The “ Recent Changes” part of the site is depressing

Recent Changes 08/03 Multicians: Jim Bush died in July 2025.

07/14 Multicians: Norm Barnecut died Dec 09, 2023.

05/24 Multicians: Nate Adleman died Sept 19, 2022.

05/15 Simulator: Release 3.1.0 of the DPS8M simulator was released.

05/12 Multicians: Richard Gardner died in 2025.

05/05 Multicians: Art Bushkin died in Feb 2024.

Always fun to see Multics pop up; the influence it had on computing is pretty impressive and its influence lives on in many projects. As just one personally relevant example, the SCOMP mentioned in the glossary [0] and described in more detail on the history page under 5.4.1 [1] became the STOP operating system which is still in active development and is what I still work on today. (Technically, the SCOMP was the whole machine, and STOP "SCOMP Trusted Operating Program" was its operating system). Up until pretty recently, we still had a Multician working on STOP, and have a guy from the Honewell days still plugging away on it.

[0]https://www.multicians.org/mgs.html#SCOMP [1]https://www.multicians.org/history.html

My Operating Systems class as an undergrad used a book written by the Multics guys.

I hated it. It would present a bunch of apparently incompatible techniques for e.g. job scheduling, and then say that Multics implemented all of them. I immediately understood why UNIX came about: the Multics designers appeared incapable of having opinions, which led to an OS that was bloated and hard to understand.

That class was a long time ago, and I was a young, arrogant, and uninformed programmer, and maybe that take was wrong. But it left a strong impression at the time, and it was one of the few books from my undergrad days that I sold back instead of keeping.

Thanks! This is a really useful source for computer science history, I was just thinking to myself that I keep reading UNIX history, but that I know very little about Multics. Looks like I can keep my evening busy for quite some time with this one.

Quite interesting are the collection of myths,

https://www.multicians.org/myths.html

And naturally, B2 Security Evaluation,

https://multicians.org/b2.html

my personal favourite page: https://www.multicians.org/memorabilia.html

Related:

Unix and Multics (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40315724 - May 2024 (76 comments)

Unix and Multics History - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40065928 - April 2024 (3 comments)

Multics and AS400：DPS8M on IBM PASE for I (OS/400) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39308420 - Feb 2024 (4 comments)

Multics Simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37304367 - Aug 2023 (15 comments)

So! You want to use Multics? (1979) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33366716 - Oct 2022 (5 comments)

Wordmul: Wordle for Multics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31636949 - June 2022 (3 comments)

Nobody learned the most important lesson from Multics vs. Unix - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29783423 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)

Multics MR12.7 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28006036 - July 2021 (25 comments)

Multics Public Access - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27128765 - May 2021 (33 comments)

Ban.ai Public Access Multics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611468 - Jan 2021 (6 comments)

Multics Simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22994027 - April 2020 (20 comments)

Multics: An Ancestor of Unix - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892923 - Dec 2019 (33 comments)

Multics Intro Course (1978) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18715014 - Dec 2018 (9 comments)

Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation (2002) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16956386 - April 2018 (3 comments)

Public Access Multics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16875552 - April 2018 (3 comments)

48-Year-Old Multics operating system resurrected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14728441 - July 2017 (9 comments)

Multics Execution Environment (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10364234 - Oct 2015 (1 comment)

Introduction to Multics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6985277 - Dec 2013 (1 comment)

We used Multics when I was at Bristol Uni in the UK c.1980. I can only remember two things about it:

1) The system was initially deemed slow, so they installed an extra 256 KB of RAM (for a system serving dozens/hundreds of students - Bristol was regional computing center), and that made a difference! This was a big deal - apparently quite expensive!

2) Notwithstanding 1), it was fast, and typical student FORTRAN assignments of a 100 or so lines of code would compile and link essentially instantly - hit enter and get prompt back. I wish compilers were this fast today on 2025's massively faster hardware!

One unix, two multics. /jk

There was at least one Multics server with users at RPI when I graduated in 1999. I wonder how long it persisted.