From uucp Sun Aug  9 15:54:14 1981 remote from pur-ee
NAucbvax.2534
Nfa.unix-wizards
Npur-ee!cincy!duke!decvax!ucbvax!mark
NWed Aug  5 08:47:18 1981
NThe truth about Unix
NI read your Unix flame with interest, but you seem to be
Nill informed about lots of things.  Obviously you are comparing
NV6 Unix with 3BSD, but you claim to be comparing "Unix" with
N"Berkeley Unix".  You credit Berkeley with things that are
Npart of V7 (getting rid of dsw, adding egrep and fgrep).
NI might compare your note with a message saying "don't go
Nout and buy a 1975 VW Rabbit - those are crummy cars because
Nthe 1979 Rabbit is better".  (No, I'm not complaining about
Nthe recent Rabbit note, this just happened to be a handy example).
NYou also claim that "Berkeley Unix is too big to fit ... on an 11/45".
NHogwash!  3BSD is a Vax distribution - it has a C compiler that
Ngenerates Vax object code, a kernel that knows the Vax memory management
Nand I/O conventions, and some other VAX specific things.  So are 4BSD
Nand 4.1BSD, which superceded 3BSD the same way V7 has superceeded V6.
NWe have lots of PDP-11's here at Berkeley, including 70's, a 45, and
Nseveral 40's.  Most of them run some version of Berkeley Unix.
NBigness is not important - we run vi 3.6 on a 40 in the virus lab.
NOf course, it is a different system than the one on the vax.
N"Berkeley Unix" is about as specific as "Chevrolet".
N
NYou also have to bear in mind that the various flavors of Unix have
Nevolved from one system years ago in Bell Labs.  In upgrading from
Nversion x to version x+1, issues of upward compatibility have to
Nbe taken into account.  If you changed /usr to /user, not only would
Nyou infuriate most of the users "What a pointless change!  Now I
Nhave to retype half my commands!" but you would break a large number
Nof programs that look for such places as /usr/spool/mail, /usr/dict/words,
Nand so on.  Things that are not obviously wrong and horrible tend
Nto get left alone.  (There are, unfortunately, exceptions.  index
Nand rindex are called strchr and strrchr in some versions of Unix.)