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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: History of PC-Unices
Date: 13 Mar 1996 02:22:25 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <4i5bh1$ggt@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <W_MF.96Mar6094546@fawn.unibw-hamburg.de> <4hlv7n$nma@zk2nws.zko.dec.com> <4hn5kf$4pp@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <4ht83p$dfi@park.uvsc.edu> <slrn4k914b.hkr.bet@ritz.mordor.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
bet@ritz.mordor.com (Bennett Todd) wrote:
] >Minix was a Linux precursor.
]
] Oh, if only Dr. Tannenbaum were reading this.
]
] He had written Minix, and almost (but critically not quite!) released it. It
] was a cute academic exercise, and enjoyed a brief spasm of popularity, but
] problems related to its distribution kept it a minor event.
]
] There was a really, really notorious exchange, wherein Tannenbaum stated that
] Linux was a total waste of time, inexcuseably bad software engineering, and
] that he, Tannenbaum, would have failed Linus for that work if he'd had Linus
] as a student.
]
] And now "Minix was a Linux precursor". Joy!
]
] :-)
Well, Linus claimed that it was at one time... and it was the
Minix group that was bombarded. 8-).
Just because A.T. didn't *want* it to be a Linux precursor
doesn't mean it wasn't. If it pisses him off that he "incited
people to Linux" 8-) 8-), then that's too bad.
If A.T. wasn't so anal about needing to get a book sale out of
every copy of the disks, he probably would have had a much more
popular OS (and Linus might not have felt the need to start from
scratch).
I remember the A.T/L.T. exchange: A.T. got himself into an
uproar because he had his thunder stolen, and in such a way
as to damage his book sales.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.