From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 3c569bf2 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 23:05:26 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 7D2479BFBA; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:05:25 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 603E69BDBB; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:05:09 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=fail reason="signature verification failed" (2048-bit key; unprotected) header.d=gmail.com header.i=@gmail.com header.b="ZgqrOBR6"; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 2AB5B9BDBB; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:05:08 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-qk1-f196.google.com (mail-qk1-f196.google.com [209.85.222.196]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8C7699BD79 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 09:05:07 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-qk1-f196.google.com with SMTP id 4so1306068qki.6 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 16:05:07 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc:content-transfer-encoding; bh=B0SqG2avkFgWGUD8snmJkflx36WFGugZmNgOC4hZa7M=; b=ZgqrOBR6K3UoQPwewJReqkZUFi3yXveMuiB0+O8z9upkQla7gtfWa2nFAz6RwVJk05 xr9bfGEBd9U0ZjqA+26RRuao2A9UonhzorO9DTmszcG8t3l0VbiD/MxJHyQI7M3HwiU9 g5RGfgbe+/u10W9Eun+4u+XVijom759jZeiGGDJMDTL/0DyJq7Qx0sX/PsitOR1hiO+b UPhU7urlUu7tCUM/WzC8qw/ojaqTPE0HuCgI7YbhsR+rNb8GK1UZzT3FU+p2ySsbuQZV kKdkNU9wXizgRbbelAUaKad68LrO+f/SGNiMP1I8EorsP/smOrQaGqyoObXjdJkit3IT +aqg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc:content-transfer-encoding; bh=B0SqG2avkFgWGUD8snmJkflx36WFGugZmNgOC4hZa7M=; b=C+H5JwAMBMHtcYDHUP+J+qt1CaiWzzeJcznJySWRPlIFGy8zh8HugHg+TJC5M6qjxi 9jvFIBxmpUURIzAmATiriUBTaj41SwxLCRwK3WMQjX29w5U6MWqGZ/cfbGsA7/OEPFEr cIj1F01nh+plUxvs5ye5oKi7/ImSViziRWlJ8enLrN7tt2heWQxZ9vQn4/oqWXQz0npP yeGlzQDRZ0qFliiMBP5x2aiqu40MkApqaRvOtUy5ONjeCaXSCb2DaK6t4cIMRb9uHgoj JwOh6osVxlkhQOoZWfUxIACSn3Qs22U6QKzbo351oZHXQ2R+933bjAaudq0EANBfufX2 dW4Q== X-Gm-Message-State: APjAAAVjgma/UtcLEp8d3C0cj/3VBvNqPqRGR9Fuah5UwpsS/vl8VI5g 1TjYESgD78cvV1OKUt2W9blzJfvv7lF8osoQc8oZuCef X-Google-Smtp-Source: APXvYqx49VGZtgkBouMI7E3hTZaXrcZUjReIdZM7/VQdwkdbz4eIi+0oDIwJcDG4W0rEThdXI/4sfkdCqvnZ8qL8aBM= X-Received: by 2002:ae9:f441:: with SMTP id z1mr6559224qkl.211.1567033505631; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 16:05:05 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <13c5c36e-c84d-e020-d09e-51c8c502dc6d@kilonet.net> <016BFF16-C490-425D-8168-3D59DCCA6A21@ccc.com> In-Reply-To: <016BFF16-C490-425D-8168-3D59DCCA6A21@ccc.com> From: Gregg Levine Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 19:04:27 -0400 Message-ID: To: tuhs@tuhs.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [TUHS] If not Linux, then what? X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Hello! I can certainly attest to that one. The partition methods Slackware was using for releases before 3.0 were stranger then a lot of things. For release 3.0 and later it all started to make sense. I had more problems thought figuring out why several others really wanted me to break up the disk into a batch of individual ones...... However while exploring both NetBSD and FreeBSD I did workout why they wanted the disk broken out into those slices. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 6:29 PM Clem cole wrote: > > Not true 386BSD used fdisk. It shared the disk just fine. In fact I lik= ed 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 qui= te. > > 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 marke= ting, 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 la= rgely the AOL-fuelled explosion of popularity of the Internet and Windows i= gnoring same until too late that opened the door enough for Linux to jam it= s 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 feature= s 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. Neithe= r one of them had much of a chance in the real world. Much like Unix itsel= f, Linux's worse-is-better approach really worked. > > I have a hypothesis about Linux's ascendance too, which is a personal ane= cdote I am inflating to the status of hypothesis. As I recall, the *BSDs f= or 386 all assumed they owned the hard disk. Like, the whole thing. You c= ouldn'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 m= y 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 Fra= memaker 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, t= o play games. Sure, that too. > > Linux let me defragment my drive, non-destructively repartition it, and c= reate 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 w= rote: >> >> 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, wha= t >>> 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 possibilitie= s... >> >> - If you look at the number of hobbyist "Unix homages" that emerged at a= round that time, it's clear that there was a sizable community of intereste= d folk willing to build their own thing, and that weren't interested in Win= dows 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 o= ff 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 th= e same problem as Windows NT; there were a lot of folk that were only sligh= tly 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 disturbe= d!) that his old statements are being held here and there, ready to trot ou= t :-). >> >> 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 d= one so anyways. >> >> I'm not sure what to blame on whatever happened post-1992, though I'd pu= t some on Microsoft Research having taken the wind out of Mach's sails by h= iring off a bunch of the relevant folk. In order for Hurd to "make it," Ma= ch 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 pop= ularity 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 o= f 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 ris= k of the AT&T lawsuit lurking over it, so had that gone in a different dire= ction, 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 woul= d have stood behind ... something else, I'd think. I don't know which to s= uggest. >> -- >> When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the >> question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"