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For Sale: Free Operating System (1998)
- salutonmundo 7y agoIt's pretty unfortunate that English uses the same word for "no-cost" and "unfettered".
- bad_user 7y agoIn this case both are relevant, since indeed, why would you sell something that's also given away by others at no cost, possibly along with your own contributions. In Red Hat's case we did have CentOS.
- pwodhouse 7y agoMarketing is why. With good marketing investment you can reach people who don't know how to get the no cost version and are willing to pay.
- garmaine 7y agoSomewhere there is a sociolinguistic Ph.D waiting to be done on the downstream effects of this.
- busymom0 7y agoIt's crazy for me to realize that Linux was created the same year when I got the first computer in my house running Windows 98. I didn't know Linux was this old. Another funny thing I just remembered is how I broke our house computer trying to install Linux (I have no idea how to actually do it, I was barely 10-12 years old back then). I bought one of those magazines which shipped with CDs with demo games and other software. I tried to install Linux on our home computer using that and completely messed the computer up because apparently my hardware didn't support it or something. Anyway, I got a pretty good beating from my Mom after that. EDIT: correction, as couple people pointed out Linux was created in 1991. I thought it was created in 1998 based on the publishing of this archived news article. I also grew up in a developing country where things came much later than the US.
- mkl 7y agoDid you make a typo? Linux was created in 1991.
- klez 7y agoI highly doubt you had Windows 98 in 1991. Did you mean Windows 3.1?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 0815test 7y agoThere used to be a pretty easy way to install Linux on MS-DOS running computers (which includes Win 9x) without damaging the existing system in any way. You would place the Linux filesystem inside a C:\LINUX folder on the FAT partition, using the UMSDOS filesystem support that used to be included in the Linux kernel for fs metadata. Booting Linux would be accomplished by first getting to MS-DOS mode (which could be done either at boot or when shutting down Windows 9x) and then running LOADLIN.EXE, a bootloader that ran entirely under MS-DOS (similar to how modern bootloaders run in UEFI).
- DavidPiper 7y ago> The movement, known alternately as free software and open source ... Ha, I can think of someone who might take issue with that. I know it's 20 years ago, but I'm interested to see it reported like that first-hand.
- visarga 7y agoIt's interesting to see those early speculations while knowing how they turned out, such as Netscape open sourcing their code and MS fearing the open source approach.
- 0815test 7y agoMS did fear the open source approach back then - the 'Halloween' documents were leaked out of MS in that timeframe, and they do make that quite clear.
- xmprt 7y agoI wonder how different things would be if Windows XP didn't end up being so popular. Or maybe there are benefits of proprietary software that aren't mentioned in this article that ended up naturally overcoming open source software.
- badsectoracula 7y agoBefore Windows XP being massively popular it was Windows 98 being massively popular - up until Service Pack 2 (IIRC) the main competitor to Windows XP was Windows 98 and people would simply not move off it. There isn't really a universe where Windows XP is a failure with Windows 98's popularity - there wasn't much of a real choice from people who eventually had to abandon Windows 98 outside of Windows XP and Microsoft was pushing Windows desktops hard as their primary focus at the time. Of course Windows 98 owe part of its popularity to Windows 95. Around Windows 95 was the last time you could say that other desktop OSes had a chance to become a de-facto standard, but IIRC the only desktop competitor at the time was OS/2 and IBM shat the bed on that one (BeOS also tried but it was too little too late and Linux at the time was a regression from both DOS and Windows UX-wise... assuming anyone knew about it). Microsoft's sketchy deals with PC vendors where they had to pay an OS license for every PC sold regardless of the PC being sold with a Microsoft OS or not didn't help competitors much.
- pjmlp 7y agoLike children, it needs two to have a sketchy deal. If enough OEMs had decided to go their own way, the license deals would have been changed. However they saw it as convenient as well. As counter example, Android OEMs couldn't care less for Google's roadmap and updates. OS/2 was not an option for most consumers when I had to pay extra 500 euros on top of an already expensive 1500 euro 386SX computer, on a country where the minimum wage was around 300 euros after taxes. Naturally I converted the escudos into euros. As for BeOS, the only thing I got from it was the R5 demo disk and the developer book that I eventually found out by accident on a technical library. It wasn't really on sale over here.
- projektfu 7y ago
- et2o 7y ago> "An operating system is a living thing," said Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-author of "Information Rules," a book to be published this week by the Harvard Business School Press. "Ongoing investment and upgrades are essential to attract customers. Nice cooperative thoughts are not enough." Typical economist thinking. Linux will never work.
- ls612 7y agoHe wasn’t wrong though. Linux has flourished because many different entities have invested a lot of money in its development, not just because of “nice cooperative thoughts”.
- dredmorbius 7y agoHis co-author, Hal Varian, has been Google's chief economist since 2002. https://www.gv.com/team/hal-varian/ https://www.gv.com/team/hal-varian/
- jacurtis 7y ago> James Cameron's special-effects company, Digital Domain, which used the operating system to help create the illusions in "Titanic." I know this is a random tangent from the core theme of the article. But I found it funny that in 1998 we describe CGI as "illusions".