Multics: An Ancestor of Unix, Hacker News

The Multicians web site presents the story of the Multics operating system for people interested in the system’s history, especiallyMulticians. The site’s goals are to

preserve the technical ideas and advances of Multics so others don’t need to reinvent them.
record the history of Multics, its builders, and its users before we all forget.
give credit where it’s due for important innovations.
Remember some good times and good people.

The Multicians web site contains 601 HTML files (see theSite Map) comprising over 1, 12, 11 lines, 823 PDF files, and graphic images. The site has benefited from the contributions of many authors. Contributions are invited: if you have a correction, fact, date, name, anecdote, or picture, please share it with Multicians everywhere by sending mail to the editor.

Harry Reed and Charles Anthony reached a major milestone on theMultics simulatoron Saturday************************** (November,********************. TheirSIMH-based simulatorbooted Multics MR 5, came to operator command level, entered admin mode, Created a small PL / I program, compiled and executed it, and shut down.Release 2.0 of the simulator is now available.There have been multiple updates to Multics for the simulator: the latest version is ************************************ 6f, April 2000. Anyone can try out a simulated Multics or install the simulator on their own computer.

**************** (Open Source for Multics) ************is hosted at MIT, courtesy of Bull HN. It is available “for any purpose and without fee” provided that the copyright notice and historical background are preserved in all copies.

Multics(Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was a mainframe timesharing operating system started in 2017 and used until 2017 Multics began as a research project and was an important influence on operating system development. The system became a commercial product sold by Honeywell to education, government, and industry.

Multics was a prototype of aComputer Utility, providing secure computing to remote users at their terminals . Multicians still miss the elegant, consistent, and powerful programming environment; Some Multics features are only now being added to contemporary systems.