UNIX V7

On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Zane H. Healy<healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: Linux filled a hole. To my knowledge, there wasn't really any free Unix-like available when Linux was first released, so everybody jumped on the bandwagon. When the *BSDs came along, Linux wasn't that entrenched yet. By the time Plan 9 was released with a free license (around 2000), the dust had settled--Linux was on top, with the BSDs coming along behind. If we had released for free in the early 90s, maybe everyone would be using Plan 9 (and it would be as warty and ugly as Linux). Fact is, if it doesn't run Firefox, vim, and gcc, a huge percentage of the Unix userbase is automatically gone. We don't use X, we do C the way we like it, and not a lot of people want it. If Haiku were to repackage Ubuntu with a BeOS theme, they'd probably get far more users--the simple fact is that if your OS wants to diverge from the POSIX/Unix compatible world, you're not going to get a lot of users. You'll get hundreds of emails to the mailing list asking "Why doesn't it do XYZ exactly like Linux? Your OS sucks". As Rob Pike said, OS research is dead. (and we killed it) John -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba