Re: [TUHS] If not Linux, then what?

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 &lt;clemc(a)ccc.com <mailto:clemc@ccc.com>> 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 &lt;athornton(a)gmail.com <mailto:athornton@gmail.com>> 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 > &lt;cbbrowne(a)gmail.com <mailto:cbbrowne@gmail.com>> wrote: > > On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 19:14, Arthur Krewat > &lt;krewat(a)kilonet.net <mailto:krewat@kilonet.net>> wrote: > > https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/08/26/0051234/celebrating-the-28th-anni… > > 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?" >