Why V7 Unix matters so much
I feel the same - V7 is significant - but for different reasons.<p>(1) V7 did not use a MMU, there are no shared object libraries. The whole stack feels simpler, less layered. It is straightforward to hand-craft a binary on a pre-ELF system.<p>(2) V7 was just before select was introduced. V7 was only capable of basic networking like uucp where you give over the cpu to the networking operation.<p>A while back I wrote some notes contrasting RetroBSD (2BSD, close to v7) to LiteBSD (4.4 BSD), <a href="http://songseed.org/dinghy/d.pic32.platform.html" rel="nofollow">http://songseed.org/dinghy/d.pic32.platform.html</a><p>Both ports were done by the same developer, from different versions of the same codebase, separated by four years. If you compared any releases of Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux from the last twenty years, the differences would seem trivial compared to the differences between RetroBSD and LiteBSD.