UNIX was initially made because Ken Thompson wanted to play his space game on a PDP-7

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minilandl@reddit

dxvk was created because Philip wanted to play neir automata

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Informal_Bunch_2737@reddit

If you look at the WINE update notes, most of the time its just adding support for specific games. wine 10.2 bugfix: 16-bit Myst deadlocks when entering Book

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rasteri@reddit

If you look at the leaked Windows source code it's very much the same thing. Comments saying things like "deliberately left broken because Word 97 relies on this bug"

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Albos_Mum@reddit

Win95 detects if you're running the original Simcity and runs the memory manager in a legacy mode specifically to avoid bugs.

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Yeah I love reading Raymond Chen's blog when he goes into detail about some of the insane things they had to do to make windows 95 compatible with so much stuff. It really was an impressive bit of software

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ryanknut@reddit

meanwhile NT4 could run Windows 9x 16/32-bit software, Windows NT 32-bit software, DOS software, OS/2 software, and even some POSIX stuff (barely but still). crazy impressive, and many of the Win32 stuff still works to this day.

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rasteri@reddit

NT3.51 can even run a lot of 9x games (Unreal, Deus Ex)

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agent-squirrel@reddit

I mean graphics drivers literally have this too. Buggy engines and implementations are worked around in drivers.

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100GHz@reddit

You can find actual interviews around where Nvidia/amd/Intel actively have entire teams optimizing driver parts around games incorrect api usage

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

Then valve better get a similar team if they wanna be able to keep up.

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classicalySarcastic@reddit

In fairness if it’s a bug that can be worked around in software that is a hell of a lot cheaper than spinning the chip

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agent-squirrel@reddit

Oh for sure

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Albos_Mum@reddit

That's why DXVK is so good for a lot of older games even on Windows: Workarounds and fixes for older games aren't necessarily tested or function on newer GPUs, so even *if* the driver still includes them a decade later it might not be in a way that's usable for any then-modern GPUs. Vulkan being low-level allows DXVK to exist in the same "software space" as those driver optimisations, so it can include a lot of them as a direct result. Sims 2, Fallout 3/New Vegas and GTA IV are three examples of widely known and played games that fall into this category.

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agent-squirrel@reddit

That’s fantastic!

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Misicks0349@reddit

I wonder how often these updates incidentally fix other apps unrelated to games 🤔

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The-Rizztoffen@reddit

Must’ve been the most satisfying playthrough. Like unwinding after a big project at work/school is done

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LinAGKar@reddit

And The Witcher 3, I think

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minilandl@reddit

Overwatch was a big one early on. It was really bad every week you would get 5 posts on r/linux_gaming which was just overwatch benchmarks with dxvk.

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MGThePro@reddit

Overwatch and GTA 5. Those were the first two games I got running too, before all of it was automated with proton and before I knew about lutris

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minilandl@reddit

Yeah I think those games also work okay on Apple silicon through porting toolkit and crossover which doesn't have as much compatibility as proton but still plays some games.

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NexusOtter@reddit

I think his GitHub avatar is STILL A2 fanart.

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MichaelPopeDeveloper@reddit

This post sent me down a rabbit hole, one minute I was reading about the C programming laguage, next I was learning how much of an absolute Chad Ken Thompson is. Your post inspired this video I made [https://youtube.com/shorts/baEdonCk2js?feature=share](https://youtube.com/shorts/baEdonCk2js?feature=share)

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es20490446e@reddit

My first Linux software was just a script that selected between dosbox and wine. Eventually it grew into an OS 😅

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orange-bitflip@reddit

[UNIX IS A GAMING OS] Checkmate, Windorks.

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yur_mom@reddit

Thanks to SteamDeck Linux is actually becoming a gaming OS. I will admit I still keep a Windows computer around just for gaming.

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doomygloomytunes@reddit

>Thanks to SteamDeck Linux is actually becoming a gaming OS. ... but it ain't Unix

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EmbeddedSoftEng@reddit

That's what the name means: Linux Is Not UNIX ... Xylophone

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Skywalker350@reddit

> The Linux name came from "Linus' Minix" which was the operating system Linus was trying to replace for himself. https://www.howtogeek.com/44036/how-your-operating-system-got-its-name/#linux

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EmbeddedSoftEng@reddit

Joke. You. Not even in the same postal code.

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Skywalker350@reddit

well it wouldn't be thaaat far fetched (only the "xylophone" part gave it away) - see "GNU"... so a "/s" would have been appropriate in my opinion

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yur_mom@reddit

but this subreddit is called r/linux so most people can probably figure out the connection between Unix and Linux...by your logic why is a Unix article on a Linux forum...oh let me guess because they are based off similar philosophies and concepts.

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doomygloomytunes@reddit

Lighten up... but it still ain't Unix ;)

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yur_mom@reddit

Lighter than you are brahhhh..

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ziris_@reddit

Daaaaamn! u/yur_mom is lighter!? That's saying something. Your mom's so far that when she goes to the theater, she sits next to EVERYBODY!

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mysticreddit@reddit

The PS3, PS4, and PS5 operating systems are also based on FreeBSD.

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trenskow@reddit

It’s a common misconception that he go-created C. C was created by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thomson was the first user when he used it to implement UNIX. He definitely did have influence on the language through feedback to Dennis Ritchie, but Richie is the creator of C and Thomson is the creator of UNIX.

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john0201@reddit (OP)

Ritchie was more directly responsible for C, and maybe it’s unfair to say Thompson co-created it, but it would not exist without him and he was heavily involved in its development. Thompson created B, and Ritchie expanded B to take advantage of newer computers with more memory (which was called NB, or new B). Thompson then used NB to write UNIX, but it had shortcomings, so he worked with Ritchie who added new features. They decided this was different enough from B to have a new name, so they called it C.

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Oflameo@reddit

Gaming and quality computing go hand in hand.

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ScoopDat@reddit

Wish quality computing was able to save gaming from the shitpile it's in now..

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Oflameo@reddit

It did, just ignore the prophet motivated, always online, AAAs.

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ScoopDat@reddit

UE5 stutter fest, every game's render pipeline now temporally driven, fake frame generation, upscalers from sub 1080p resolutions. I don't think that's going anywhere. Ignoring AAA (what is expected to be the pinnacle of game development due to investiture naturally), isn't really great. It's like talking about cars and saying "yeah cars are great, just ignore everything after $150K"... Yeah, but the high end is what's supposed to drive interest and awe, you lose that, you get a far less interesting industry. As for ignoring profit motivated games, idk how that's possible since they're all profit motivated tbh. At least any that are for sale I'd like to think.

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Oflameo@reddit

I focus on the emulation and demoscene instead. They innovate on the software instead of tell us to buy more hardware. There are even runtimes like Pico-8 designed to constrain and streamline.

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ScoopDat@reddit

Emulation? If I could I'd make you all heads of the programming departments of every AAA studio. Only people on Earth I imagine to be more smarter than emulation developers, are possibly I guess technical leads working on ASML's EUV lithography hardware..

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braaaaaaainworms@reddit

Emulation is pretty simple, the hard part is *fast* emulation of a system with an MMU

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thinkingperson@reddit

He is the "K" in the K&R C.

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themule71@reddit

Kernighan

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thinkingperson@reddit

Gosh, got the wrong guy. :/

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maigpy@reddit

why didn't Ken Thompson create Linux or freebsd?

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MatchingTurret@reddit

In 1969? On a PDP-7?

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maigpy@reddit

nah, in the 90s. could have given a hand to linus, even.

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0b0101011001001011@reddit

Maybe because he was busy making UTF-8, music compression schemes abd inferno operating system.

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kalam_burgud@reddit

and plan9, i guess

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nicman24@reddit

Games and porn people

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DaftPump@reddit

In case this was misunderstood. Pornography was the top reason the home video market took off in the early 80s.

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Albos_Mum@reddit

Almost every notable software project you can think of started *way* simpler than it is today and built from there. Even for something like Firefox that hasn't changed purpose over the years, what is expected of it has vastly changed. Once upon a time Firefox was never expected to play video, or just play it via a third party Flash plugin but that's now all integrated to the browser itself as just one big example.

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PM_ME_UR_ROUND_ASS@reddit

Yeah and unix itself went from a simple game support system to powering critical infrastructure and spacecraft. The original unix kernel was only about 16,000 lines of code but now modern unix-like systems have millions. Crazy evolutoin.

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hitoriboccheese@reddit

Reminds me of how DXVK only exists because one German guy wanted to play Nier: Automata on Linux.

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grem75@reddit

[The first actual Windows application WINE ran was a game.](https://i.imgur.com/W6E3dyW.png)

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starlevel01@reddit

I like how even then wine spammed the console

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dfwtjms@reddit

Linux wasn't developed for months because Linus was busy playing Prince of Persia.

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MatchingTurret@reddit

Exact opposite is true: >[As it turned out, Minix wasn't available in Finland (at least I wasn't able to find it easily), so while I got my machine on January 5th 1991 (easy date to remember due to the monthly payments :-), I was forced to run DOS on it for a couple of months while waiting for the Minix disks. So Jan-Feb was spent about 70-30 playing "Prince of Persia" and getting aquainted with the machine. When Minix finally arrived, I had solved "PoP", and knew a smattering of 386 machine code (enough to be able to get the machine into protected mode and sit there looping). So I installed Minix (leaving some room for "PoP" on a DOS partition), and started hacking.](https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-very-first-interview-about-linux)

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dfwtjms@reddit

Doesn't he say he was mostly playing PoP? My source was different, it was his friend telling the story but maybe we believe Linus himself. Eventually dual-booting gone wrong got us Linux.

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MatchingTurret@reddit

>Doesn't he say he was mostly playing PoP? While waiting for Minix... >it was his friend telling the story That would be Lars Wirzenius and he is the one who made the Linux News including the interview I quoted.

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dfwtjms@reddit

I correct my initial statement: the development of the embryonic stage Linux was hindered for months due to Linus playing Prince of Persia.

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MatchingTurret@reddit

The delay wasn't because of Linus playing Prince of Persia but because of the non-availability of Minix.

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Albos_Mum@reddit

From what I remember, Linux itself started as a relatively simple multithreading experiment using 386-specific features that'd print either "A" or "B" depending on which thread was running.

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MatchingTurret@reddit

See here: [April: assembly language, A/B threads](https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/radicle.liw.fi/rad:z355dPnbvpPxC3FoT38pjs9AzspQB/tree/early-linux-history.md)

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NaugyNugget@reddit

One great way to get to know Ken's story: [Ken Thompson interviewed by Brian Kernighan at VCF East 2019 (YouTube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6q5dv_B-o)

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