[TUHS] History of non-Bell C compilers?

[Marc Rochkind]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 8:55 AM Henry Bent <henry.r.bent at gmail.com> wrote:

> ...Did you continue to use Coherent, or do you have any thoughts on the
> article in hindsight?
>
> -Henry
>

I definitely didn't continue to use Coherent. As I recall, I installed each
of the 3 systems successively on my XT (Pick, Coherent, and THEOS). That
was about the time I got PC/IX from Interactive Systems (true System III),
and that's what I went with.

At a trade show, I bought a utility that allowed me to run PC-DOS under
PC/IX. I'm sure it wasn't a virtual machine. Rather, it just swapped back
and forth. (Guessing a bit there.)

What Coherent and some other very early UNIX clones missed was the idea of
open source, which came along later. This is what allowed Linux to thrive
when others went by the wayside. But, nobody knew how to make any money
from open source (and maybe still don't), so that would have been a problem
back then.

As for my thoughts on the article: Reading it recently, it seems OK. I have
no idea how one ought to go about reviewing an operating system. Certainly
loading one up and playing with it for a couple of hours doesn't tell much.
Using one exclusively for a long time doesn't tell one anything, either. I
think reviews work better for movies, books, hotels, cameras, and things
like that.

Marc
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