Messages in this thread | | | Date | 05 May 1999 23:12:00 +0200 | From | (Kai Henningsen) | Subject | Re: Ken Thompson interview in IEEE Computer magazine (fwd) |
| |
alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox) wrote on 05.05.99 in <m10f1EJ-0007TwC@the-village.bc.nu>:
> > AT&T's lawsuit that delayed the release of 4.4BSD certainly gave > > Linux an opportunity to compete more seriously against free BSD > > UNIX derivatives. If a BSD for Intel systems had existed sooner > > then even Linus admitted that Linux would probably not exist now. > > Your chronology is wrong there
Well, it pretty much describes why *I* am running Linux.
> The lawsuit was some time after this. About 0.96 if I remember
Well, I didn't consider Linux really usable before about that time. And neither BSD.
I think I had already given up on Minix (after hearing Tanenbaum refuse to add message queues so we could get rid of several *really* hairy corners, with potential deadlocks and violating module boundaries and stuff - our views on simplicity were *really* incompatible), and was hoping for BSD to "grow up". Except there was the law suit, and Linux grew up faster.
And I was pondering writing my own, but I didn't. I think I did have some rudimentary switch-to-protected-mode-and-print-some-characters code ... ;-)
> Microsoft and the overchargning Unix vendors certainly created the climate > for Linux, but I think backlash is way inaccurate. Sadly it and "religion" > are becoming a little too accurate nowdays.
Partly because the M$ problem is getting more acute these days. Except for DOS 4, not even M$ manages to completely fsck up a piece of software that small (though when I think of the stack of install disks for DOS 6 - *shudder*), but when NT 5 is about the size of MVS (heretofore one of the most bloated systems around), and has the typical quality of M$ software ... I guess some people feel strangled. Sometimes I do, too.
MfG Kai
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |