Why Was Linux the Kernel That Succeeded?

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 6, 2015 @06:42AM from the belle-of-the-ball dept.

jones_supa writes: "One of the most puzzling questions about the history of free and open source software is this: Why did Linux succeed so spectacularly, whereas similar attempts to build a free or open source, Unix-like operating system kernel met with considerably less success?" Christopher Tozzi has rounded up some theories, focusing specifically on kernels, not complete operating systems. These theories take a detailed look at the decentralized development structure, pragmatic approach to things, and the rich developer community, all of which worked in favor of Linux.

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Re:0.96pl5 by jbolden · 2015-05-06 07:30 · Score: 1, Troll

Your years are off. Around the time of the 386SX I had 20megs of RAM in my 386. Hard drives were hundreds of megs. $1000k 20mb drive is like 1985 or so. 1990 you are at like $10 / meg for storage and 1995 around $2 / meg.