7 Feb
2018
7 Feb
'18
2:51 p.m.
On 7 Feb 2018, at 00:02, Theodore Ts'o
<tytso(a)mit.edu> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 06, 2018 at 02:13:51PM -0800, Dan Stromberg wrote:
As a long-time Unix user (since around 1978) I agree with the above: the lawsuit was
definitely not very high in my concerns when I wanted a Unix on a cheap PC, I just wanted
it to work and, at the same time, I appreciated the impossible ecosystem which the PC
brought along with a gazillion different cards all requiring a special driver (I am
thinking, in particular, of the “SuperIO” card which my 386SX had to provide two RS232
ports, a parallel port and a 3 1/2” drive - made in Taiwan, zero documentation, etc.). The
Unix machines I had access to via work/study were all “big iron” coming from large
manufacturers and totally out of my price range.
2) I think the main reason BSD nearly died, was
the AT&T lawsuit. At
the time, Linux appeared to be a safer bet legally.
At the time of the AT&T lawsuit, most of the people who would be
interested in using a Un*x-like system on their personal x86 systems
probably wouldn't have been worried about their own personal legal
liability. The decision of corporations to use Linux was well *after*
the AT&T lawsuit was resolved. Something to remember is that in early 90's,
floppy disks was the only
affordable way hobbiists to get OS's installed on x86 systems. Even
OS/2 as distributed from IBM / Microsoft came on 30+ floppy disks. In
1990, CD-R recording system cost $35,000 (and dollars were bigger back
then). In 1992, the price had dropped to $10-12k, and it wasn't until
1995 that he first CD-R system under $1000 was available.
It was also really rather easy to share a floppy disk amongst friends whereas copying a CD
or a tape was really very expensive for a student/amateur.
So I would argue that Linux was *easier* to bootstrap
than
NetBSD/FreeBSD during that era. The fact that we could shrink a
kernel and a root file system down to two 1.44 MiB floppy disks
required an on-trivial engineering effort, and it meant that all you
had to was to download and write half-dozen to a dozen flopy disks,
and then it was *trivial*.
Absolutely true.
I would have never tried Linux had it been possible to install FreeBSD/NetBSD on the PCs I
had access to from a floppy disk. This changed around 1994 when I managed to boot NetBSD
from floppy on a Dell 486SX with very specific hardware (network card, etc.) which I had
managed to find thrown away by a big bank in the City.
My dream was a Sun but all I could afford was a 2nd hand battered 486SX…
Arrigo