl is its ability to provide a very successful abstraction of the horrible mess that is collectively called Unix.

  Erik Naggum

  Successful, Admire, Horrible

  "Using Lisp to Call another program in linux?". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. November 11, 2002.

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• Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim.

  Darl McBride

  Heritage, Linux, Claims

  "Geeks on Bikes: The SCO Group/Caldera Product Development Plan". www.linuxjournal.com. August 28, 2002.

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• Unix is a junk OS designed by a committee of PhDs.

  Dave Cutler

  Junk, Phds, Programming

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• Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.

  Hal Abelson

  Should Have, Achievement, Taste

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• Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac and nobody cares about it.

  Bill Joy

  Running, Care, Today

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• I must say the Linux community is a lot nicer than the Unix community. A negative comment on Unix would warrent death threats. With Linux, it is like stirring up a nest of butterflies.

  Kenneth P. Thompson

  Butterfly, Community, Negative

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• I do believe that in a race, it is naive to think Linux has a hope of making a dent against Microsoft starting from way behind with a fraction of the resources and amateur labor. (I feel the same about Unix.

  Kenneth P. Thompson

  Believe, Thinking, Race

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• How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton?

  Brian Boyle

  Humorous, Dope, Smoking

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• UNIX does not allow path names to be prefixed by a drive name or number; that would be precisely the kind of device dependence that operating systems ought to eliminate.

  Andrew S. Tanenbaum

  Names, Numbers, Doe

  "Modern Operating Systems". Book by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 1992.

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• A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring.

  Andrew S. Tanenbaum

  People, Bells, Maelstrom

  "Clearing Up Some Misconceptions". "Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2", www.cs.vu.nl. May 21, 2004.

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• Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Real, Book, Careers

  Source: genius.cat-v.org

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• I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.

  Donald Knuth

  Expression, Definitions, Roof

  "Digital Typography". Book by Donald Knuth, 1999.

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• I changed the Linux copyright license to be the GPL some time in the first half of 1992. Mostly because I had hated the lack of a cheaply and easily available UNIX when I had looked for one a year before.

  Linus Torvalds

  Years, Firsts, Half

  Source: www.linuxfocus.org

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