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From: mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: DAEMONs -- what does GCOS mean anyway ?
Message-ID: <114@babbage.acc.virginia.edu>
Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 21:25:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: babbage.114
Posted: Wed Oct 14 21:25:30 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 10:29:01 EDT
References: <1131@nrcvax.UUCP> <3550002@hplsdla.HP.COM> <392@xios.XIOS.UUCP> <1129@ark.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: University of Virginia
Lines: 17
Summary: G[E]COS roff, cat

GECOS:	General Electric Comprehensive Operating System.
GCOS:	When the large systems division was sold to Honeywell, they dropped
	the E.

	There used to be GCOSs (GCoi) at Bell.
	The gcos field in etc/passwd is supposed to have your gcos account name.


edit runoff was a text formatting command at Dartmouth in the late 60's.
	This was replaced by runoff. The latter was UNIcized to roff.
	AT Dartmouth it's now off.

on the early GE/Dartmouth timesharing system, CAT printed a catalogue of files
(like ls) and LIST printed a file (like cat).

for that matter, the nucleus of the OS was the EXEC, and the user interface
the MONITOR. On DECs it was the other way around.