11 May
2013
11 May
'13
7:59 a.m.
SunOS on 3/50s, 3/60s, with a server and thick Ethernet cabling. This was around 1986 to
1988, while I was in graduate school. After that, 1994 to 1999, it was administering a
whole office full of Sun networked workstations (10, 20, UltraSparc). My first non-Sun
Unix experience was testing BSD on a small PC.
As one you has never really had DEC PDP-11 or Vax experience to any extent, I look at
those computers and think more about wanting to put Ultrix or some other Unix/BSD/Linux
system on them and don't think nostalgic about DEC operating systems. My first big
computer experience (not counting some timeshare Basic programming on MECC/MERITS systems
in Minnesota) from 1977 to 1981 in college was with Harris computers running Vulcan or
VOS. That is my frame of reference for major computer, followed by SunOS/Solaris. Today
my operating system of choice is Linux (e.g., Xubuntu).
Having said that, I do have a healthy respect and admiration to those of you here who know
PDP-11 and Vax systems, plus before that PDP-8 and things like OS/8. Let alone the
various obscure systems. I just can't relate at the same time.
Kevin Anderson
a lurking subscriber from Iowa