On 8/28/2019 6:48 PM, Adam Thornton wrote: > It probably was the partition/slice confusion that, well, confused me, > then.  My experience, such as it was, was from the DOS world. As was mine mostly 8-) I remember it from the PITA it was to translate in my head.  Unix folks looked at partitions as /dev/dsk/0s0->0s7 (I think 7 was the SVR2 maximum.  The "Unix" partitions fit inside the FDISK partition or dos slice... The dos guys looked at it kind of like the fdisk space disk0 partition 3 (for example) was the partition and then the BSD folks broke that in to /dev/sd0a /dev/sd0b /dev/sd0c etc. I did a little SunOS and SysV along with Dos and Windows and could make them coexist as long as there was an open primary dos partition. > > Although the period I am thinking of was way pre-slackware.  You had a > boot floppy and a root floppy and that was about it, I think.  I think > the kernel had MFM/RLL disk drivers for an ISA bus interface?  I > remember that I could boot the thing on the MCA machines in the lab > but not actually install it (even had I been allowed to), and I think > installation was pretty much fdisk/mkfs, extract the tarball...I don't > remember how you installed the bootloader...which I guess was already > LILO at that point? Probably just dding the bootsector to the first > physical sector of the disk?  Version 0.08 or so, maybe? > Sounds like SLS -- Soft Landing System -- which later was pretty much replaced with Slackware.  I used the early MCA stuff on PS/2's at IBM for a while.  Most of the PS/2 stuff we had was SCSI.  The boot loader was lilo.  It could go in the partition space or disk mbr.  See:https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-bootload/index.html > It was quite a while ago, and I was drunk for most of college, > so....memory is imprecise at best. > > On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 3:28 PM Clem cole > wrote: > > Not true 386BSD used fdisk.  It shared the disk just fine.  In > fact I liked the way it sliced the disk much better than Slackware > in those days. > > Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but > not quite. > > On Aug 28, 2019, at 4:27 PM, Adam Thornton > wrote: > >> I was an ardent OS/2 supporter for a long time. Sure, IBM's >> anemic marketing, and their close-to-outright-hostility to >> 3rd-party developers didn't help.  But what killed it, really, >> was how damn good its 16-bit support was.  It *was* a better DOS >> than DOS and a better Windows than 3.11fW.  So no one wrote to >> the relatively tiny market of 32-bit OS/2. >> >> I fear that had Linux not made the leap, MS might well have won.  >> It's largely the AOL-fuelled explosion of popularity of the >> Internet and Windows ignoring same until too late that opened the >> door enough for Linux to jam its foot in. >> >> Hurd was, by the time of the '386 Unix Wars and early Linux, >> clearly not going to be a contender, I guess because it was about >> cool research features rather than running user-facing code.  I >> kept waiting for a usable kernel to go with what Linux had >> already shown was a quite decent userspace, but eventually had >> better things to do with my life (like chase BeOS).  It was like >> waiting for Perl 6--it missed its moment. >> >> Plan 9 and Amoeba were both really nifty.    I never used >> Sprite.  Neither one of them had much of a chance in the real >> world.  Much like Unix itself, Linux's worse-is-better approach >> really worked. >> >> I have a hypothesis about Linux's ascendance too, which is a >> personal anecdote I am inflating to the status of hypothesis.  As >> I recall, the *BSDs for 386 all assumed they owned the hard >> disk.  Like, the whole thing.  You couldn't, at least in 1992, >> create a multiboot system--or at least it was my strong >> impression you could not.  I was an undergrad.  I had one '386 at >> my disposal, with one hard disk, and, hey, I needed DOS and >> Windows to write my papers (I don't know about you, but I wanted >> to write in my room, where I could have my references at hand and >> be reasonably undisturbed; sure Framemaker was a much better >> setup than Word For Windows 1.2 but having to use it in the >> computer lab made it a nonstarter for me).  Papers, and, well, to >> play games.  Sure, that too. >> >> Linux let me defragment my drive, non-destructively repartition >> it, and create a dual-boot system, so that I could both use the >> computer for school and screw around on Linux.  I'm probably not >> the only person for whom this was a decisive factor. >> >> Adam >> >> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 1:08 PM Christopher Browne >> > wrote: >> >> On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 19:14, Arthur Krewat >> > wrote: >> >> https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/26/0051234/celebrating-the-28th-anniversary-of-the-linux-kernel >> >> Leaving licensing and copyright issues out of this mental >> exercise, what >> would we have now if it wasn't for Linux? Not what you'd >> WANT it to be, >> although that can add to the discussion, but what WOULD >> it be? >> >> I'm not asking as a proponent of Linux. If anything, I >> was dragged >> kicking and screaming into the current day and have >> begrudgingly ceded >> my server space to Linux. >> >> But if not for Linux, would it be BSD? A System V >> variant? Or (the >> horror) Windows NT? >> >> >> I can make a firm "dunno" sound :-) >> >> Some facts can come together to point away from a number of >> possibilities... >> >> - If you look at the number of hobbyist "Unix homages" that >> emerged at around that time, it's clear that there was a >> sizable community of interested folk willing to build their >> own thing, and that weren't interested in Windows NT.  (Nay, >> one should put that more strongly...  That had their minds >> set on something NOT from Microsoft.)  So I think we can >> cross Windows NT off the list. >> >> - OS/2 should briefly come on the list.  It was likable in >> many ways, if only IBM had actually supported it...  But it >> suffers from something of the same problem as Windows NT; >> there were a lot of folk that were only slightly less >> despising of IBM at the time than of Microsoft. >> >> - Hurd was imagined to be the next thing... >> >> To borrow from my cookie file... >> >> "Of course 5  years from now that will be different,  but 5 >> years from >> now  everyone  will  be  running  free  GNU on  their  200 >>  MIPS,  64M >> SPARCstation-5."  -- Andrew Tanenbaum, 1992. >> % >> "You'll be  rid of most of us  when BSD-detox or GNU  comes >> out, which >> should happen in the next few months (yeah, right)." -- >> Richard Tobin, >> 1992. [BSD did follow within a year] >> % >> "I am aware of the benefits  of a micro kernel approach.  >> However, the >> fact remains  that Linux is  here, and GNU  isn't --- and >>  people have >> been working on Hurd for a lot longer than Linus has been >> working on >> Linux." -- Ted T'so, 1992. >> >> Ted has been on this thread, and should be amused (and >> slightly disturbed!) that his old statements are being held >> here and there, ready to trot out :-). >> >> In the absence of Linux, perhaps hackers would have flocked >> to Hurd, but there was enough going on that there was plenty >> of room for them to have done so anyways. >> >> I'm not sure what to blame on whatever happened post-1992, >> though I'd put some on Microsoft Research having taken the >> wind out of Mach's sails by hiring off a bunch of the >> relevant folk.  In order for Hurd to "make it," Mach has to >> "make it," too, and it looked like they were depending on CMU >> to be behind that. (I'm not sure I'm right about that; happy >> to hear a better story.) >> >> Anyway, Hurd *might* have been a "next thing," and I don't >> think the popularity of Linux was enough to have completely >> taken wind out of its sails, given that there's the dozens of >> "Unix homages" out there. >> >> - I'd like to imagine Plan 9 being an alternative, but it was >> "properly commercial" for a goodly long time (hence not >> amenable to attaching waves of hackers to it to add their >> favorite device drivers), and was never taken as a serious >> answer.  Many of us had admired it from afar via the Dr Dobbs >> Journal issue (when was that?  mid or late '90s?) but only >> from afar. >> >> - FreeBSD is the single best answer I can throw up as a >> possibility, as it was the one actively targeting 80386 >> hardware.  And that had the big risk of the AT&T lawsuit >> lurking over it, so had that gone in a different direction, >> then that is a branch sadly easily trimmed. >> >> If we lop both Linux and FreeBSD off the list of >> possibilities, I don't imagine Windows NT or OS/2 bubble to >> the top, instead, a critical mass would have stood behind ... >> something else, I'd think.  I don't know which to suggest. >> -- >> When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing >> it to the >> question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?" >>