phil@amd70.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (02/05/84)
I was reading Kernighan and Pike and noticed that the book was typeset on a VAX-11/750 running the 8th edition of Unix. Presumably that's the one that came after the 7th edition (what my machine is currently running). I'd be interesting in hearing about it, how it is different and why it isn't available outside the labs, if anyone reading this knows about it. -- Phil Ngai (408) 988-7777 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd70!phil
gwyn%brl-vld@sri-unix.UUCP (02/06/84)
From: Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn@brl-vld> "8th Edition UNIX" is also known as "Research Version 8" and is what the Bell Labs computer science research folks have. You didn't really expect them to stop evolving UNIX, did you? The official AT&T UNIX product is UNIX System V, and I am sure they do not want to support more than one version of UNIX. I believe and hope that the more useful innovations from Research Version 8 and elsewhere will appear in AT&T UNIX somewhere down the pike (pun not intended). I personally do not have access to Research Version 8; I think one or two universities may have a copy. My understanding is that its kernel evolved from the 4.1BSD kernel and its user utilities are rationalized, without all the typical Berkeley cruft (e.g. "cat -v"). If this description is not correct, presumably someone will further respond.
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (02/10/84)
As I've heard it, the story on the "8th edition" is as follows. The kernel is roughly 4.1BSD plus Dennis Ritchie's line disciplines. The user-level stuff is extensively worked-over, with a lot of Berkeley garbage ripped out and a lot of new stuff added. There are undoubtedly a good many other miscellaneous things like Blit support, networking software, and so forth. The 8th edition basically runs on the machines at the Research lab (the home of Unix) and nowhere else. The official word is (or at least, has been in the past) that the 8th edition will *never* be distributed. The folks at Research apparently went through immense effort and pain getting V7 out the door, and swore off software distribution forever as a result. It also seems safe to assume that the 8th edition doesn't fit well with AT&T's current view that System V is the be-all and end-all of Unixes and will be the base for all future work. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry