Interview with Brian Kernighan (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Linux Journal has an interview with Brian Kernighan, one of the creators of AWK and AMPL. "LJ: You have worked in Bell Labs, alongside Bjarne Stroustrup, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. What kind of relations do you have with them? Were you like a big, wise family? BK: We were all friends and close colleagues for many years, all in the same small group at Bell Labs. Ken, Dennis and I are all about the same age, and we all came to the Labs about the same time; Bjarne came 10 years later. I wouldn't call it family, but it was definitely good friends, and I miss seeing them all every day, which is the way it was for many years."

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Interview with Brian Kernighan (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 29, 2003 19:27 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

LJ: Is it true that you suggested the name "UNIX" for the long ago OS,
Multics? What does that word mean?

BK: Yes, long ago. Multics was an acronym for something like Multiplexed
Information and Computing Service, and it was big and complicated because
it had many of everything. I suggested Unics for Ken's new system,
because it was small and had at most one of anything. (Multi and uni are
both Latin roots, so it was a very weak pun.) Someone else spelled it
with the letter X; no one can remember who.

=======

That's as close to authoritative as I've seen; I don't think Salus gets
any closer...?

Interview with Brian Kernighan (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 29, 2003 19:41 UTC (Tue) by cpeterso (subscriber, #305) [Link]

LJ: What UNIX OSes do you like? Linux? BSD?

BK: The way I use them, which is as a casual programmer, it doesn't matter--they are all the same. If I encounter some difference, it only makes me mad, because there really isn't any reason for things to be different most of the time. I use Solaris at Princeton, Irix when I visit Bell Labs, and FreeBSD on my Mac; I also have Cygwin on several PCs so that standard tools are readily available.

He uses FreeBSD on his Mac?! Was this a joke? There is no PowerPC port of FreeBSD. Maybe he mean he uses an X Windows client on his Mac to connect to a FreeBSD server..?

Interview with Brian Kernighan (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 29, 2003 20:12 UTC (Tue) by dmuino (subscriber, #6930) [Link]

Very likely he meant OSX/Darwin, which is not FreeBSD, but it does have quite a bit of BSD code in it.

Interview with Brian Kernighan (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 29, 2003 20:16 UTC (Tue) by derby (guest, #2977) [Link]

http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html

Interview with Brian Kernighan (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 30, 2003 0:02 UTC (Wed) by cpeterso (subscriber, #305) [Link]

Latest News - 3 July, 2002 : This page has been significantly updated. FreeBSD/PowerPC currently boots almost to the point of reaching single-user mode.