16 Jul
2021
16 Jul
'21
4:33 a.m.
I was running 386BSD 0.0 on a 386 40 mhz machine in April 1992 with 32
mb of ram.
There was much instability in the OS with more than 8 gb of ram and I
mailed 32 mb of extra to the Jolitz late summer to the fall.
I never heard about Linux until much later in 1993.
There used to be a post on usenet news annoucing the relase with the
FTP, but the best I could google was this FAQ confirming release in
1992.
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.386bsd.announce/c/PGltboD6rq4
I have repetively seen discussion suggesting Linux was available first,
but having directly worked for a university at the time installing
SunOS, AT&T SVR3, and other old OS’s, we welcomed the concept of
switching from AT&T SVR3 on 386 machines to 386BSD. We’d probably have
welcomed Linux if anyone in the department knew about it.
James Risner
On 15 Jul 2021, at 21:35, Dave Horsfall wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2021, Michael Kjörling wrote:
Could be; I got that news from one of those daily history sites (I
don't always trust Wikipedia).
In 1992,
386BSD is released by Lynne and William Jolitz, starting
the open source operating system movement (Linux didn't come along
under later).
Are you sure? Wikipedia claims that it happened the other way around;
that the Linux kernel initial release was 0.02 on 5 Oct 1991, while
the 386BSD initial release was 0.0 on 12 March 1992. It seems that work on 386BSD began earlier than
work on Linux, but
that the initial release of Linux was earlier than the initial
release of 386BSD.
That could be the source of the confusion.
-- Dave