Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!apple!vsi1!octopus!avsd!childers
From: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Op Environment vs Op System (was: NeXT not revolutionary enough?)
Message-ID: <145@avsd.UUCP>
Date: 9 Nov 88 19:47:41 GMT
References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <48@necbsd.NEC.COM> <26446@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <4833@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Organization: AMPEX Corporation, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 18

In article <4833@polya.Stanford.EDU> shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro) writes:

>UNIX is the first operating system of commerical import to distinguish
>between the operating system and the [user] environment.

I'm not sure that's precisely true. I've been aware of the difference between
the OS and the user interface ever since I first studied the internals of
CP/M, back in the late Seventies.

I would assume that this functional division between the two has been existent
ever since OSes were designed, rather than conglomerated.

Thus, it would seem that the criteria here is not age, so much as it is the
degree of attention with which a given individual studied the systems in use.

>Jon

-- richard