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> By 2001 Linux had, for all intents and purposes, caught up with the commercial UNIXes. No, I do not believe that is correct. That sounds like Penguinista rev

> By 2001 Linux had, for all intents and purposes, caught up with the commercial UNIXes. No, I do not believe that is correct. That sounds like Penguinista revisionist history. Linux was quite usable yet still half-baked in 2001. In 2005, when IBM tried to switch everything over to Linux, there was a major revolt among AIX administrators that had numerous valid complaints, so even by 2005 Linux was not quite ready for prime time. By the end of 2008, the server install split was about 50/50 Linux/NetBSD. Everyone thinks Linux took over in 2008, but I think it was later, 2012. Linux was super popular without a reason to be. I still, today, do not see it as any better than NetBSD. Grassroots marketing by PC punks blanketing forum posts with nut bar verve made Linux popular, and not by its own merits. Linux is pop music.

hulitu 5y ago
Linux was popular because was fast on x86 hardware. And unlike BSD, all programs which came with the distribution worked. With ports you could get into a situation where one program would not compile or when it needed another library that the one installed which broke things. Also BSD wars turned a lot of developers away from BSD.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > Linux was popular because was fast on x86 hardware. Because it booted fast? I don't understand that metric. We don't reboot servers. IMO Linux was a fad, but it faked it until it made it in 2008-2012. The death march of Sun had a lot to do with it. Linux, even today, never held a candle to the stability of any Sun system. > With ports you could get into a situation where one program would not compile or when it needed another library that the one installed which broke things. Comparing (I assume) apt to ports is Oranges to Apples. Ports is a source-based package management system. Apt is binary based. There are different goals here. > Also BSD wars turned a lot of developers away from BSD. What??! Did I miss the "BSD wars?" BSD won the UNIX wars prior to the Millennium. I'm not sure what you're saying. There'd be no GNU without BSD, and Linux would not be an operating system without GNU. Linux is more GNU than Linux.
edgyquant 5y ago
I remember using Linux around 2005-2006 (SUSE Community edition) and it was stable enough even though I had drivers issues with certain things like Ethernet.
- Maursault 5y ago
  Stable enough for curious and intrepid home or laptop users. But in 2005 Linux was premature for the data center, just had a lot of momentum from fanatics. I used RedHat Linux servers in 2001 for production processing, but this was at a startup (which never quite made it, but also didn't quite die... purchased by another company. I believe still in existence, but with no compelling reason for existence today).
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    Yeah that may be the case, as I said it wouldn’t even work with my Ethernet card without tweaking and Wi-Fi was absolutely no happening
    - Maursault 5y ago
      This was a common experience. Amazing (to me) that today all of the most popular distros have accomplished this, collecting and including all the drivers for all (well, not all, most) of the myriad network interfaces used, so that tweaking for network access is now pretty much built-in to the install. Same is true for the many BSDs now. I had the same thing happen as you with Darwin (yae, I got it to install! But I can't do a thing with it). What I recall about linux in the 00's was that Microsoft would break some functionality in Windows environments, and linux would fix it within a few weeks. I saw that as the reason for linux's existence, subverting Microsoft control. I think it may be still true, but LAMP became a pretty good reason for linux, too.

hulitu 5y ago

Linux was popular because was fast on x86 hardware. And unlike BSD, all programs which came with the distribution worked. With ports you could get into a situation where one program would not compile or when it needed another library that the one installed which broke things. Also BSD wars turned a lot of developers away from BSD.

Maursault 5y ago
> Linux was popular because was fast on x86 hardware. Because it booted fast? I don't understand that metric. We don't reboot servers. IMO Linux was a fad, but it faked it until it made it in 2008-2012. The death march of Sun had a lot to do with it. Linux, even today, never held a candle to the stability of any Sun system. > With ports you could get into a situation where one program would not compile or when it needed another library that the one installed which broke things. Comparing (I assume) apt to ports is Oranges to Apples. Ports is a source-based package management system. Apt is binary based. There are different goals here. > Also BSD wars turned a lot of developers away from BSD. What??! Did I miss the "BSD wars?" BSD won the UNIX wars prior to the Millennium. I'm not sure what you're saying. There'd be no GNU without BSD, and Linux would not be an operating system without GNU. Linux is more GNU than Linux.

edgyquant 5y ago

I remember using Linux around 2005-2006 (SUSE Community edition) and it was stable enough even though I had drivers issues with certain things like Ethernet.

Maursault 5y ago
Stable enough for curious and intrepid home or laptop users. But in 2005 Linux was premature for the data center, just had a lot of momentum from fanatics. I used RedHat Linux servers in 2001 for production processing, but this was at a startup (which never quite made it, but also didn't quite die... purchased by another company. I believe still in existence, but with no compelling reason for existence today).
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Yeah that may be the case, as I said it wouldn’t even work with my Ethernet card without tweaking and Wi-Fi was absolutely no happening
  - Maursault 5y ago
    This was a common experience. Amazing (to me) that today all of the most popular distros have accomplished this, collecting and including all the drivers for all (well, not all, most) of the myriad network interfaces used, so that tweaking for network access is now pretty much built-in to the install. Same is true for the many BSDs now. I had the same thing happen as you with Darwin (yae, I got it to install! But I can't do a thing with it). What I recall about linux in the 00's was that Microsoft would break some functionality in Windows environments, and linux would fix it within a few weeks. I saw that as the reason for linux's existence, subverting Microsoft control. I think it may be still true, but LAMP became a pretty good reason for linux, too.