25 Years After DOS - Lessons for Linux?

E IS mC(Square) writes "Microsoft is planning to celebrate 25 years of DOS. An article at ReallyLinux discusses what lessons Linux can learn from the history of DOS. The article begins with 'What can the Linux world learn from Microsoft's past 25 years of unique experiences and domination?', and ends with 'Only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?'" From the article: "First, we must admit openly once and for all that the 'best solution' is not always the 'most used solution.' There are few who would be foolish enough to argue that back in 1981 PC-DOS was the best solution. There were obviously a number of choices. PC-DOS was the least robust, the most temperamental, and arguably not very compatible with the IBM hardware and BIOS it was sold to work on. Yet, somewhat like the odd but obvious dominance of the VHS over BETA, this simple, cheap OS stole the show."

Comments

Re:sigh

[SA Stevens]

Unix has always been used for servers.

Believe it or not, there was a day and time when Unix security was considered a bad joke, and Unix machines were academic or research boxes for the most part. That ended with the entry of Unix powerhouses like Sun, but there was an earlier era. Technically you are right, because in the bare beginning Unix was essentially a time-sharing system with users connected by dumb terminals, and Unix was ONLY a server OS.

It's erroneous to call Linux 'the latest version of Unix.' The BSD OSes are direct decendents (through layers of evolutiona and re-write which excised all the code that 'evil' entities now 'own' and wield like a weapon, of course). Linux is a clone, similar to Coherent, QNX, or OS-9.

Nope DOS was much cheaper

[screwthemoderators]

IBM's $39.95 DOS while CP/M was $450 and UCSD p-System was $550. http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/1908p133id52503. htm