From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To: Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo@alchemistowl.org>
Cc: The Eunuchs Historic Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] On the origins of Linux - "an academic question"
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2020 09:53:52 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANCZdfo1-1y8EQN-Rf3tB1txYvdXaG52gN7RMZhf9Dx3kamoSQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <C7972CAB-7A91-49CD-9F7A-9675400E81E5@alchemistowl.org>
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On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 9:42 AM Arrigo Triulzi <arrigo@alchemistowl.org>
wrote:
> [I originally asked the following on Twitter which was probably not the
> smartest idea]
>
> I was recently wondering about the origins of Linux, i.e. Linux Torvalds
> doing his MSc and deciding to write Linux (the kernel) for the i386 because
> Minix did not support the i386 properly. While this is perfectly
> understandable I was trying to understand why, as he was in academia, he
> did not decide to write a “free X” for a different X. The example I picked
> was Plan 9, simply because I always liked it but X could be any number of
> other operating systems which he would have been exposed to in academia.
> This all started in my mind because I was thinking about my friends who
> were CompSci university students with me at the time and they were into all
> sorts of esoteric stuff like Miranda-based operating systems, building a
> complete interface builder for X11 on SunOS including sparkly mouse
> pointers, etc. (I guess you could define it as “the usual frivolous MSc
> projects”) and comparing their choices with Linus’.
>
> The answers I got varied from “the world needed a free Unix and BSD was
> embroiled in the AT&T lawsuit at the time” to “Plan 9 also had a
> restrictive license” (to the latter my response was that “so did Unix and
> that’s why Linus built Linux!”) but I don’t feel any of the answers
> addressed my underlying question as to what was wrong in the exposure to
> other operating systems which made Unix the choice?
>
The AT&T lawsuit (April 1992) post-dated Linus starting on his work (eg
0.12 released January 1992). He said in an interview once he was unaware
that net/2 was out and could be leveraged to get a working system when he
started. It did give a big boost to Linux at a critical time due to the
huge amount of FUD that it created over BSD's future.
Warner
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-01-17 16:55 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 49+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-01-17 16:01 Arrigo Triulzi
2020-01-17 16:53 ` Warner Losh [this message]
2020-01-17 17:08 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2020-01-17 17:25 ` Brantley Coile
2020-01-17 19:59 ` Arno Griffioen
2020-01-18 3:50 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-18 4:19 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-18 15:25 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-18 16:19 ` reed
2020-01-19 2:49 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-19 3:12 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 3:47 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Warren Toomey
2020-01-19 3:51 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 3:58 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2020-01-19 13:25 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-19 13:48 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 3:32 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-20 3:51 ` George Michaelson
2020-01-20 3:59 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Jon Forrest
2020-01-20 17:19 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Clem Cole
2020-01-20 17:49 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-20 19:00 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 18:04 ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-20 18:09 ` David Barto
2020-01-20 18:34 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Arthur Krewat
2020-01-20 19:18 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Clem Cole
2020-01-20 19:46 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-20 20:15 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 6:58 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD Lars Brinkhoff
2020-01-21 14:30 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 17:17 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-21 17:22 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 17:25 ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-21 18:43 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 18:44 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-21 19:14 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 20:27 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-22 0:14 ` [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question") Greg A. Woods
2020-01-21 0:44 ` Bakul Shah
2020-01-20 19:09 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2020-01-20 19:51 ` Clem Cole
2020-01-20 23:04 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-21 0:13 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-21 23:45 ` Greg A. Woods
2020-01-18 15:30 ` [TUHS] On the origins of Linux - "an academic question" Larry McVoy
2020-01-17 23:11 ` Andrew Warkentin
2020-01-17 23:20 ` Rob Pike
2020-01-17 23:38 ` Brantley Coile
2020-01-18 0:23 ` Wesley Parish
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