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The article admits it first mentioned Linux in the magazine by 1996 - clearly they weren't interested too much in software innovation being so late to the party

The article admits it first mentioned Linux in the magazine by 1996 - clearly they weren't interested too much in software innovation being so late to the party. While I did often browse through copies of PC Magazine in the early '90s it was mainly to gauge where the hardware market was at - as far as being interesting to nerdy types like myself I think Byte and Dr Dobbs were much more interesting.

ghaff 4y ago
I subscribed to all 3. It was a pretty siloed world back then. Even if you were a power user and/or hobbyist PC user who was part of the BBS scene etc., you probably didn't interact a whole lot with either Unix or nascent open source communities. And, as a product manager of Unix systems in the late 90s, I know I was only vaguely aware of Linux. PC Mag was definitely the lead magazine of the PC community from mainstream corporate users to assembly language programmers. (There was also PC Tech Journal, I think, which more consistently got into the tech weeds.) Dr. Dobbs and Byte were always more eclectic--to the point they could be hit and miss--but were certainly more likely to get into more obscure technical topics.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  There seems to have been a brief surge of interest in Unix-style systems when the 286 (and maybe 386) first came to market, since there was enough hardware to do a full-fat protected-mode OS now. The first exposure I had to Unix concepts was some old (already at the time, this was probably like 1993 or so) library book discussing "things to do with your shiny new IBM AT." I suspect Unix on Early PCs fell to business concerns. If you bought an AT (or 286/386 in general) it was going to come with DOS, because anything Unix flavoured was an expensive aftermarket add-on. Would it have been different if the AT&T/BSD legal hassles had finished earlier? Imagine if there was a "286BSD" available at basically the same time as the AT; IBM would have an affordable OS that made a good demo for the kit they were selling, and being able to offer it for essentially the cost of the floppies might have made it the obvious "grown up" alternative to DOS. There would have been less need for the grand OS/2 effort, and probably far less effort devoted to DOS extensions.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    One of the alternate histories of the modern computer era is one in which AT&T made peace with BSD. There were of course also many minicomputer OSs that were no longer of significant commercial interest by, say, the mid-80s that could have been interesting as open source options. Something like Linux was probably inevitable but Linux itself was probably not.

ghaff 4y ago

I subscribed to all 3. It was a pretty siloed world back then. Even if you were a power user and/or hobbyist PC user who was part of the BBS scene etc., you probably didn't interact a whole lot with either Unix or nascent open source communities. And, as a product manager of Unix systems in the late 90s, I know I was only vaguely aware of Linux. PC Mag was definitely the lead magazine of the PC community from mainstream corporate users to assembly language programmers. (There was also PC Tech Journal, I think, which more consistently got into the tech weeds.) Dr. Dobbs and Byte were always more eclectic--to the point they could be hit and miss--but were certainly more likely to get into more obscure technical topics.

hakfoo 4y ago
There seems to have been a brief surge of interest in Unix-style systems when the 286 (and maybe 386) first came to market, since there was enough hardware to do a full-fat protected-mode OS now. The first exposure I had to Unix concepts was some old (already at the time, this was probably like 1993 or so) library book discussing "things to do with your shiny new IBM AT." I suspect Unix on Early PCs fell to business concerns. If you bought an AT (or 286/386 in general) it was going to come with DOS, because anything Unix flavoured was an expensive aftermarket add-on. Would it have been different if the AT&T/BSD legal hassles had finished earlier? Imagine if there was a "286BSD" available at basically the same time as the AT; IBM would have an affordable OS that made a good demo for the kit they were selling, and being able to offer it for essentially the cost of the floppies might have made it the obvious "grown up" alternative to DOS. There would have been less need for the grand OS/2 effort, and probably far less effort devoted to DOS extensions.
- ghaff 4y ago
  One of the alternate histories of the modern computer era is one in which AT&T made peace with BSD. There were of course also many minicomputer OSs that were no longer of significant commercial interest by, say, the mid-80s that could have been interesting as open source options. Something like Linux was probably inevitable but Linux itself was probably not.