Editing Multics (section)

===Unix===
The design and features of Multics influenced the [[Unix]] operating system, which was originally written by two Multics programmers, [[Ken Thompson]] and [[Dennis Ritchie]].<ref name="Seibel" /> Influence of Multics on Unix is evident in many areas, including the [[hierarchical file system]], [[redirection (computing)|redirection]], the [[shell (computing)|shell]], and the naming of some commands. But the internal design philosophy is quite different, focusing on keeping the system small and simple, and so correcting some perceived deficiencies of Multics because of its high resource demands on the limited computer hardware of the time.

The name ''Unix'' (originally ''Unics'') is itself a [[pun]] on ''Multics''. The ''U'' in Unix is rumored to stand for ''[[wikt:uniplex|uniplex]]ed'' as opposed to the ''[[wikt:multiplex|multiplex]]ed'' of Multics, further underscoring the designers' rejections of Multics' complexity in favor of a more straightforward and workable approach for smaller computers. (Garfinkel and Abelson<ref>Garfinkel, Simson and Abelson, Harold. Architects of the Information Society: Thirty-Five Years of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT. MIT Press, 1999. {{ISBN|978-0262071963}}</ref> cite an alternative origin: Peter Neumann at Bell Labs, watching a demonstration of the prototype, suggested the pun name UNICS – pronounced "[[eunuchs]]" – as a "castrated Multics", although Dennis Ritchie is said to have denied this.<ref>{{cite newsgroup|author=Karn, Phil|title=Origins of unix|date=1981-10-28|newsgroup=fa.unix-wizards|message-id=4743@Aucbvax.UUCP|url=http://article.olduse.net/4743@Aucbvax.UUCP|access-date=2014-04-11}}</ref>)

Ken Thompson, in a transcribed 2007 interview with Peter Seibel<ref name="Seibel">Peter Seibel. [[Coders at Work]]: Reflections on the Craft of Programming. APress Publications, 2007. {{ISBN|978-1-4302-1948-4}}</ref> refers to Multics as "overdesigned and overbuilt and over everything. It was close to unusable. They [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] still claim it's a monstrous success, but it just clearly wasn't". On the influence of Multics on Unix, Thompson stated that "the things that I liked enough (about Multics) to actually take were the hierarchical file system and the shell — a separate process that you can replace with some other process".

Dennis Ritchie wrote that the design of UNIX was influenced by [[Compatible Time-Sharing System|CTSS]].<ref>{{cite conference |last=Ritchie |first=Dennis M. |author-link=Dennis Ritchie |year=1977 |title=The Unix Time-sharing System: A retrospective |conference=Tenth Hawaii International Conference on the System Sciences |url=https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/retro.pdf |quote=a good case can be made that UNIX is in essence a modern implementation of MIT’s CTSS system}}</ref>