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=-0.6 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,HTML_MESSAGE,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 ad799824 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 22:49:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 16B879BF72; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 08:49:24 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ACCB39BDBB; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 08:48:59 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key; unprotected) header.d=gmail.com header.i=@gmail.com header.b="INp+MBIm"; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id A094E9BDBB; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 08:48:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-oi1-f196.google.com (mail-oi1-f196.google.com [209.85.167.196]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D36559BD79 for ; Thu, 29 Aug 2019 08:48:56 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-oi1-f196.google.com with SMTP id g128so1075221oib.1 for ; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 15:48:56 -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; bh=KR/9+KeDnovAah08ZcF1znPfoH+mupKGBHf5TcHocFQ=; b=INp+MBImMTN/v2rGxZ2FFrBbVh357JLNh6k7qgxQm0iNmSPsFwZ/PWE5vbUL5f4D/+ D3uggP7eMdu79kkX2E9G341rReAlJPwr0T1Q6RmBGYhL4RfYmb1PA3IDHJ1KMdnUgcVp fp0NPqx8+y8ZNoUqCVmtSnZ1p5gb28tP1QjPKJfv8DfN/O80UVrDxbLjRmRD55RN6puu bfaFGgW5Hg/ubHds/WIG3/oXScavZu1+e2+3NWuPXt+cfUiBYGA1snKlVgxBXwLdCsq1 7jfgMA3m0mc7q5ZxYquVS4HxA7iBPQs3OJJhNOziQBk5oocLsyBNrK4l1LOkKzmCzzqb sIRQ== 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; bh=KR/9+KeDnovAah08ZcF1znPfoH+mupKGBHf5TcHocFQ=; b=Z2kp/Fk4BLA+3nxeENnRqrl4YOsytnvI9Ww1hGOfB1hzWsT35oXNpuT9CaEqoM+DwD yU7GLdD22z1iLWcXCyHUy+D4H+BwLJVTzWsNRYs7TJTWA+0YxKUxq0G8eBKE9Zw5sugu 0Z5pcCSRuIobgP2EVoo43sMJe6/ACoMZ6FWt9XV6nYUjqMPLAzkY6cCuatElmArcJ5vc NBCt3FDlKbip+aSBW2ZjGgIC+GOkcyfeblywoqhY1oaqcZtzycpSx5xX9oXbpUNOZFzE ihlqmU4gSd+TaBr7q7waUIzU1cNXeysKT1hicMm4qkR04iCA5LV5sbVxTbfyqwN8U0jU Ok+A== X-Gm-Message-State: APjAAAX0J+qoucS4cykdReCAy/9305d7N/z0xUgN1A1B569tkU4GSTe3 jIkQ1ddDCwLgO7iFxKf0hnoUq79VVIpNkXnW6RXZFw== X-Google-Smtp-Source: APXvYqxVnWuhK07BVgDlG9YqOCNOoeopweq5aOjaEdKAZSk5+erRg0n6+qr3NvbqvHk6hia5dc4oCDWo2nZtS2iY3i8= X-Received: by 2002:a54:478d:: with SMTP id o13mr4483400oic.54.1567032535123; Wed, 28 Aug 2019 15:48:55 -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: Adam Thornton Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 15:48:43 -0700 Message-ID: To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000009b94070591353140" 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" --0000000000009b94070591353140 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" It probably was the partition/slice confusion that, well, confused me, then. My experience, such as it was, was from the DOS world. 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? 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?" >> > --0000000000009b94070591353140 Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
It probably was the partition/slice confusion that, w= ell, confused me, then.=C2=A0 My experience, such as it was, was from the D= OS world.

Although the period I am thinking of was= way pre-slackware.=C2=A0 You had a boot floppy and a root floppy and that = was about it, I think.=C2=A0 I think the kernel had MFM/RLL disk drivers fo= r an ISA bus interface?=C2=A0 I remember that I could boot the thing on the= MCA machines in the lab but not actually install it (even had I been allow= ed to), and I think installation was pretty much fdisk/mkfs, extract the ta= rball...I don't remember how you installed the bootloader...which I gue= ss was already LILO at that point?=C2=A0 Probably just dding the bootsector= to the first physical sector of the disk?=C2=A0 Version 0.08 or so, maybe?=

It was quite a while ago, and I was drunk for mos= t of college, so....memory is imprecise at best.

On Wed, Aug 28, 2= 019 at 3:28 PM Clem cole <clemc@ccc.com= > wrote:
=
Not true 386BSD used fdisk.=C2=A0 It shared the disk just= fine.=C2=A0 In fact I liked the way it sliced the disk much better than Sl= ackware in those days.=C2=A0

Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect th= ings to be almost but not quite.=C2=A0

On Aug 28,= 2019, at 4:27 PM, Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

I was an ardent OS= /2 supporter for a long time.=C2=A0 Sure, IBM's anemic marketing, and t= heir close-to-outright-hostility to 3rd-party developers didn't help.= =C2=A0 But what killed it, really, was how damn good its 16-bit support was= .=C2=A0 It *was* a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than 3.11fW.=C2= =A0 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.=C2=A0 It's largely the AOL-fuelled explosion of popularity of the= Internet and Windows ignoring same until too late that opened the door eno= ugh 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.=C2=A0 I kept waiting for a usable kernel to go wi= th what Linux had already shown was a quite decent userspace, but eventuall= y had better things to do with my life (like chase BeOS).=C2=A0 It was like= waiting for Perl 6--it missed its moment.

Plan 9 = and Amoeba were both really nifty.=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 I never used Sprite.= =C2=A0 Neither one of them had much of a chance in the real world.=C2=A0 Mu= ch like Unix itself, Linux's worse-is-better approach really worked.=C2= =A0

I have a hypothesis about Linux's asc= endance too, which is a personal anecdote I am inflating to the status of h= ypothesis.=C2=A0 As I recall, the *BSDs for 386 all assumed they owned the = hard disk.=C2=A0 Like, the whole thing.=C2=A0 You couldn't, at least in= 1992, create a multiboot system--or at least it was my strong impression y= ou could not.=C2=A0 I was an undergrad.=C2=A0 I had one '386 at my disp= osal, with one hard disk, and, hey, I needed DOS and Windows to write my pa= pers (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 Frame= maker was a much better setup than Word For Windows 1.2 but having to use i= t in the computer lab made it a nonstarter for me).=C2=A0 Papers, and, well= , to play games.=C2=A0 Sure, that too.

Linux let m= e 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 aro= und on Linux.=C2=A0 I'm probably not the only person for whom this was = a decisive factor.

Adam

On Wed, Aug 28, 2= 019 at 1:08 PM Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@gmail.com> wrote:
On M= on, 26 Aug 2019 at 19:14, Arthur Krewat <krewat@kilonet.net> wrote:
htt= ps://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/26/0051234/celebrating-the-28th-anniver= sary-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 &= quot;dunno" sound :-)

Some facts can come tog= ether to point away from a number of possibilities...

<= div>- If you look at the number of hobbyist "Unix homages" that e= merged at around that time, it's clear that there was a sizable communi= ty of interested folk willing to build their own thing, and that weren'= t interested in Windows NT.=C2=A0 (Nay, one should put that more strongly..= .=C2=A0 That had their minds set on something NOT from Microsoft.)=C2=A0 So= I think we can cross Windows NT off the list.

- O= S/2 should briefly come on the list.=C2=A0 It was likable in many ways, if = only IBM had actually supported it...=C2=A0 But it suffers from something o= f the same problem as Windows NT; there were a lot of folk that were only s= lightly 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 cou= rse 5 =C2=A0years from now that will be different, =C2=A0but 5 years fromnow =C2=A0everyone =C2=A0will =C2=A0be =C2=A0running =C2=A0free =C2=A0GNU= on =C2=A0their =C2=A0200 =C2=A0MIPS, =C2=A064M
SPARCstation-5." = =C2=A0-- Andrew Tanenbaum, 1992.
%
"You&= #39;ll be =C2=A0rid of most of us =C2=A0when BSD-detox or GNU =C2=A0comes o= ut, which
should happen in the next few months (yeah, right)." -- R= ichard Tobin,
1992. [BSD did follow within a year]
%
"I am aw= are of the benefits =C2=A0of a micro kernel approach.=C2=A0 However, thefact remains =C2=A0that Linux is =C2=A0here, and GNU =C2=A0isn't --- a= nd =C2=A0people have
been working on Hurd for a lot longer than Linus ha= s been working on
Linux." -- Ted T'so, 1992.

Ted has been on this thread, and should be amused (and slightly dist= urbed!) that his old statements are being held here and there, ready to tro= t out :-).

In the absence of Linux, perhaps hacker= s 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 sa= ils by hiring off a bunch of the relevant folk.=C2=A0 In order for Hurd to = "make it," Mach has to "make it," too, and it looked li= ke they were depending on CMU to be behind that.=C2=A0 (I'm not sure I&= #39;m right about that; happy to hear a better story.)

An= yway, Hurd *might* have been a "next thing," and I don't thin= k the popularity of Linux was enough to have completely taken wind out of i= ts 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 t= ime (hence not amenable to attaching waves of hackers to it to add their fa= vorite device drivers), and was never taken as a serious answer.=C2=A0 Many= of us had admired it from afar via the Dr Dobbs Journal issue (when was th= at?=C2=A0 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.=C2=A0 And that had th= e big risk of the AT&T lawsuit lurking over it, so had that gone in a d= ifferent direction, then that is a branch sadly easily trimmed.
<= br>
If we lop both Linux and FreeBSD off the list of possibilitie= s, I don't imagine Windows NT or OS/2 bubble to the top, instead, a cri= tical mass would have stood behind ... something else, I'd think.=C2=A0= I don't know which to suggest.
--
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by r= educing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?= "
--0000000000009b94070591353140--