Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!encore!bzs@encore.com
From: bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Op Environment vs Op System (was: NeXT not revolutionary enough?)
Message-ID: <4163@encore.UUCP>
Date: 11 Nov 88 03:38:04 GMT
References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <48@necbsd.NEC.COM> <26446@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <4833@polya.Stanford.EDU> <145@avsd.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp
Lines: 22
In-reply-to: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)

From: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
>>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.

Unix pre-dates CP/M by several years, what's your point?

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

This is not exactly a theoretical point one needs to make assumptions
about, show an operating system with this property before around 1970
when Unix began this sort of thing. There may be some definitional
problems, however, as to exactly what is meant by the first claim.

I suspect the point, in some modified form, will stand, plus or minus
some hair-splitting.

	-Barry Shein, ||Encore||