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It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But th

by MrTonyD 10y ago

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and Scott and IBM and HP had a couple of floors of kernel engineers at Redwood Shores fixing Linux and submitting the changes until Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. But by that time we had already submitted enough to make Linux into a functioning product.

tobltobs 10y ago
> Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. I might have been living under a rock and everybody but me already heard about this story. But I would expect that every HN reader would drop his coffee cup reading this for the first time. Is this true? Why had I never heard about it? Why should Bill do that?
varjag 10y ago
Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on your corporate assignments.
- MrTonyD 10y ago
  I'm just a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley. I soldered and wire wrapped chips I picked up from Haltek/Halted and the sales offices of local chip manufacturers, and taught myself programming using switches to enter binary codes (before I bought a broken teletype and fixed it - paper tape was a huge improvement after using switches to program.)
nikanj 10y ago
I'm super curious about this. When was this, mid-90s?
patates 10y ago
well, it probably saved some lives by telling people that their printer was on fire
ambulancechaser 10y ago
I'm not sure that I see the connection between Linux at Oracle and the group of "Larry, Scott, IBM and HP" wanting Bill Gates to neuter SqlServer. Could you explain in more detail? This whole saga is fascinating, especially since I've come from a generation where Linux has such a connotation of quality.
- MrTonyD 10y ago
  Yeah, I guess the connection isn't obvious. Bill had decided to start competing in the SQL space. He announced a bunch of features that matched Oracle's enterprise features 1:1 and promised to make SQLServer scalable and supported by a big consulting force. So Larry met with Scott/HP/IBM and to move forward with a "low cost linux appliance" with software to compete in the various segments of the PC space - they would almost give the whole thing away for free. Larry met with Bill with a list of demands in exchange for killing the project. It took a series of several meetings. I don't know the specifics asked by IBM/HP/Sun, since I only heard the Oracle side of the story. I believe we had, at one point, 200 engineers from those companies there at Oracle HQ making Linux work. I know that we flew in Linus to explain to him some of the changes (since they were enterprise kernel features that he had no background with) - and he green-lighted the changes (they really just matched what was already in the UNIX kernels from HP/IBM and others.)
  - tobltobs 10y ago
    I can remember those "Built a print server with Linux" times. But I did have the impression that MS really didn't take Linux as a serious contender, not even as a server OS. Was I wrong believing that?
    - MrTonyD 10y ago
      I knew OS people from NeXT, Microsoft, and several other companies at the time. None of us took Linux too seriously - it was too unreliable and too immature. But by the time that Oracle got it fixed (and IBM "took over" Red Hat to roll out the "new" Linux), it was a real product.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
moonfern 10y ago
There's a post on lwn.net from April 2, 2001 about the Linux 2.5 kernel summit: https://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/ https://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/ From that article: " The first presentation was by Lance Larsh of Oracle who, essentially, provided a laundry list of changes and features Oracle would like to see in order to get better performance out of high-end, large database servers " ...bullet list... " The reception was "generally" positive - many or most of the above problems are well known and on the list to be fixed in 2.5 already. One exception was the non-preemption request, which was considered dangerous and unnecessary. " J. Corbet is the author.

by MrTonyD 10y ago

tobltobs 10y ago

> Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. I might have been living under a rock and everybody but me already heard about this story. But I would expect that every HN reader would drop his coffee cup reading this for the first time. Is this true? Why had I never heard about it? Why should Bill do that?

varjag 10y ago

Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on your corporate assignments.

MrTonyD 10y ago
I'm just a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley. I soldered and wire wrapped chips I picked up from Haltek/Halted and the sales offices of local chip manufacturers, and taught myself programming using switches to enter binary codes (before I bought a broken teletype and fixed it - paper tape was a huge improvement after using switches to program.)

nikanj 10y ago

I'm super curious about this. When was this, mid-90s?

patates 10y ago

well, it probably saved some lives by telling people that their printer was on fire

ambulancechaser 10y ago

I'm not sure that I see the connection between Linux at Oracle and the group of "Larry, Scott, IBM and HP" wanting Bill Gates to neuter SqlServer. Could you explain in more detail? This whole saga is fascinating, especially since I've come from a generation where Linux has such a connotation of quality.

MrTonyD 10y ago
Yeah, I guess the connection isn't obvious. Bill had decided to start competing in the SQL space. He announced a bunch of features that matched Oracle's enterprise features 1:1 and promised to make SQLServer scalable and supported by a big consulting force. So Larry met with Scott/HP/IBM and to move forward with a "low cost linux appliance" with software to compete in the various segments of the PC space - they would almost give the whole thing away for free. Larry met with Bill with a list of demands in exchange for killing the project. It took a series of several meetings. I don't know the specifics asked by IBM/HP/Sun, since I only heard the Oracle side of the story. I believe we had, at one point, 200 engineers from those companies there at Oracle HQ making Linux work. I know that we flew in Linus to explain to him some of the changes (since they were enterprise kernel features that he had no background with) - and he green-lighted the changes (they really just matched what was already in the UNIX kernels from HP/IBM and others.)
- tobltobs 10y ago
  I can remember those "Built a print server with Linux" times. But I did have the impression that MS really didn't take Linux as a serious contender, not even as a server OS. Was I wrong believing that?
  - MrTonyD 10y ago
    I knew OS people from NeXT, Microsoft, and several other companies at the time. None of us took Linux too seriously - it was too unreliable and too immature. But by the time that Oracle got it fixed (and IBM "took over" Red Hat to roll out the "new" Linux), it was a real product.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

moonfern 10y ago

There's a post on lwn.net from April 2, 2001 about the Linux 2.5 kernel summit: https://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/ https://lwn.net/2001/features/KernelSummit/ From that article: " The first presentation was by Lance Larsh of Oracle who, essentially, provided a laundry list of changes and features Oracle would like to see in order to get better performance out of high-end, large database servers " ...bullet list... " The reception was "generally" positive - many or most of the above problems are well known and on the list to be fixed in 2.5 already. One exception was the non-preemption request, which was considered dangerous and unnecessary. " J. Corbet is the author.