“My first choice was to take the BSD 4.4-Lite release and make a kernel. I knew the code, I knew how to do it. It is now perfectly obvious to me that this would have succeeded splendidly and the world would be a very different place today."
So true. It's unfortunate AT&T/Unix System Laboratories kept the BSD kernel code locked up in a lawsuit. Would have loved the article to have had a deeper insight into that as Stallman had already chosen to abandon Hurd by the time Linux came around.
It wasn't just that Linux was available, it was that BSD wasn't. It's too bad that the last few years have seen a decline in FreeBSD / other BSD OS's especially as it is an amazing operating system still light years ahead of GNU/Linux is many areas. Not to mention that it's one unified OS rather than hundreds of GNU/Linux distros.
One can only imagine what would have happened had the BSD code not been tied up in lawsuits. I bet they would have gone with the mature BSD kernel, leading to a better OS, and Linux would probably be a footnote in history if that.
Interesting how inferior technology wins a lot more than it loses. That said, I still love GNU/Linux. :)
> Not to mention that it's one unified OS rather than hundreds of GNU/Linux distros.
I admittedly haven't used any BSD enough to make a well informed opinion but I was under the impression that BSDs are fragmented at the OS level (i.e.: different kernels), while Linux is fragmented at the distribution level (i.e.: default collection of software, file-system layout, etc).
I imagine that, in addition to there being different kernel flavors there are also distribution level differences (e.g.: there are subtle differences between FreeBSD's rc.conf and NetBSD's) so I'm not sure which approach is better or worse, but I tend to lean on the "one kernel, several distributions" camp.
There is no OS level fragmentation. Sorry that makes no sense in the BSD world. FreeBSD is an OS. OpenBSD is an OS. etc. That's not fragmentation. They are different OS's. It's like saying there's fragmentation between Windows and OS X.
GNU/Linux is one OS with hundreds of distros. That's fragmentation.
> One can only imagine what would have happened had the BSD code not been tied up in >lawsuits. I bet they would have gone with the mature BSD kernel, leading to a better OS, and >Linux would probably be a footnote in history if that.
Likely. For myself, in 1993 I recall being totally underwhelmed with Windows 3.1 when I got my first 386 SX PC. I went looking for something better and came across some BSD derivatives and Linux. I knew that there were some vague legal issues with BSD, so I chose to download the 30 or so SLS floppies that made up a Linux "distribution" and I haven't looked back since.
So true. It's unfortunate AT&T/Unix System Laboratories kept the BSD kernel code locked up in a lawsuit. Would have loved the article to have had a deeper insight into that as Stallman had already chosen to abandon Hurd by the time Linux came around.
It wasn't just that Linux was available, it was that BSD wasn't. It's too bad that the last few years have seen a decline in FreeBSD / other BSD OS's especially as it is an amazing operating system still light years ahead of GNU/Linux is many areas. Not to mention that it's one unified OS rather than hundreds of GNU/Linux distros.
One can only imagine what would have happened had the BSD code not been tied up in lawsuits. I bet they would have gone with the mature BSD kernel, leading to a better OS, and Linux would probably be a footnote in history if that.
Interesting how inferior technology wins a lot more than it loses. That said, I still love GNU/Linux. :)