[TUHS] Mach for i386 / Mt Xinu or other

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Joerg Schilling

    > He is a person with a strong ego and this may have helped to spread
    > Linux.

Well, I wasn't there, and I don't know much about the early Linux versus
UNIX-derivative contest, but from personal experience in a similar contest
(the TCP/IP versus ISO stack), I doubt such personal attributes had _that_
much weight in deciding the winner.

The maximum might have been that it enabled him to keep the Linux kernel
project unified and heading in one direction. Not inconsiderable, perhaps, if
there's confusion on the other side.,,

So there is a question here, though, and I'm curious to see what others who
were closer to the action think. Why _did_ Linux succeed, and not a Unix
derivative? (Is there any work which looks at this question? Some Linux
history? If not, there should be.)

It seems to me that they key battleground must have been the IMB PC-compatible
world - Linux is where it is now because of its success there. So why did
Linux succeed there?

Was is that it was open-source, and the competitor(s) all had licensing
issues? (I'm not saying they did, I just don't know.) Was it that Linux worked
better on that platform? (Again, don't know, only asking.)  Perhaps there was
an early stage where it was the only good option for that platform, and that's
how it got going?  Was is that there were too many Unix-derived alternatives,
so there was no clarity as to what the alternatives were?

Some combination of all of the above (perhaps with different ones playing a key
role at different points in time)?

     Noel