Personal distributed computing: the Alto and Ethernet software

ABSTRACT

The personal distributed computing system based on the Alto and the Ethernet was a major effort to make computers help people to think and communicate. The paper describes the complex and diverse collection of software that was built to pursue this goal, ranging from operating systems, programming environments, and communications software to printing and file servers, user interfaces, and applications such as editors, illustrators, and mail systems.

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Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Physical sciences and engineering

    • Mathematics and statistics

• Computer systems organization

  • Architectures

    • Distributed architectures

• Computing methodologies

  • Modeling and simulation

    • Simulation types and techniques

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)

• Mathematics of computing

  • Mathematical analysis

    • Functional analysis

      • Approximation

    • Mathematical optimization

    • Nonlinear equations

  • Probability and statistics

    • Probabilistic algorithms

    • Probabilistic reasoning algorithms

      • Markov-chain Monte Carlo methods

      • Sequential Monte Carlo methods

• Networks

  • Network architectures

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • History of computing

      • History of software

• Software and its engineering

  • Software notations and tools

    • Development frameworks and environments

      • Integrated and visual development environments

  • Software organization and properties

    • Software system structures

      • Distributed systems organizing principles

• Theory of computation

  • Design and analysis of algorithms

    • Approximation algorithms analysis

    • Mathematical optimization