UNIX-LIKE OPERATING SYSTEMS
21 SEPTEMBER 2025
The Unix operating system project appears to have started in 1969 at Bell Labs.
Something resembling contemporary Unix-like systems may have been developed in
1973 when Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson rewrote the Unix kernel in C. Both of
these important milestones predate me by some years. Nonetheless, operating
systems that preserve the Unix philosophy have survived. Linux and OpenBSD are
two such systems that I am personally familiar with.
The following is a screenshot of my Arch Linux setup from 2020. It uses X
display server and i3 for window management. The urxvt terminal emulator is
made translucent using the Xcompmgr compositor.
The following is a screenshot of my OpenBSD laptop from 2024:
This degree of customization is impossible with commercial operating systems.
The vendor sets firm boundaries about how the machine should be used.
The conceptual elegance and architectural supremacy of Unix-like operating
systems lie in how programs developed independently come together to accomplish
complex tasks. For instance, to read an HTML email, I may use Mutt, an email
client. Mutt would request credentials for my email account from Pass, a
password manager, which in turn uses GPG to decrypt them before handing them
over to Mutt. Mutt would then authenticate and fetch the email and delegate the
rendering of the email to Lynx a web browser. The chaining of different tools
resembles a sofware symphony.
Each of these programs were developed by different programmers (at times
decades apart), without an explicit intent for them to interoperate.
The interoperability is a direct consequence of the Unix engineering
philosophy. Engineers generations apart have kept that tradition alive (like
a cathedral built by many generations).
Files: dotfiles.tar.gz
The Unix operating system project appears to have started in 1969 at Bell Labs. Something resembling contemporary Unix-like systems may have been developed in 1973 when Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson rewrote the Unix kernel in C. Both of these important milestones predate me by some years. Nonetheless, operating systems that preserve the Unix philosophy have survived. Linux and OpenBSD are two such systems that I am personally familiar with.
The following is a screenshot of my Arch Linux setup from 2020. It uses X display server and i3 for window management. The urxvt terminal emulator is made translucent using the Xcompmgr compositor.
The following is a screenshot of my OpenBSD laptop from 2024:
This degree of customization is impossible with commercial operating systems. The vendor sets firm boundaries about how the machine should be used.
The conceptual elegance and architectural supremacy of Unix-like operating systems lie in how programs developed independently come together to accomplish complex tasks. For instance, to read an HTML email, I may use Mutt, an email client. Mutt would request credentials for my email account from Pass, a password manager, which in turn uses GPG to decrypt them before handing them over to Mutt. Mutt would then authenticate and fetch the email and delegate the rendering of the email to Lynx a web browser. The chaining of different tools resembles a sofware symphony.
Each of these programs were developed by different programmers (at times decades apart), without an explicit intent for them to interoperate. The interoperability is a direct consequence of the Unix engineering philosophy. Engineers generations apart have kept that tradition alive (like a cathedral built by many generations).
Files: dotfiles.tar.gz