3 ms·
If you want to bring history into it, recall that Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Unix vendors themselves like Sun and SCO) did a great job of disrupting the
by angersock 11y ago
If you want to bring history into it, recall that Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Unix vendors themselves like Sun and SCO) did a great job of disrupting the adoption of Linux in the 90s and spreading FUD among normal people and IT types.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the engineering side though. :)
- brudgers 11y agoWhatever effect nineties FUD had on Linux adoption was rounding error on the relative difficulty of setting up a desktop Linux environment compared to setting up Windows. Arch tiday is user friendly by comparison,..even discounting how much more effort went into obtaining Linux before ubiquitous broadband. Engineering in the real world includes deliverability, installation considerations, and the role of technical debt. The proof of Microsoft's engineering has been reflected over nearly thirty years of sales based on creating business value.
- zurn 11y agoFurther into history, Microsoft used to be heavily into Unix. Quoth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix : ''' Microsoft omitted multiuser support from its own MS-DOS operating system because Xenix had it.[29] The company planned to over time improve MS-DOS so it would be almost indistinguishable from single-user Xenix, or XEDOS, which would also run on the 68000, Z8000, and LSI-11; they would be upwardly compatible with Xenix, which Byte in 1983 described as "the multi-user MS-DOS of the future".[30][31] Microsoft advertised DOS and Xenix together, listing the shared features of its "single-user OS" and "the multi-user, multi-tasking, UNIX-derived operating system", and promising easy porting between them.[32] '''