[TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux - "an academic question")

[Warner Losh]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2020, 4:06 PM Greg A. Woods <woods at robohack.ca> wrote:

> At Mon, 20 Jan 2020 14:09:00 -0500, "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso at mit.edu>
> wrote:
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Early Linux and BSD (was: On the origins of Linux -
> "an academic question")
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 07:32:57PM -0800, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > > > Out of curiosity, did the articles contain download information for a
> > > > bootable copy of 386BSD?
> > >
> > > Yes, they did:
> > >
> > >
> https://www.drdobbs.com/porting-unix-to-the-386-the-final-step/184408800
> >
> > .... which is dated July 1992, and describes a "launch" of 386BSD
> > Release 0.0 in March 17, 1992.  This is contemporaneous with Linux
> > 0.95a (which by coincidence was also released on March 17th, 1992.)
>
> Yes, though as I recall all of the articles mentioned that the OS could
> be downloaded, but I pointed at that final article as it was the first
> one in which I found explicit mention of the FTP server name(s).
>
> > The first "real" distribution, the Soft Landing System, was released
> > in May 1992.  (The Manchester Computer Centre distribution in November
> > 1991 was a floppy-based distro containing command-line and development
> > utilities, but not X Windows, so some people don't feel it counts as a
> > full-featured distribution.)
>
> The actual 386bsd Release 0.0 (the one done directly by Bill and Lynne
> Jolitz) announcement is dated "March 7, 1992" according to the first
> post about it on comp.unix.bsd (and according to that announcement there
> was a meeting at Apple in Cupertino (SVNet) on the 11'th where copies of
> the floppies were made available for copying (comp.unix.bsd:
> <2763 at tardis.Tymnet.COM>).
>
> Note that according to an article from Unigram ("Issue 396", dated
> August 3-7, 1992, (p)re-posted by Tom Limoncelli in comp.unix.bsd) this
> "386bsd 0.0" was actually a re-write of earlier work to create a "386"
> based release of BSD.  Apparently UCB lawyers asked Jolitz to destroy
> all the initial work done for the release, and he complied and rewrote
> what became 0.0 from scratch again, starting with the plain NET2
> release.  (comp.unix.bsd: <1992Aug1.020513.14170 at plts.uucp>)
>
> I would argue that in one way of looking at things NetBSD (and by
> extension FreeBSD) really started with the 0.0 patch kit, and that's
> also dated March 15, 1992 by Chris Demetriou.  I agree though that the
> creation of the first commits in the CVS repository represent a more
> direct reflection of the intent to create a unique thing called NetBSD.
>

Lots of people were building CVS repos based on the patchkits... Chris
wasn't trying to start a project, but more was trying to find a way of
organizing everything that people were working on. At least that's what I
recall from the rumors I'd heard on campus after Chris visited Boulder...

Warner

(On March 13, 1992 there was a post by Mike Stump on comp.unix.bsd
> asking for someone to coordinate patches for 386bsd; and Pace Willisson
> posted the first patch in response on March 14, 1992; and Chris replied
> on the same day saying he would put such patches up on
> agate.berkeley.edu; and the "README.PATCHES" file appeared there on
> March 15, 1992.)
>
> --
>                                         Greg A. Woods <gwoods at acm.org>
>
> Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods at robohack.ca>
> Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>     Avoncote Farms <woods at avoncote.ca>
>
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