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$275 was much, much cheaper than a Unix workstation. Linux with X was only a year away, though, and that put a nail in the coffin of DV/X as cheap-PC-as-X-serv

$275 was much, much cheaper than a Unix workstation. Linux with X was only a year away, though, and that put a nail in the coffin of DV/X as cheap-PC-as-X-server. Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere.

kelnos 5y ago
> Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere. I was definitely born a little bit too late. I started university in the very-late 90s, and nearly all the "public" (as in, open to all students) computer labs ran Windows NT (and later Win2k). (At least they were set up with networked home directories, so students could easily access saved coursework wherever they were.) But there was one lab in particular that I enjoyed, though: one of my professors had a computer lab that he had de-facto control over, and all the machines ran FreeBSD (his one true OS love). I would ssh back into my dorm-room computer (running Red Hat, I think?), so I could run my personal X11 apps on the X server on the FreeBSD box I was using. Unfortunately I only had access to that lab for a few semesters, as access was granted only while taking some particular classes. Those machines had a bunch of hardware design simulators and Verilog & VHDL compilers on them; it was mainly an ECE hardware design lab.
tssva 5y ago
"Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere." Some universities did. Mine had computer labs with non-networked PC's running DOS and a single machine with a printer attached that you lined up for so you could take your turn to print. But to be fair it was a liberal arts school with no computer sciences or engineering program.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
More than a year! Linux with X took quite a few years to become usable, even if you had someone that knew how to install it from twenty floppies. I remember spending a week getting X running in the mid-90s. $275 misses the big investment in hardware over just DOS or even Win3. Other folks have mentioned the investments in CPU, RAM, and Graphics that would need to be made to be productive, and these were all expensive then. I'd guess you'd be looking at $1000+ which is about $2000+ today. Most businesses didn't absolutely need it, and worse was better unfortunately.

kelnos 5y ago

> Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere. I was definitely born a little bit too late. I started university in the very-late 90s, and nearly all the "public" (as in, open to all students) computer labs ran Windows NT (and later Win2k). (At least they were set up with networked home directories, so students could easily access saved coursework wherever they were.) But there was one lab in particular that I enjoyed, though: one of my professors had a computer lab that he had de-facto control over, and all the machines ran FreeBSD (his one true OS love). I would ssh back into my dorm-room computer (running Red Hat, I think?), so I could run my personal X11 apps on the X server on the FreeBSD box I was using. Unfortunately I only had access to that lab for a few semesters, as access was granted only while taking some particular classes. Those machines had a bunch of hardware design simulators and Verilog & VHDL compilers on them; it was mainly an ECE hardware design lab.

tssva 5y ago

"Universities in the early 90s had networked X services everywhere." Some universities did. Mine had computer labs with non-networked PC's running DOS and a single machine with a printer attached that you lined up for so you could take your turn to print. But to be fair it was a liberal arts school with no computer sciences or engineering program.

mixmastamyk 5y ago

More than a year! Linux with X took quite a few years to become usable, even if you had someone that knew how to install it from twenty floppies. I remember spending a week getting X running in the mid-90s. $275 misses the big investment in hardware over just DOS or even Win3. Other folks have mentioned the investments in CPU, RAM, and Graphics that would need to be made to be productive, and these were all expensive then. I'd guess you'd be looking at $1000+ which is about $2000+ today. Most businesses didn't absolutely need it, and worse was better unfortunately.