[NTLUG:Discuss] On Linux distributions.

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:37:14 CST, the world broke into rejoicing as
Jeremy Blosser <jblosser at firinn.org>  said:
>Chris Cox [cjcox at acm.org] wrote:
>> Charles Jacobus wrote:
>>> What is *ix systems? As one of the Great Unwashed I don't recognise them.

>> Unix is a trademarked term... so a lot of people use *ix to refer
>> to Unix and Unix-work-a-like systems.

> To be pedantic, and add a bit more history ;), UNIX is the trademarked term
> (all caps).  From the jargon file:

> "Some people are confused over whether this word is appropriately
> `UNIX' or `Unix'; both forms are common, and used
> interchangeably. Dennis Ritchie says that the `UNIX' spelling
> originally happened in CACM's 1974 paper "The UNIX Time-Sharing
> System" because "we had a new typesetter and troff had just been
> invented and we were intoxicated by being able to produce small
> caps." Later, dmr tried to get the spelling changed to `Unix' in a
> couple of Bell Labs papers, on the grounds that the word is not
> acronymic. He failed, and eventually (his words) "wimped out" on the
> issue. So, while the trademark today is `UNIX', both capitalizations
> are grounded in ancient usage; the Jargon File uses `Unix' in
> deference to dmr's wishes."

I've shifted over to the same "deference," myself.

Note that for the many modern implementations that are not formally
compliant with what standards are required to attain the UNIX (tm)
trademark, it's probably more appropriate to call them "Unix"
anyways...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.mca@" "enworbbc"))
http://vip.hex.net/~cbbrowne/unix.html
"MS  apparently now  has a  team dedicated  to tracking  problems with
Linux  and publicizing them.   I guess  eventually they'll  figure out
this backfires... ;)" -- William Burrow <aa126 at DELETE.fan.nb.ca>