Olde cheap(ish) *nix [was Linux vs. BSD?]

Ken D'Ambrosio kend at xanoptix.com
Sat Jun 18 13:51:00 EDT 2005


Fred wrote:

>I was at Commodore during its final 5 years on this planet. While there,
>I saw many marketing mistakes and many bad product development and
>manufacturing decisions made with wild abandon. Hell, we had even ported
>Unix to the Amiga, and many universities became interested, because
>finally there was a Unix box their students could own for under $5000. 
>
>Commodore didn't get it, and killed the Unix project.
>  
>
*reaches up and pulls down his dusty _UNIX System V Release 4 
Administration_, and flips to the acknowledgements page*:
"Many hardware and software companies provided valuable information and 
equipment necessary  for researching this revision. [...] Commodore 
Business Machines  provided an Amiga 3000UX with an early version of its 
VR4 so that we could actually use it."

IIRC, Commodore's 2500UX and 3000UX were the first SVR4's out the door 
of anyone.  I wanted that machine *SO BADLY*... but as a mere MIS guy 
for UPS, I couldn't swing even its fairly reasonable price.  (And my 
lowly A1000, without an MMU, wouldn't deign to run the software.)  Thus, 
when Coherent came out (anyone remember Coherent by Mark Williams Co.?), 
I pounced.  And it was good.

Then I heard about Linux, fired up my spiffy new 14.4 modem, and started 
d/l'ing Slackware.  And it was better.  Hell: I could even get X 
running!  (Coherent had X, but it was $100 extra.)

Would I have tried BSD?  Almost certainly.  And y'know what?  There's 
nothing wrong with BSD -- but I agree with Linus: attempting to attain 
perfection can really hamper development.  Lots of development means 
competition.  Competition, almost by definition, means that pretty good 
projects will go by the wayside, but it also means that it keeps people 
on their toes, and trying to do good stuff, but also trying to 
innovate.  I like that.

$.02,

-Ken



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