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points by pjmlp 2 days ago | 0 comments

Kudos for not being another UNIX clone.

However Windows NT originally was already POSIXy, what it lacked all these years was Microsoft being serious about POSIX subsystem, had that been the case, probably Linux would never taken off among PC, the same experience as OS X would be there in 1993.

[–] EvanAnderson 1 day ago

The acquisition of OpenNT / Interix / Services for Unix (SFU) gave MSFT a really solid POSIX compatibility offering but it was too late-- Linux was already ascendant by that time. The no cost nature of Linux, as compared to the per-client client licensing for server versions of NT, can't be understated, though.

[–] RetroTechie 1 day ago

> The no cost nature of Linux, as compared to the per-client client licensing for server versions of NT, can't be understated, though.

THIS, so much. One time (~1995 or so?) I bought a boxed SUSE Linux release. Pulled out the book, and practically on the 1st page, there was a copyright notice specifically allowing anyone to copy that book & pass it on. Whereas for practically every other book I'd had in my hands up to that point, copyright notices consisted of various "forbidden to do X, Y or Z" statements.

That right there convinced me I had something different, something special in my hands. Disclaimer: I had read about "open source" before, so I did know what I was looking at. But still it felt special.

Unsurprisingly: note the documentation linked to at the end of jmmv's Unix<->NT comparison above. They're ALL Amazon "buy this book" links. Over on the Linux/BSD side of the fence, such references are typically web pages, man pages, a free-download pdf or the like.

It's not the "free beer" aspect that got me over time. It's the "open", "sharing", "community project", versus "closed", "profit", "property of BigCorp Inc".

[–] pjmlp 1 day ago

Indeed, Linux only became interesting to me on 1995's Summer, because getting that Linux Unleashed book with Slackware 2.0 CD was the route to easier homework assignments.

I had no way to do proper POSIX development at home with the Windows NT limitations, and access to the university labs running a mix of DG/UX and Solaris servers was rather limited.