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> Linux essentially sucked all the air out of the UNIX development space by killing off all the commercial UNIXes. Only because they have done a really good jo

> Linux essentially sucked all the air out of the UNIX development space by killing off all the commercial UNIXes. Only because they have done a really good job.

E6300 10y ago
More like because they've done a good-enough job and because most distributions are free of charge. (Don't get your knickers in a knot. I'm not banging on Linux.)
- jcoffland 10y ago
  Actually the free of charge aspect limited uptake of Linux in the commercial sector for a long time. It has it's faults but Linux won by being a great software.
cwyers 10y ago
Eh. The biggest thing Linux had going for it in terms of winning market share was running on commodity x86 parts in a time period when the commercial Unices weren't touching it, and x86 made really strong gains in beating everybody else at performance per dollar.
- sedachv 10y ago
  > The biggest thing Linux had going for it in terms of winning market share was running on commodity x86 parts in a time period when the commercial Unices weren't touching it From the 1980s to 1993 there were: v7 ports: Microsoft Xenix (later became SCO), Venix, Coherent System III ports: PC/IX (later 386/ix) SVR3 ports: official Intel, ESIX from Everex SVR4 ports: Dell UNIX, Novell UnixWare, Microport
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    Also AIX (ran for some time on PS/2 machines), NeXTSTEP (3.1+ ran on PCs)... The list is, actually, quite extensive.
  - cwyers 10y ago
    Okay? Red Hat Enterprise Linux wasn't released until 2000, so I don't know what Microsoft's late-80s UNIX distribution has to do with it. Google was running Linux from the early days, and they launched in 1998, which is nearly a decade after Xenix stopped being updated. EDIT: Yes, Linux has its origins sooner, and if you want to know why Linux beat the BSDs to mindshare, what was going on in 1993 is very important. But Linux wasn't competing for mindshare with Xenix, it was stuff like Solaris (which did have an x86 port, but was mostly running on SPARC), AIX (which was mostly IBM big-iron and POWER), HP-UX (which was PA-RISC and IA-64), etc.
    - sedachv 10y ago
      If you want to talk about post-1993, saying that Linux won because there weren't any commercial x86 Unices makes even less sense. Xenix did not stop being updated, it became SCO UNIX. SCO bought and continued to sell UnixWare from Novell in 1995. x86 Solaris came out in 1993, but Sun actually had an x86 Unix since 1991 when they bought ISC.
    - jcoffland 10y ago
      Red Hat was rather late to the game. Both Debian and Slackware came out 7 years earlier in 1993.
  - skissane 10y ago
    Strictly speaking, Coherent wasn't a V7 port – they wrote the code from scratch rather than using any of AT&T's code, and they never paid AT&T any Unix license fees. AT&T was suspicious, but even after a careful investigation by Dennis Ritchie himself, they couldn't prove any of their code had been copied. Given both the V7 source code and Coherent source code have now been released, you can compare them yourself and form your own opinion, if you'd like. V7 source code: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7 http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7 Coherent source code: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=Coherent4.2.10 http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=Coherent4.2.10
    - sedachv 10y ago
      I am actually on the lookout for Coherent 2 or earlier sources. It would be very interesting to see how it worked on the 8088.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    Microsoft abandoned Xenix when AT&T decided to commercialize Unix with SVR4. OS/2 was, in fact, created to be Microsoft's Xenix replacement (and then when Microsoft fell out with IBM, we got NT as Xenix's replacement's replacement).
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "Microsoft abandoned Xenix when AT&T decided to commercialize Unix with SVR4." They not only kept supporting it via SCO Group but even used that company to bankroll an attempt to kill Linux in court. IBM, dependent on Linux, promised a billion dollar battle. Company eventually went bankrupt but its "real UNIX" is still in use by Fortune 500 companies as legacy systems. That they sold inventory-management solutions on top of SCO Server means quite a few are mission-critical. That money coming in is probably why they keep fighting over whether it should stay bankrupt or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group Microsoft truly abandoned UNIX when they went with OpenVMS: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-re... Note: Fun to remind UNIX/Linux users about that when they joke about an OpenVMS desktop. One dominates the market. ;)
- cobbzilla 10y ago
  The first time I saw Linux in a work environment was in '96 as a Samba file server on our office LAN, which was otherwise dominated by Windows NT machines. I think it was set up partly for novelty (someone wanted to play with Linux), and partly to save money on not buying one more Windows license.
  - jra_samba 10y ago
    Just like Linux we're (Samba) still around ：-）. Only now we can be an Active Directory Domain Controller as well as just a fileserver !
- jcoffland 10y ago
  You make it sound like Linux was the only option on x86.
Someone 10y ago
Linux wasn't really good before it became popular. I think it won because it offered neutral grounds (a place where lots of players who don't have huge market power can meet without fear of being swindled) and, partly, out of luck (you could call it 'good timing', but I don't think Linus considered that)
- jcoffland 10y ago
  What OS was really good before quite a few iterations?

> Linux essentially sucked all the air out of the UNIX development space by killing off all the commercial UNIXes. Only because they have done a really good job.

E6300 10y ago

More like because they've done a good-enough job and because most distributions are free of charge. (Don't get your knickers in a knot. I'm not banging on Linux.)

jcoffland 10y ago
Actually the free of charge aspect limited uptake of Linux in the commercial sector for a long time. It has it's faults but Linux won by being a great software.

cwyers 10y ago

Eh. The biggest thing Linux had going for it in terms of winning market share was running on commodity x86 parts in a time period when the commercial Unices weren't touching it, and x86 made really strong gains in beating everybody else at performance per dollar.

sedachv 10y ago
> The biggest thing Linux had going for it in terms of winning market share was running on commodity x86 parts in a time period when the commercial Unices weren't touching it From the 1980s to 1993 there were: v7 ports: Microsoft Xenix (later became SCO), Venix, Coherent System III ports: PC/IX (later 386/ix) SVR3 ports: official Intel, ESIX from Everex SVR4 ports: Dell UNIX, Novell UnixWare, Microport
- rbanffy 10y ago
  Also AIX (ran for some time on PS/2 machines), NeXTSTEP (3.1+ ran on PCs)... The list is, actually, quite extensive.
- cwyers 10y ago
  Okay? Red Hat Enterprise Linux wasn't released until 2000, so I don't know what Microsoft's late-80s UNIX distribution has to do with it. Google was running Linux from the early days, and they launched in 1998, which is nearly a decade after Xenix stopped being updated. EDIT: Yes, Linux has its origins sooner, and if you want to know why Linux beat the BSDs to mindshare, what was going on in 1993 is very important. But Linux wasn't competing for mindshare with Xenix, it was stuff like Solaris (which did have an x86 port, but was mostly running on SPARC), AIX (which was mostly IBM big-iron and POWER), HP-UX (which was PA-RISC and IA-64), etc.
  - sedachv 10y ago
    If you want to talk about post-1993, saying that Linux won because there weren't any commercial x86 Unices makes even less sense. Xenix did not stop being updated, it became SCO UNIX. SCO bought and continued to sell UnixWare from Novell in 1995. x86 Solaris came out in 1993, but Sun actually had an x86 Unix since 1991 when they bought ISC.
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    Red Hat was rather late to the game. Both Debian and Slackware came out 7 years earlier in 1993.
- skissane 10y ago
  Strictly speaking, Coherent wasn't a V7 port – they wrote the code from scratch rather than using any of AT&T's code, and they never paid AT&T any Unix license fees. AT&T was suspicious, but even after a careful investigation by Dennis Ritchie himself, they couldn't prove any of their code had been copied. Given both the V7 source code and Coherent source code have now been released, you can compare them yourself and form your own opinion, if you'd like. V7 source code: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7 http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7 Coherent source code: http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=Coherent4.2.10 http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=Coherent4.2.10
  - sedachv 10y ago
    I am actually on the lookout for Coherent 2 or earlier sources. It would be very interesting to see how it worked on the 8088.
- amyjess 10y ago
  Microsoft abandoned Xenix when AT&T decided to commercialize Unix with SVR4. OS/2 was, in fact, created to be Microsoft's Xenix replacement (and then when Microsoft fell out with IBM, we got NT as Xenix's replacement's replacement).
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    "Microsoft abandoned Xenix when AT&T decided to commercialize Unix with SVR4." They not only kept supporting it via SCO Group but even used that company to bankroll an attempt to kill Linux in court. IBM, dependent on Linux, promised a billion dollar battle. Company eventually went bankrupt but its "real UNIX" is still in use by Fortune 500 companies as legacy systems. That they sold inventory-management solutions on top of SCO Server means quite a few are mission-critical. That money coming in is probably why they keep fighting over whether it should stay bankrupt or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group Microsoft truly abandoned UNIX when they went with OpenVMS: http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-re... Note: Fun to remind UNIX/Linux users about that when they joke about an OpenVMS desktop. One dominates the market. ;)
cobbzilla 10y ago
The first time I saw Linux in a work environment was in '96 as a Samba file server on our office LAN, which was otherwise dominated by Windows NT machines. I think it was set up partly for novelty (someone wanted to play with Linux), and partly to save money on not buying one more Windows license.
- jra_samba 10y ago
  Just like Linux we're (Samba) still around ：-）. Only now we can be an Active Directory Domain Controller as well as just a fileserver !
jcoffland 10y ago
You make it sound like Linux was the only option on x86.

Someone 10y ago

Linux wasn't really good before it became popular. I think it won because it offered neutral grounds (a place where lots of players who don't have huge market power can meet without fear of being swindled) and, partly, out of luck (you could call it 'good timing', but I don't think Linus considered that)

jcoffland 10y ago
What OS was really good before quite a few iterations?