On 2020-08-29, Martin Gregorie  wrote:
>
> Throughout this era that was little attention given to security

I learnt programming on machine with a multi-user, interactive OS in
1970 - A CTL Modular One. Security certainly was paid attention to. The
machine had segmented RAM, you only had access to memory the OS
allocated you, and only the OS, in supervisor mode, could set the
relevant Memory registers etc. Security here meant that one user's
program could not interfer, or be interfered, with another user's
programs.

I think we had to wait till the 386 before we got similar hardware
security features in a CPU chip - I don't think the 286 had enough. It
was the arrival of the 386 chip in desktops machines that inspired
Torvalds to look at starting Linux.

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