Linux in a World Where Windows 3.0 Never Happened

covertbadger writes "Larry Osterman said farewell yesterday to David Weise, the developer he credits with getting applications to run in protected mode on Windows 3.0, which led directly to Microsoft choosing to push Windows instead of OS/2. Today he speculates on what the IT world would be like if Weise had never completed this work. Windows 95 would never have existed, OS/2 would be the de facto standard, and IBM would never have put weight behind Linux because it had its own operating system to push."

Comments

Who is to say someone else wouldn't have

[Shnizzzle]

put weight behind Linux? Maybe Apple goes that route instead of using Darwin.

Re:Who is to say someone else wouldn't have

[bombadillo]

OS X ( DARWIN ) is based off of NEXT OS. Steve Jobs was head of NEXT after he left Apple. When Steve came back to Apple he basically brought NEXT OS back with him. Apple would not have chosen Linux when they already had another solid *nix alternative.

Ever notice that the home directory icon on OS X resembles the NEXT home icon.

What if?

[Malc]

If "ifs" and "ands" per pots and pans then tinkers would be rich men.

Who says Microsoft wouldn't have embraced and extended OS/2 and shut IBM out, leading to the same conclusion?

What a waste of space stories like these are.

Fallacy of the Never Happened

[Speare]

There's a fallacy in imagining a world where a particular person never completed a particular invention. In short, it skips the notion that someone else would have invented it instead.

If Ungh Blungh didn't invent the wheel, some other proto-Sapiens halfwit would have invented it in the following year. It's not like there was a shortage of halfwits in the golden crescent.

If Henry Ford didn't invent the assembly-line production model, someone else would have invented it in the following decade. It's not like there was a shortage of development in the industrial arena.

If this developer at Microsoft didn't fix "enhanced mode" Windows, then some other developer at Microsoft would have. It's not like Microsoft was aching for cash to hire smart developers to tinker with 80386 instruction sets.

The size and complexity of an invention AND its environment are also key: If Linus never wrote a whole and usable kernel and published it, chances are that no other homebrew kernel would have grown with the same fervor. The complexity of the task, and the complexity of the eco-political forces at work, helped to spur the adoption in a unique way.

Re:Fallacy of the Never Happened

[ghoti]

Good point, but you ignore the importance of timing here. If protected mode stuff running on Windows would have been done half a year later, Microsoft may already have made a decision to go with OS/2 - and enhanced Windows would have just been another nice demo.

Re:Fallacy of the Never Happened

[Zarhan]

There's a fallacy in imagining a world where a particular person never completed a particular invention. In short, it skips the notion that someone else would have invented it instead.

Wheel and rest of your examples are valid. However, I think that there *are* certain things that wouldn't have been invented by someone else.

Consider Einstein. In 1905, he published his special relativity theory. Now, for this, all the pieces were pretty much there - somebody else would have come up with that sooner or later.

However, general relativity, in 1915, is something that probably would have not been realized even by today if it were not for Albert. Even if we had gravity probe B I think scientists would be pretty dumbfounded by results - there is not really any "reasonable" explanation. You need to think outside the box - and I think that even though Newton's "standing on the shoulder of giants" applies to lots of things, there were no shoulders to stand upon regarding general relativity.

Of course, this point is rather irrelevant because we are talking about developing an OS..

Re:Fallacy of the Never Happened

[san]

To bring this thread further off topic:

Actually, Hilbert published his paper on general relativity at the same time as Einstein. (Einsteins paper was submitted 5 days later than Hilbert's).

The concept of 'curvature of space' (in the sense of differential geometry) had been worked on since Riemann in the 19th century and with Einstein's general relativity it had become clear that the universe doesn't have a Euclidian metric.

From that realization it was only a matter of time before somebody presented a metric which includes gravitational and electromagnetic effects, which is general relativity.

Re:Doom only ran on DOS

[edwdig]

Doom ran on practically anything. I remember playing it on SparcStations and SGI Indy Workstations back in 95. Doom would've just been written for whatever was the dominant platform at the time.

Games go where the users are. Not the other way around. Gamers are too small a percentage of computer users to dictate platforms to everyone else.

Re:Engineer?

[budcub]

People with a Phd can be called doctor too.

Besides, not all engineers design bridges.

Linux would still be here. Here's the logic:

[pandrijeczko]

1. Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel in 1991 because "he was unsatisfied with the operating systems of the time" (as I think the quote goes from "Just For Fun").

2. He wrote the Linux kernel on a 386 PC - yeah, i guess he could have been using SCO UNIX on it but I seem to recall he was using MS-DOS a bit also.

3. Richard Stallman started GNU during the 1980s, emacs, gcc, etc were already in widespread usage and being handed out as free source code.

Therefore, the catalyst that sparked off Linux doesn't appear to have been Windows 3.0 anyway.

Sure, with more OS/2 users, there may not have been so many people developing for Linux but it would still be here.

Re:Engineer?

[Evil W1zard]

Degree's don't mean crap. If you have the experience and skillsets and not the degree you still can be an engineer.

Re:Engineer?

[Hal_Porter]

Having a degree doesn't make you engineer, solving problems does.

Re:I would expect this from a microsiftite

[erikharrison]

What the hell are you talking about?

There is not FUD. Fear? Uncertainty? Doubt? He didn't say a damn thing against Linux, and even argues that the business model which pushed IBM to invest in Linux (and which was partially caused by Linux) would still exist. They'd just open up OS/2 instead of porting OS/2 code (and AIX code, since those code bases have intermingled) to Linux.

It's not unreasonable. OS/2 already has a strong presense in enterprise workstations, and that's a strong consulting market. A stronger OS/2 very possibly might have kept IBM (and only IBM mind you) out of the Linux game.

Stop yelling just because someone said something you didn't understand.

Re:Doom only ran on DOS

[NanoGator]

"Gamers are too small a percentage of computer users to dictate platforms to everyone else."

You do realize that we all have CD ROMs and sound cards because of games, right?

Windows gamers are numbered in the 10s of millions. If you don't believe me, then I'd like you to explain why EB is stuffed with Windows games on the shelves with little to no support for any other OS.

Re:Per? Were!

[jaklein]

"If 'buts' and 'or' were filthy whores, we'd all be covered in chanker sores."

Re:Lucky streaks and closed minds

[Lemmy Caution]

I think comparisons with Nazi Germany are fatuous. GWB is not Hitler, on dozens of levels. He's not even that important - the political movement of which he is a part is not his vision, is not really dependent on him in anyway, and would survive his disappearance without batting an eye.

Also, GWB has not engaged in the activities you've described.

However, I do think that the rise of the Japanese militarist regime is a far more productive metaphor. Replace state Shinto with Christianity, and the parallels really start to fit. The slow erosion of civil liberties, the pressure to put media in the service of state goals, the increasing authority given to law enforcement, the hostility to dissent, the use of rhetorics of victimization to justify intervention (Japan used the fact of European colonialism to legitimize its own empire).

The "slow boil" effect is the key parallel, I think. In 1933, the Nazis took over a fairly democratic society, and the flags went up. Nazi ideology was explicitly racist, with an agenda for racial domination. There was no such moment in Japan. Yamato suprematism was never part of official doctrine, and was often repudiated by members of the military who wanted to encourage the cooperation of the co-prosperity sphere members (while the same sort of "boys will be boys" apologetics you would hear for Abu Ghraib and other abuses would be used to minimize or deny responsibility for events like the Rape of Nanking.)

As in Fascist Italy, there was room for some (limited, monitored) dissent - Communists were able to operate throughout conflict, though many leaders were imprisoned.

The parallels aren't perfect, but I don't think the last chapter in the US' rightward drift has been written yet, either. The attitudes that are looming are worrisome.