Date: 19 Apr 1997 18:56:46 +0100 From: Paul Richards <paul@originat.demon.co.uk> To: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> Cc: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu>, jack@diamond.xtalwind.net, mark@quickweb.com, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On Holy Wars, and a Plea for Peace [sorry Danny, wherever you are, but the title fits]... Message-ID: <87iv1isxpd.fsf@originat.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: The Hermit Hacker's message of Sat, 19 Apr 1997 14:34:00 -0300 (ADT) References: <Pine.NEB.3.96.970419143222.4592I-100000@thelab.hub.org>
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The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> writes: > > On Sat, 19 Apr 1997, Joel Ray Holveck wrote: > > > How come Linux is so well-known? What in its history caused it to > > take the spotlight? > > Pretty much the first *free* Unix-like operating system. I think > its only predecessor was Minix(?) It wasn't for about a year after I played > with Linux that I even heard of FreeBSD... Not really a very accurate piece of history. 386BSD and Linux were born at *roughly* the same time. I had 0.x (where x was very low) versions of Linux at around the time that I also had 386BSD 0.0 so there wasn't much in it and they were both equally unusable as "real" systems, 386BSD barely stayed up and Linux had no networking. I think the main reason Linux picked up so quickly was it grew up in a different environment. It developed from the Minix crowd and DOS users who wanted to try Unix, which was always a much bigger audience, whereas 386BSD grew up in the BSD community which was a much tighter nit group of people who weren't to evangelical about this wonderful new system called unix since it wasn't new to them. Nate or Bruce could probably comment since they were both in the Minix camp when all this started. It would make an interesting book, the history of free unix. It's perhaps a bit too soon to write it though. -- Dr Paul Richards, Originative Solutions Ltd. Internet: paul@originat.demon.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (UK Mobile)
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