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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.nla.gov.au!act.news.telstra.net!newshost.telstra.net!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.hawaii.edu!ames!purdue!lerc.nasa.gov!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.msfc.nasa.gov!sgigate.sgi.com!sdd.hp.com!hamblin.math.byu.edu!park.uvsc.edu!usenet 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.