🚀 go-pugleaf

Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:
>Bob Eager <news...@eager.cx> wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:21:20 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>> 
>>> Okay, I was going to ask what CP/M had that DOS didn't (except
>>> nostalgia),
>>> since the latter was derived from the former. Once you include MP/M I
>>> can see a difference. On the other hand it's a shame the unix wasn't
>>> able to get into this space earlier - resource and legal requirements?
>> 
>> Resource requirements, mainly. UNIX on an 8086 wasn't really feasible 
>> (although Minix did it in the end).
>
>I was thinking about this last night. I ran Minix on an XT and it was
>painfully slow, and I had the feeling it could die at any point (a pipe
>could fill up, for example) It was somewhat useful as a tool to learn unix,
>but not for much else.
>
>> 
>>> It took Linus to turn unix into a true, and widely-used,  personal
>>> operating system.
>> 
>> Well ... 386BSD (becoming {Free,Net,Open}BSD was stable a little bit 
>> earlier, but didn't get Linus' marketing push.
>
>That was my other thought: why Linux and not BSD?

I suspect the SYSV v. BSD issue.  Linux is much closer
to system V than BSD.

Then there was IBM, SGI, HP and others pumping tons
of money into linux (by allowing employees to contribute
to Linux on company time, sponsering conventions, etc).

>> 
>> And none of these are truly UNIX, in the legal sense of the name. BSD is 
>> a bit nearer in the code sense.
>> 
>
>That legal stuff was a big part of the problem. 

It wasn't so much legal stuff as normal competition.   Digital Unix,
Irix, AIX, HP-UX, Unixware, et alia, all had "proprietary" features
that generally granted an advantage on company hardware - most of
which was also proprietary (and thus, exposing details via a common
Unix would have not been interesting to management).


>There were a ton of -nix,
>more-or-less like unix, but none could be unix.

Actually, there was (and still is) a branding program that
allows an implementation to call itself Unix.   Some versions
of Apple OS/X have been branded Unix '03, for example.

Unixware (nee SVR4) was the direct descendent of T&R Unix and was offered
by many hardware vendors in the day (e.g. Unisys, NCR, Fujitsu,
et alia).