A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

The True-GNU philosophy is more extreme than I care for, but it certainly laid a foundation for the current scene, as well as providing real software.

C was already implemented on several quite different machines and OSs, Unix was already being distributed on the PDP-11, but the portability of the whole system was new

Obviously, the person who had most influence on my career was Ken Thompson. Unix was basically his, likewise C's predecessor, likewise much of the basis of Plan 9 (though Rob Pike was the real force in getting it together). And in the meantime Ken created the first computer chess master and pretty much rewrote the book on chess endgames. He is quite a phenomenon.

Steve Jobs has said that Xwindows is brain-damamged and will disappear in two years. He got it half-right.

It seems certain that much of the success of Unix follows from the readability, modifiability, and portability of its software.

From an operating system research point of view, Unix is if not dead certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.