The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
@ 2019-07-14  5:56 Dave Horsfall
  2019-07-14  6:01 ` Larry McVoy
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2019-07-14  5:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz 
started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and 
corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just 
about everything).

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  5:56 [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Dave Horsfall
@ 2019-07-14  6:01 ` Larry McVoy
  2019-07-14  7:15   ` Ed Carp
  2019-07-14  6:15 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
                   ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2019-07-14  6:01 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

I'm a fan of Bill, he worked for me, wasn't work, it was payback
for what he went through.  Bill and Lynne are unsung heros.

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 03:56:21PM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz
> started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and
> corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just
> about everything).
> 
> -- Dave

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm 

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  5:56 [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Dave Horsfall
  2019-07-14  6:01 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2019-07-14  6:15 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2019-07-14  6:23   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2019-07-14  6:53 ` Jason Stevens
  2019-07-14  7:13 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Ed Carp
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2019-07-14  6:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 976 bytes --]

On Sunday, 14 July 2019 at 15:56:21 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz
> started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and
> corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just
> about everything).

Yes, I recall a release on the French national holiday, with specific
reference to that event, but there were earlier versions of 386BSD out
there.  I have a message relayed from Bill Jolitz by David Harris on
19 March 1992, containing:

  I have made 386BSD Release 0.0 available with public access sources.

This appears to be the same as the message at
https://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1992/0319.html

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  6:15 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2019-07-14  6:23   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
  2019-07-17  0:38     ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey @ 2019-07-14  6:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1001 bytes --]

On Sunday, 14 July 2019 at 16:15:44 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 July 2019 at 15:56:21 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>> 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz
>> started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and
>> corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just
>> about everything).
>
> Yes, I recall a release on the French national holiday, with specific
> reference to that event,

Here we go (http://gunkies.org/wiki/386BSD_0.1_announcement):

                     386BSD Release 0.1

                       "Cut the Tape"
                        14 July 1992
                       (Bastille Day)
                    "Vive la Revolution"

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 163 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  5:56 [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Dave Horsfall
  2019-07-14  6:01 ` Larry McVoy
  2019-07-14  6:15 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2019-07-14  6:53 ` Jason Stevens
  2019-07-14  8:17   ` [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re: Happy birthday, 386BSD!) Michael Huff
  2019-07-14  7:13 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Ed Carp
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-07-14  6:53 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1581 bytes --]

Getting this to build was such a tremendous effort.  Although last time I revisited my 386BSD 0.0 work even under emulation it ran too fast and had issues. 




But it's really a tremendous effort what Bill and Lynne had done, by pushing out not only a running version of Net/2 but a self hosting version of Net/2 for the lowly and utterly common and commodity 386.




Its a shame the BSDSS and later N2SS from CMU (ports of 4.4 / Net/2) to Mach 3.  But that USL vs BSDi/CSRG lawsuit cut short what should have the shot heard around the world moment. 




It was shockingly hard to chase down 386BSD  0.0 just as it was to find NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9




Im just sad I was in the dark about BSD at that time, all the Unix people I knew hid behind their RS/6000s and SUN workstations while me and all my peers were all all running Linux. 




But there is nothing like the feeling of running make world, or building a custom kernel when compared to just running a binary set. 




Since 0.1 is more capable, here is a download for Windows users for it ready to run. 




https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/386BSD-0.1.exe/download






On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 1:57 PM +0800, "Dave Horsfall" <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:










386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz 
started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and 
corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just 
about everything).

-- Dave






[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2947 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  5:56 [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Dave Horsfall
                   ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2019-07-14  6:53 ` Jason Stevens
@ 2019-07-14  7:13 ` Ed Carp
  2019-07-14 12:52   ` Theodore Ts'o
  3 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Ed Carp @ 2019-07-14  7:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019, space aliens made Dave Horsfall write:

> 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz 
> started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and

Not really. Bill and Lynne kept very tight control over releases - the 
word "open" didn't really apply to 386BSD, and there were many Open Source 
projects well under way before 386BSD was even conceived.

Under Linux, the process was a lot more "open", even democratic. One of 
the reasons I abandoned 386BSD early on and started working on Linux was 
because I (as well as many others) were very frustrated at the complete 
contol the Jolitz's exercised over 386BSD, and limited releases to one 
every six months - much slower than was generally considered to be 
acceptable for the long list of bugs and fixes in the pipeline.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  6:01 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2019-07-14  7:15   ` Ed Carp
  2019-07-14  8:14     ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Ed Carp @ 2019-07-14  7:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Sat, 13 Jul 2019, space aliens made Larry McVoy write:

> I'm a fan of Bill, he worked for me, wasn't work, it was payback
> for what he went through.  Bill and Lynne are unsung heros.

Many people wished they would've released code and fixes more often. That 
was one of the reasons that Linux gained considerable attention over 
386BSD in those days.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  7:15   ` Ed Carp
@ 2019-07-14  8:14     ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-07-14  8:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy, ecarp; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1496 bytes --]

Well 0.0 barely ran at all, but 0.1 was pretty solid.  The big thing was that it was self hosting and by way of the patch kits, forking was not only easy, but inevitable as Free and Net headed in different directions. 




What really lead to the widespread adoption of Linux was the incredibly limited release information on 386BSD as Linus had mentioned a few times that if he knew about 386BSD he wouldn't have even started Linux.  




But in my opinion it was the combination of BSDi over estimating the odds of annoying AT&T/USL, along with how quickly universities like CMU dumped any/all public BSD work, and the rise of Linux being able to run a GNU user land free and independent of BSD code. 




Otherwise most of us would be running "NiHao BSD, orange aardvark" or however it is they come up with distro names. 




But I'd say that even though it sputtered out quickly, 386BSD showed that even 2 people could push a free and open OS out into the world via the internet.











On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 3:21 PM +0800, "Ed Carp" <erc@pobox.com> wrote:










On Sat, 13 Jul 2019, space aliens made Larry McVoy write:

> I'm a fan of Bill, he worked for me, wasn't work, it was payback
> for what he went through.  Bill and Lynne are unsung heros.

Many people wished they would've released code and fixes more often. That 
was one of the reasons that Linux gained considerable attention over 
386BSD in those days.






[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2608 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re:  Happy birthday, 386BSD!)
  2019-07-14  6:53 ` Jason Stevens
@ 2019-07-14  8:17   ` Michael Huff
  2019-07-14  9:07     ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Michael Huff @ 2019-07-14  8:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2169 bytes --]

Hi

Personally, I'm very grateful for the amount of time you've spent not 
simply finding and posting the things you do (this, cmu mach, the BSD 
and Unix stuff) but also the blog entries you write that spell out the 
steps you take to get it all running.

As someone who came along much later (slackware 3.5?, freebsd 
2.2-something) but has a lot of interest/curiosity about what the older 
days were like it's very helpful and illuminating.

Oh! ...and of course, Happy Birthday 386BSD!

Regards,

-a Virtuallyfun fan/reader

On 7/13/2019 10:53 PM, Jason Stevens wrote:
> Getting this to build was such a tremendous effort.  Although last 
> time I revisited my 386BSD 0.0 work even under emulation it ran too 
> fast and had issues.
>
> But it's really a tremendous effort what Bill and Lynne had done, by 
> pushing out not only a running version of Net/2 but a self hosting 
> version of Net/2 for the lowly and utterly common and commodity 386.
>
> Its a shame the BSDSS and later N2SS from CMU (ports of 4.4 / Net/2) 
> to Mach 3.  But that USL vs BSDi/CSRG lawsuit cut short what should 
> have the shot heard around the world moment.
>
> It was shockingly hard to chase down 386BSD  0.0 just as it was to 
> find NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9
>
> Im just sad I was in the dark about BSD at that time, all the Unix 
> people I knew hid behind their RS/6000s and SUN workstations while me 
> and all my peers were all all running Linux.
>
> But there is nothing like the feeling of running make world, or 
> building a custom kernel when compared to just running a binary set.
>
> Since 0.1 is more capable, here is a download for Windows users for it 
> ready to run.
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/386BSD-0.1.exe/download
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 1:57 PM +0800, "Dave Horsfall" 
> <dave@horsfall.org <mailto:dave@horsfall.org>> wrote:
>
>     386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz
>     started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and
>     corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just
>     about everything).
>
>     -- Dave
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4698 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re:  Happy birthday, 386BSD!)
  2019-07-14  8:17   ` [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re: Happy birthday, 386BSD!) Michael Huff
@ 2019-07-14  9:07     ` Jason Stevens
  2019-07-14 17:47       ` Adam Thornton
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-07-14  9:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Michael Huff; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2983 bytes --]

It's always nice to get such nice fan mail.   Ever since the early days of SIMH and PUPS I've been a fan of the idea of being able to help others discover and run ancient Unix. 




It's amazing how fast things moved when looking back at the 5 years after the wide stream adoption of the 80386, and how many things have risen and fallen in that time period, how many failed to only come back and win. 




1988-1993 was so incredibly pivotal, much more than say 2014-2019.  I wonder if we will ever see such a powerful window of change like that ever again. 




Definitely a happy birthday to 386BSD!






From: Michael Huff


Sent: Sunday, July 14, 4:18 PM


Subject: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re:  Happy birthday, 386BSD!)


To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org






Hi


Personally, I'm very grateful for the amount of time you've spent not simply finding and posting the things you do (this, cmu mach, the BSD and Unix stuff) but also the blog entries you write that spell out the steps you take to get it all running. 


As someone who came along much later (slackware 3.5?, freebsd 2.2-something) but has a lot of interest/curiosity about what the older days were like it's very helpful and illuminating. 


Oh! ...and of course, Happy Birthday 386BSD!


Regards,


-a Virtuallyfun fan/reader


On 7/13/2019 10:53 PM, Jason Stevens wrote:


Getting this to build was such a tremendous effort.  Although last time I revisited my 386BSD 0.0 work even under emulation it ran too fast and had issues. 




But it's really a tremendous effort what Bill and Lynne had done, by pushing out not only a running version of Net/2 but a self hosting version of Net/2 for the lowly and utterly common and commodity 386.




Its a shame the BSDSS and later N2SS from CMU (ports of 4.4 / Net/2) to Mach 3.  But that USL vs BSDi/CSRG lawsuit cut short what should have the shot heard around the world moment. 




It was shockingly hard to chase down 386BSD  0.0 just as it was to find NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9




Im just sad I was in the dark about BSD at that time, all the Unix people I knew hid behind their RS/6000s and SUN workstations while me and all my peers were all all running Linux. 




But there is nothing like the feeling of running make world, or building a custom kernel when compared to just running a binary set. 




Since 0.1 is more capable, here is a download for Windows users for it ready to run. 




https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/386BSD-0.1.exe/download








On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 1:57 PM +0800, "Dave Horsfall" <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:




386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just about everything). -- Dave 









[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6533 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  7:13 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Ed Carp
@ 2019-07-14 12:52   ` Theodore Ts'o
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: Theodore Ts'o @ 2019-07-14 12:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: ecarp; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 12:13:35AM -0700, Ed Carp wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Jul 2019, space aliens made Dave Horsfall write:
> 
> > 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz
> > started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and
> 
> Not really. Bill and Lynne kept very tight control over releases - the word
> "open" didn't really apply to 386BSD, and there were many Open Source
> projects well under way before 386BSD wasy even conceived.
> 
> Under Linux, the process was a lot more "open", even democratic. One of the
> reasons I abandoned 386BSD early on and started working on Linux was because
> I (as well as many others) were very frustrated at the complete contol the
> Jolitz's exnercised over 386BSD, and limited releases to one every six months
> - much slower than was generally considered to be acceptable for the long
> list of bugs and fixes in the pipeline.

+1

The term "Open Source" dates to 1998, so saying the movement dates
back to 1992 is at best historical revisionism.  If what you mean is
the concept of distributed development, enabled by the internet, and
you don't want to count Linux (which started in 1991), I'd point you
at perl from the late 80's.

Larry Wall was extremely welcoming to enhancements from people that he
didn't know except for the fact that they sent patches that passed
technical muster.  Even if that person was a random undergraduate
systems programmer at MIT...

Both Larry Wall and Linus Torvalds subscribed to the "release early,
release often" methodology --- which was especially important in the
days before distibuted source control systems.  If you want to
encourage contributors, it's really important that they get positive
feedback very quickly.  So feedback on proposed patches, and letting
people see their contributions show up in a new release is
super-important.  And that means releases on a schedule measured in
days or weeks, and not months.

So if anything, I'd claim that 386BSD was a great, early example of an
open source anti-pattern.  Releases every six months might be fine if
you're using a physical distribution medium, like CD-ROM's, but one of
the key aspects of the "Open Source movement" was the distributed
development methodologies that was enabled by the 'Net.

					- Ted

P.S.  There are plenty of other comp.sources.unix and
comp.sources.misc "open source" projects from the 1980's, but Perl is
one of the much larger, much more visible, and with a very large
contributor base, which makes it a very early project that looks like
what many people think of when they say "a successful Open Source
project" today.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re: Happy birthday, 386BSD!)
  2019-07-14  9:07     ` Jason Stevens
@ 2019-07-14 17:47       ` Adam Thornton
  2019-07-15  1:54         ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread
From: Adam Thornton @ 2019-07-14 17:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4216 bytes --]

Jason Stevens jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com via
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en>
outdoorexpressionslimited.onmicrosoft.com wrote:
> 1988-1993 was so incredibly pivotal, much more than say 2014-2019.  I
wonder if we will ever see such a powerful window of change like that ever
again.

We did but no one was paying attention.  It was 2007-2010.  The iPhone and
Android were introduced, and the computing world went from an
Intel-architecture monopoly (which it had pretty much become by 2005) to an
Intel/ARM duopoly (because Intel and AMD focused too much on performance
and not enough on making a low-power implementation of the architecture; an
Intel-compatible chip *could* have won the mobile wars, but didn't).  In
the next couple years iPhone and Android (both on ARM) massacred all of the
mobile competition.

That also meant that the underlying OS for mobile devices became, you
guessed it, Unix (or at least something that smells a lot like it).  Which
is weird, given that something designed for single-threaded composible
text-filtering operations is now running almost all of the world's
multithreaded user-facing graphical applications, but that's the vagaries
of history for you.

Adam

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 2:08 AM Jason Stevens <
jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:

> It's always nice to get such nice fan mail.   Ever since the early days of
> SIMH and PUPS I've been a fan of the idea of being able to help others
> discover and run ancient Unix.
>
> It's amazing how fast things moved when looking back at the 5 years after
> the wide stream adoption of the 80386, and how many things have risen and
> fallen in that time period, how many failed to only come back and win.
>
> 1988-1993 was so incredibly pivotal, much more than say 2014-2019.  I
> wonder if we will ever see such a powerful window of change like that ever
> again.
>
> Definitely a happy birthday to 386BSD!
>
>
> From: Michael Huff
> Sent: Sunday, July 14, 4:18 PM
> Subject: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re:  Happy birthday, 386BSD!)
> To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
>
>
> Hi
> Personally, I'm very grateful for the amount of time you've spent not
> simply finding and posting the things you do (this, cmu mach, the BSD and
> Unix stuff) but also the blog entries you write that spell out the steps
> you take to get it all running.
> As someone who came along much later (slackware 3.5?, freebsd
> 2.2-something) but has a lot of interest/curiosity about what the older
> days were like it's very helpful and illuminating.
> Oh! ...and of course, Happy Birthday 386BSD!
> Regards,
> -a Virtuallyfun fan/reader
> On 7/13/2019 10:53 PM, Jason Stevens wrote:
> Getting this to build was such a tremendous effort.  Although last time I
> revisited my 386BSD 0.0 work even under emulation it ran too fast and had
> issues.
>
> But it's really a tremendous effort what Bill and Lynne had done, by
> pushing out not only a running version of Net/2 but a self hosting version
> of Net/2 for the lowly and utterly common and commodity 386.
>
> Its a shame the BSDSS and later N2SS from CMU (ports of 4.4 / Net/2) to
> Mach 3.  But that USL vs BSDi/CSRG lawsuit cut short what should have the
> shot heard around the world moment.
>
> It was shockingly hard to chase down 386BSD  0.0 just as it was to find
> NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9
>
> Im just sad I was in the dark about BSD at that time, all the Unix people
> I knew hid behind their RS/6000s and SUN workstations while me and all my
> peers were all all running Linux.
>
> But there is nothing like the feeling of running make world, or building a
> custom kernel when compared to just running a binary set.
>
> Since 0.1 is more capable, here is a download for Windows users for it
> ready to run.
>
>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/386BSD-0.1.exe/download
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 1:57 PM +0800, "Dave Horsfall" <dave@horsfall.org>
> wrote:
>
> 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz
> started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and
> corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just
> about everything). -- Dave
>
>
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 8581 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re: Happy birthday, 386BSD!)
  2019-07-14 17:47       ` Adam Thornton
@ 2019-07-15  1:54         ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-07-15  1:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society, Adam Thornton

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6199 bytes --]

The crazy thing about say the rise and fall of Danger (NetBSD) you had BSD+Mach (NeXTSTEP) striking back on the iPhone, the amazing adoption of Linux on the Android front and the spectacular failure of Microsoft and their stop gap OS, Windows CE (which is without a doubt one of the biggest mistakes they ever made) and how NT/OS2 / Windows NT also made it to mobile space but was too late to the market and withdrawn. 




Although the race to bring computers to the masses via smartphones certainly was a big deal, but it was all the same players of the '88-93 wars. 




The real surprise is how a rigid Linux distribution found such wide spread adoption, how NeXT finally found widespread adoption, and how NT was unable to lock in corporate middleware unlike how it did on the desktop. 




I've owned them all, the danger sidekick was so amazing but the lack of SDK's was embarrassing, then Microsoft bought them and effectively dismantled them (anyone remember the Kin?) which really showed their lost ways.  Once rhr iPhone had been jailbreaked being able to ssh in and out of the phone was amazing, but for me the lockdown was just too much. CE has been so neglected that ie4 in 2007 was such a joke.  Android was a rough ride, but it was available globally with wildly varying apps but it had so much buzz outside of western Europe and North America.  Windows phone was a dud until they finally got the NT kernel running but by then they had changed API directions and platforms so much they alienated everyone.  I still love my Lumia 1020.




Its no wonder that USL has no dog in the hunt. Just like how whatever modern sco is called repackaging FreeBSD. 




From: Adam Thornton


Sent: Monday, July 15, 1:48 AM


Subject: Re: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re: Happy birthday, 386BSD!)


To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society






Jason Stevens jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com via outdoorexpressionslimited.onmicrosoft.com wrote:


> 1988-1993 was so incredibly pivotal, much more than say 2014-2019.  I wonder if we will ever see such a powerful window of change like that ever again. 




We did but no one was paying attention.  It was 2007-2010.  The iPhone and Android were introduced, and the computing world went from an Intel-architecture monopoly (which it had pretty much become by 2005) to an Intel/ARM duopoly (because Intel and AMD focused too much on performance and not enough on making a low-power implementation of the architecture; an Intel-compatible chip *could* have won the mobile wars, but didn't).  In the next couple years iPhone and Android (both on ARM) massacred all of the mobile competition.




That also meant that the underlying OS for mobile devices became, you guessed it, Unix (or at least something that smells a lot like it).  Which is weird, given that something designed for single-threaded composible text-filtering operations is now running almost all of the world's multithreaded user-facing graphical applications, but that's the vagaries of history for you.




Adam




On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 2:08 AM Jason Stevens <jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:


It's always nice to get such nice fan mail.   Ever since the early days of SIMH and PUPS I've been a fan of the idea of being able to help others discover and run ancient Unix. 




It's amazing how fast things moved when looking back at the 5 years after the wide stream adoption of the 80386, and how many things have risen and fallen in that time period, how many failed to only come back and win. 




1988-1993 was so incredibly pivotal, much more than say 2014-2019.  I wonder if we will ever see such a powerful window of change like that ever again. 




Definitely a happy birthday to 386BSD!






From: Michael Huff


Sent: Sunday, July 14, 4:18 PM


Subject: [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re:  Happy birthday, 386BSD!)


To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org






Hi


Personally, I'm very grateful for the amount of time you've spent not simply finding and posting the things you do (this, cmu mach, the BSD and Unix stuff) but also the blog entries you write that spell out the steps you take to get it all running. 


As someone who came along much later (slackware 3.5?, freebsd 2.2-something) but has a lot of interest/curiosity about what the older days were like it's very helpful and illuminating. 


Oh! ...and of course, Happy Birthday 386BSD!


Regards,


-a Virtuallyfun fan/reader


On 7/13/2019 10:53 PM, Jason Stevens wrote:


Getting this to build was such a tremendous effort.  Although last time I revisited my 386BSD 0.0 work even under emulation it ran too fast and had issues. 




But it's really a tremendous effort what Bill and Lynne had done, by pushing out not only a running version of Net/2 but a self hosting version of Net/2 for the lowly and utterly common and commodity 386.




Its a shame the BSDSS and later N2SS from CMU (ports of 4.4 / Net/2) to Mach 3.  But that USL vs BSDi/CSRG lawsuit cut short what should have the shot heard around the world moment. 




It was shockingly hard to chase down 386BSD  0.0 just as it was to find NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9




Im just sad I was in the dark about BSD at that time, all the Unix people I knew hid behind their RS/6000s and SUN workstations while me and all my peers were all all running Linux. 




But there is nothing like the feeling of running make world, or building a custom kernel when compared to just running a binary set. 




Since 0.1 is more capable, here is a download for Windows users for it ready to run. 




https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/386BSD-0.1.exe/download








On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 1:57 PM +0800, "Dave Horsfall" <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:





386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just about everything). -- Dave 

















[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 12384 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

* Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!
  2019-07-14  6:23   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
@ 2019-07-17  0:38     ` Jason Stevens
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread
From: Jason Stevens @ 2019-07-17  0:38 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Dave Horsfall, Greg 'groggy' Lehey; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2288 bytes --]

I dug out my booting copy of 0.0




https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/386BSD-0.0-with-bochs.7z/download




It runs under bochs.  It's very rough back then, it doesn't run in multiuser, and it's missing a bunch of stuff, making it as distributed impossible to self host.  I had to add in the net2 userland stuff myself to build the kernel, although that isn't in this dump. 




After booting you have to run :




fsck -p


mount -a


update


/etc/netstart




There is no nvi/vi instead elvis is supplied. Naturally many were dismissive of 0.0 as it barely ran. In the months that followed 0.1 was much more complete even running in multi user!  The real magic was in the patch kits, culminating in #24 if I'm remembering it right, which was then followed up with the schisim and NetBSD 0.8, which is really just 386BSD with all the patches applied... That version was impossible to track down, and oddly enough surfaced after I managed to rebuild it by filling in parts from the source control and a bit of work. 




It's a little late for 'on this day' type thing but it's not lost to the winds of time. 






From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey


Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2:24 PM


Subject: Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD!


To: Dave Horsfall


Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society






On Sunday, 14 July 2019 at 16:15:44 +1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Sunday, 14 July 2019 at 15:56:21 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote: >> 386BSD was released on this day in 1992, when William and Lynne Jolitz >> started the Open Source movement; well, that's what my notes say, and >> corrections are welcome (I know that Gilmore likes to take credit for just >> about everything). > > Yes, I recall a release on the French national holiday, with specific > reference to that event, Here we go (http://gunkies.org/wiki/386BSD_0.1_announcement): 386BSD Release 0.1 "Cut the Tape" 14 July 1992 (Bastille Day) "Vive la Revolution" Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA 





[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4562 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2019-07-17  0:39 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2019-07-14  5:56 [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Dave Horsfall
2019-07-14  6:01 ` Larry McVoy
2019-07-14  7:15   ` Ed Carp
2019-07-14  8:14     ` Jason Stevens
2019-07-14  6:15 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-07-14  6:23   ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2019-07-17  0:38     ` Jason Stevens
2019-07-14  6:53 ` Jason Stevens
2019-07-14  8:17   ` [TUHS] Thanks for Virtuallyfun! (was Re: Happy birthday, 386BSD!) Michael Huff
2019-07-14  9:07     ` Jason Stevens
2019-07-14 17:47       ` Adam Thornton
2019-07-15  1:54         ` Jason Stevens
2019-07-14  7:13 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, 386BSD! Ed Carp
2019-07-14 12:52   ` Theodore Ts'o

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).