4 Jun
2022
4 Jun
'22
6:30 a.m.
David Arnold says:
I think a similar pattern was true for many of my era
(late
80’s/early 90’s). It was quite a bit easier to get a Linux system
running while retaining a DOS, Windows or Minix system as a backup,
and so that was how it evolved.
It had nothing (directly) to do with the legal issues.
This is consistent with my experience. Until 1999 I used SunOS, then Solaris, as both
student and student employee of Columbia's computing group. But I doubt that I would
have installed SunOS at home even if free.
Linux, on the other hand, was seemingly everywhere: Shelves of books (some bundling a
CD-ROM of some distribution) at bookstores, _Linux Journal_, Usenet discussions, online
HOWTOs, others around me installing Linux at home and at work. BSD? It didn't get 10%
of the mindshare.
Maybe that was a result of litigation, but I can 100% say for sure that my choosing in
1995 to go with Red Hat 2.1 for a brand new Pentium had nothing directly to do with any
BSD-related litigation, because I wasn't aware of any such in the first place.
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