#RSX –> Unix
Hi, Gary; just though I'd put my two-cents in…
I hope I'm not too late! I can't caution you NEARLY enough that IMHO you
are planning to exchange one set of headaches with another EVEN BIGGER set
of headaches!! DANGER! DANGER!!
Well, (now that I have your attention), I would consider this: although
you're experiencing problems maintaining your 11/23, you should understand
that RSX-11M, although primitive in some respects, is _MUCH_ easier to
learn, use, and maintain than ANY Unix system.
Unix was hacked together BY hackers FOR hackers (in the best sense of the
word, however good that is), under cover of darkness in their free time .
To wit, a couple of guys were working on a PDP-11 back in pre-historic
times and didn't like the archaic DEC-supplied OS they had to use (RT-11 ~
V1.x, I think), so they kludged together their own OS, which included a
couple of new ideas that haven't really been duplicated by any other OS.
But although these new ideas remain the exclusive province of Unix, they
are clearly designed for programmers (particularly "bitheads", who relish
the unbridled over-complexity of Unix) who are performing new software
development, and most decidedly NOT for anyone else, PARTICULARY NOT for
users, managers, operators, and general human beings.
Unix (and its bastard sibling "C") would have dropped unnoticed into
oblivion were it not for the _EXTREMELY_ successful marketing techniques of
Bell/AT&T, who donated UNIX free of charge to any and all colleges and
universities who asked for it. Since the PDP-11 was an extremely popular
machine (there are still more PDP-11's out there than IBM PC's), and DEC's
licensed operating systems were so expensive (anything is more expensive
than free!), Unix was taught and learned by a majority of students around
the world, and these same students
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