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From: G Sumner Hayes <sumner+@CMU.EDU>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.x
Subject: Free Unix History (was Re: On Kaleb Keithley's neg. comments on Linux (Xaw3d Distrib.))
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:27:35 -0400
Organization: Sophomore, Mathematics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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[Please remove comp.os.linux.x from followups; the thread should move
to .misc. For those of you joining this thread recently, we're trying
to pin down when Linux, 386BSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD got their
starts...]
Allow me to correct myself:
G Sumner Hayes <sumner+@CMU.EDU> writes:
> This is wrong. FreeBSD and NetBSD forked from the earlier 386BSD.
> Version 0.0 of 386BSD came out when Linux was at version
> 0.10.something.
[SNIP: Earliest versions of Linux and 386BSD pretty unusable on most hardware]
> I believe the first release of 386BSD 0.0 was in June of 1992, but am
> not sure...
[SNIP: Linux v0.01 in late Aug. or early Sep. 1991]
> By Dec. 19,[1991] Linux v0.11.0 had been released...
I realize these are inconsistent. The third is definitely true (the
date is from a posting in which Linus announces v0.11.0). The
first could be mistaken (though the claim was made in the thread I
archived); H.J. Lu wrote:
> When I was looking for Unix for my 386sx, Linux 0.09 or 0.10 was
> my only option. 386BSD only came out a few weeks/months after
> Linux.
The date for 386BSD comes from the following:
Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote:
> kargl@troutmask.apl.washington.edu wrote:
>> Nice summary, but I think you have the NetBSD and 386BSD entires
>> a little
>> messed up.
>>
>> 1992, Jolitz released 386BSD to the public
> ^- 0.1. 0.0 was released
> before that to a small
> group.
So a 1991 release of 386BSD is not ruled out...
Kaleb Keithley (wow, we come full circle!) responded:
> How do you define "small"? 0.0 was publicly available on the net,
> but it didn't grok FDISK partitions, so a lot of people who might
> have liked to use it (like me) could not, not without abandoning
> their other partitions.
Terry responded:
> "Largely unusable without *specific* hardware components and
> specific BIOS/CMOS behaviour". In other words, the set of
> people who could accept distribution was very small.
>
> Only a few people were able to run 0.0. I personally ran it
> by banging bits on the disk image (which I later put in the
> unofficial FAQ for AT&T WGS and HP VECTRA systems) using a Sun
> machine to do the banging. 0.1 had the same problems, and
> that was the genesis of the patch kit.
I _still_ would love to see release dates for 386BSD 0.{0,1}, NetBSD,
FreeBSD, and OpenBSD if people have them archived away somewhere...
Was 386BSD released at the end of 1991 or some time in 1992? Perhaps
we'll never know...
TTFN,
Sumner
P.S. Please remove comp.os.linux.x from followups.
P.P.S. The original subject is in Re: comments in the Xaw3d README
about shared libs being nigh impossible to create in Linux; that's no
longer true since the move to ELF, but the README was written before
this. That thread's on comp.os.linux.x if someone (Kaleb) wants to
make sure nothing libellous is being said, but it seems tame enough...