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Unix Operating Systems Celebration Day
"If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it's done."
~ Scott Adams, Dilbert Cartoonist
"Don't panic!" Programmers and computer scientists, a kilt in this tartan would definitely impress! Time to celebrate all Unix operating systems and descendants, including the open-source Debian or Debian GNU/Linux, the only computer operating system with its own tartan (with a special ancestrally logo-coloured and encoded sett - rotate to see "DEBIAN" represented in Morse code by the white lines representing dots, dashes, and pauses)! In 1969, Bell Labs employees, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna, decided to unofficially continue work on a lapsed internal project (Multics) for a new time-sharing operating system. In 1970, the group coined the name Unics (later spelled Unix) for Uniplexed Information and Computing Service, as a pun on Multics, which stood for Multiplexed Information and Computer Services. Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions, with many other distributions created from its codebase, including Ubuntu and Knoppix, and as such contains many classic command line "easter eggs" - funny and undocumented results. Guess what you get if you type the following to the terminal prompt on some systems?
$ apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
* /\---/\
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...
Most operating systems can be grouped into two different families. Aside from Microsoft's Windows NT-based operating systems, nearly everything else traces its heritage back to Unix.
First announced on August 16, 1993, by Ian Murdock, who initially called the system "the Debian Linux Release". The word "Debian" was formed as a portmanteau of the first name of his then-girlfriend Debra Lynn and his own first name.
The release included the Debian Linux Manifesto, outlining Murdock's view for the new operating system. In it he called for the creation of a distribution to be maintained openly, in the spirit of Linux and GNU.
This tartan was designed in 2007 for the eighth annual gathering of developers from all over the world in Edinburgh. The colours are references to various logos: Reds for the Debian swirl, Blue for Captain Blue-Eyes (the old Debian logo), and Yellow, Black & White for Tux, the Linux logo. If the image is rotated 180 degrees, the White can be seen to be arranged so as to spell out DEBIAN in Morse code (with a correct 1:3 ratio for dots to dashes, and for the pauses in and between letters).
For a history of origin of the Unix operating system and its descendants, click the Debian logo!