Multics MR12.7 released | Hacker News Reader

Multics MR12.7 released

multics-wiki.swenson.org

77 pointsnix2325 comments

What kind of things can I do with multics in 2021?

it is being run in ring0 on each intel CPU, and is doing the intel management engine. Most probably you have more running instances of multics than linux.

That's MINIX.

funny, misread multics as minix.

That's minix3, but it could be that Multics implements USB support even before minix3 does ;)

That's not ring 0 but ring -3.

I was kind of expecting a discussion around getting quake or zork implemented...

That's surprising. I understand the desire to keep Multics alive for the sake of preserving history, but why would you want to release new features for it?

>but why would you want to release new features for it?

Why not?

FreeDOS got even a package manager ;)

And TK4- gets new features too....like tcp/ip

I think it's great that old systems like Multics are still being developed for but I don't really agree with your comparisons:

There are still a lot of DOS applications in production (particularly in industry) as well as a massive retro gaming community. So DOS is still used a lot. Multics is a lot older than DOS though. Is there anyone still using it outside of hobby communities?

I've seen TCP/IP added to a lot of older systems like the Amstrad CPC 464 because it makes work with the systems a lot easier as their older physical media degrades and comes in shorter supply. But the release notes for MR12.7 reads more like that of FreeBSD or similar.

But as I said, I do think it's great that people are still developing Multics; even if I do share the same surprise as the OP did.

As an aside, what language would they be coding in? B? BCL? Or would it be pure assembly? IIRC Multics predates C.

>There are still a lot of DOS applications in production (particularly in industry) as well as a massive retro gaming community.

True but for that your don't need a pkg-manager, and for retro gaming..i would argue that 99.99% use DosBox, and the 0.01% with real hardware use probably MS-Dos 6.22.

>anyone still using it outside of hobby communities?

I don't think, but we never know ;) The last real hardware was shutdown in 2000 in Canada:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics#Project_history

>But the release notes for MR12.7 reads more like that of FreeBSD or similar.

What do you mean with that?

>what language would they be coding in? B? BCL?

First it was PLE then PL/1 well and some assembly, in Mutltics tradition the language the OS had to be implemented was written in stone before the langspec. or a working compiler existed (PLE E stands for early PL)

BTW: The opposite to Multics the "Incompatible Timesharing System" gets some Maintenance-(love) too:

https://github.com/PDP-10/its

> True but for that your don't need a pkg-manager,

Why not?

> and for retro gaming..i would argue that 99.99% use DosBox, and the 0.01% with real hardware use probably MS-Dos 6.22.

Most do use DOSBox or physical hardware. Some do use FreeDOS too but yes, it is a hell of a lot less common so I do take your point :)

> What do you mean with that?

Have a read of it yourself: https://s3.amazonaws.com/eswenson-multics/public/releases/MR...

A lot of it is production features and bug fixes rather than toys for hobbyists. I will admit I'm talking about my subjective impression here though.

> First it was PLE then PL/1 well and some assembly, in Mutltics tradition the language the OS had to be implemented was written in stone before the langspec. or a working compiler existed (PLE E stands for early PL)

Interesting. Thank you :)

> BTW: The opposite to Multics the "Incompatible Timesharing System" gets some Maintenance-(love) too:

I've not heard of ITS before. Thanks for the link!

The Dos applications in production are probably delivered by floppy or CD.

But hey absolutely with you, i "updated" a warehouse management machine ~7 years ago with FreeDOS and new Industrial-grade Hardware and automated email backup (haha take that cloud!), we had just one little problem with the infrared reader, but we found one with USB and DOS drivers and and everything was fine, so there's definitely a use-case for FreeDOS.

> BTW: The opposite to Multics the "Incompatible Timesharing System" gets some Maintenance-(love) too

The lore I heard was that ITS was the reaction to CTS but now that you mentioned this, I did some research and it looks like the you're right and the project MAC folks were just making a pun on the name, but wrote ITS in response to multics, as you said. Thanks for mentioning that!

Multics is written almost entirely in PL/I, plus some assembly for bootup, some messy low level stuff, and time critical bits like process switching.

Many additional languages are available, such as COBOL, FOTRAN, APL, BASIC, Assembler, JOVIAL and others I can't recall off the top of my head.

As already mentioned in other comments Multics uses PL/I.

It is an urban myth that C was the first high level system programming language.

JOVIAL, ESPOL, NEWP, PL/I, PL/S all predate it, while at Xerox after a small stint with BCPL they used Mesa (which later influenced Modula-2), SoloOS was written in Concurrent Pascal, and IBM did all their RISC research in PL.8, before creating Aix to go after UNIX workstation market.

There are plenty of others to dive into, if you enjoy computer archaeology.

> It is an urban myth that C was the first high level system programming language.

Is it even an urban legend? I've literally never heard anyone even suggest C was the first.

> There are plenty of others to dive into, if you enjoy computer archaeology.

Sure. I even mentioned some in my post too. But I'm honestly at a loss as to the point you're making. Or was it just a generalised tangential rant?

The only reason I mentioned C was because C was written for UNIX, which was the successor to Multics (albeit UNIX was originally written B). So wondered if it was the same family of languages such as B or BCPL (as also mentioned in my post) since it's kind of the same family of operating systems.

Plenty of people do, it is as if the computing world started with UNIX and everyone was coding in Assembly until then, worse they assume the very first version of UNIX was already written in C.

Even you do do this mistake, UNIX was originally written in Assembly, there was a couple of utilities that eventually were ported to B, but full rewrite kept failing until they were about to release the fourth version of UNIX.

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html

Check "More History", "The Problems of B" and then "Portability" and "Growth in Usage".

Mate, you're preaching to the converted here. Honestly I've never heard these memes of yours before. Not online, not IRL. I've heard LISPers mistakenly talk about their language as the first but never heard anyone talk about UNIX nor C as the first -- if anything I thought it was widely known that both were relatively late inventions the evolution of TSS.

tbh few people even talk about UNIX these days anyway. The kids are all about Linux and many of the older folks like myself cut their teeth on one of the many TSS. So I'd wager the window of those who are familiar enough with POSIX to talk about UNIX but unfamiliar enough to never have used TSS is pretty narrow. At least that's been my experience.

> And TK4- gets new features too....like tcp/ip

Wow, really? Web interface to MVS when? :)

I guess I'll have to check it out one of these days.

>Web interface to MVS when?

Already there with :)

https://github.com/hercules-390/hyperion

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQMF1p-...

Sorry for the bad screenshot.

I meant OS-level software, something like ISPF-over-the-web. But I admit I've never tried Hercules' web UI before either.

Hmm i just used x3270 and Vista tn3270, but there is Virtel Web Access, but i never try'd it (maybe other stuff exists too)

It has an FTP server which can be used to access the datasets on the MVS side.

I don't have a system in front of me now but you can issue /s ftpd,srvport=nnnn where nnnn is the port number.

If you read the feature list it's stuff around tape management and annotation. Not fun or playful features, so I assume it's the result of someone actually using it and wanting those features.

(Though the previous release looks like it had more quality-of-life features, like command history search)

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