I like NetBSD, even though I run it on x86 hardware (where any of the three BSDixes would run fine). I think it's because they seem to have the most focused community. There just don't seem to be many hot-dog types, and nobody ever hypes it anywhere (I hope I am not engaging in that right now). And NetBSD seems to be the most 'exploratory' free OS of all, it's what a new architecture designer (as with the Chalice CATS StrongArm motherboard) ports first to the new hardware.
I've been working for some time to find replacements for everything I run on Linux so I can convert over my last Slackware box to one of the BSD's (at present I have boxes running all three BSD variants on my home network). The last package is CDParanoia, and it's non-Linux port is in progress right now.
Lastly, I am into this stuff to learn more about Unix, and the BSDs give a lot more exposure (for example, a "real UNIX" responds with wonderment to a "dir" command....) than Linux does.
Of course, your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does.
"so if it becomes impossible to experience the ephermal version of the lecture, pay some money for a permanent copy for permanet reference."
I can't think of a single creative work that Knuth has produced that I would want to 'go away' when I turned off a piece of electronic equipment (unless, of course, it was coming back soon, as in the case of TeX).
You have a *major* misconception of how things operate in your phrase "Linux can't agree on the guts behind their GUIs", as though "Linux" were a company deserving of "their". To cut to the quick, don't do it:)
Other factors in the success of Linux seem to be overlooked, as it's fashionable to credit the whole success of Linux on the fact that it's Open Source(tm).
In the early 90's, the power of the average PC was on the rise. With the 386 and 486 processor, it became ludicrous to run a single-user real mode operating system on such powerful hardware.
The Internet came into wide use, and the bandwidth to move big blocks of data around became very cheap. Email became "almost free" which made widespread collaboration efforts possible.
With the advent of low-cost CD-rom drives in almost all machines, it became easy to ship around a lot of data.
As the hardware become more and more cheap, it became an 'easy out' for people needing to harness a lot of raw power to just apply all the old designs to the new cheaper hardware. The 70's and 80's designs, developed for expensive proprietary hardware, could be pasted into a project like Linux. (it's no coincidence that Linux developed as a Unix-like project, it filled the hardware void for all that old code).
It fun, and it gets certain Open Source(tm) Evangalists their honorarium fees and plane fair, but the fact that it's Open Source(tm) is only one of many factors that lead to the popularity of a Unix-like OS for PC hardware called Linux.
Actually, a void opened up in the early nineties as the average hardware continued to become more and more powerful. All the old multi-user software designes that wouldn't ever run on something like an 8088-based machine suddenly became plausible for increasingly more cheap and powerful hardware. Linux fit into that void nicely, and so it took off.
Something else would have filled that void if Linux hadn't. It may or may not have been Open Source(tm).
Wether it would be Open Source(tm) or not is a side issue.
Maybe you can explain more of what you mean by "gone the way of Minix."
Minix is a training OS that accompanies a textbook. It's purpose is to be like the training ships that the Navy puts ensigns on. Not the most elaborate ship in the fleet, in fact too many bells-n-whistles just obscures it's purpose.
In the era when Linus Torvalds developed his new kernel, there were people hassling Dr. Tannenbaum to get him to expand Minix into a "general purpose OS" that they could use for regular computing. Since he wanted to keep it simple, for the above detailed reasons, he basically refused to expand it.
People who claim that Minix "failed" because it didn't grow the way Linux has really misunderstand the entire reason that Dr. Tannenbaum produced it in the first place.
For this article and this book, an Amazon link wouldn't mean too much to me. If I want this book I would just drive to Dreamhaven (can't walk there anymore like in older times).
Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter for ROM, and/or Paper Tape/Cassette, that people could bootstrap into their machines. CP/M came much later. And it was a watershed event at the time, when the alternative for hobbiests was to use toggle switches to write programs in machine code (not that 'sissy' Assembly Language).
In order to 'do it again' wouldn't this fellow have to steal off with another open source program like Mosaic that he co-developed with public funding, and turn it into a closed-source success story?
Maybe he could steal Apache this time, or something like that. Oh wait! He didn't co-develop with his peers, as was the case with Mosaic.
I fail to see any other "magic spell" that this man posesses that he could use to strike it rich a second time.
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I like NetBSD, even though I run it on x86 hardware (where any of the three BSDixes would run fine). I think it's because they seem to have the most focused community. There just don't seem to be many hot-dog types, and nobody ever hypes it anywhere (I hope I am not engaging in that right now). And NetBSD seems to be the most 'exploratory' free OS of all, it's what a new architecture designer (as with the Chalice CATS StrongArm motherboard) ports first to the new hardware.
I've been working for some time to find replacements for everything I run on Linux so I can convert over my last Slackware box to one of the BSD's (at present I have boxes running all three BSD variants on my home network). The last package is CDParanoia, and it's non-Linux port is in progress right now.
Lastly, I am into this stuff to learn more about Unix, and the BSDs give a lot more exposure (for example, a "real UNIX" responds with wonderment to a "dir" command....) than Linux does.
Of course, your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does.
translation:
"so if it becomes impossible to experience the ephermal version of the lecture, pay some money for a permanent copy for permanet reference."
I can't think of a single creative work that Knuth has produced that I would want to 'go away' when I turned off a piece of electronic equipment (unless, of course, it was coming back soon, as in the case of TeX).
If you ask for "proof," you're being blasphemous.
Belief, dude. Belief.
Indeed. Nobody has dared port the Linux kernel to VB.
And obviously Real Men code in machine language (Assembler is for sissies!)
You have a *major* misconception of how things operate in your phrase "Linux can't agree on the guts behind their GUIs", as though "Linux" were a company deserving of "their". To cut to the quick, don't do it :)
Thanks for amplifying his point.
This is true.
Now if they had only included "HTML Programmers"....
Yep.
And I could put "I was being silly" in blinking red letters that you couldn't fail to notice.
Rob, enable the blink tag, would ya?
Please?
Pretty Please?
Yep, Chicago had 18" of snow, and it became a big deal .
Here in Minnesota we never carry on about things like that. (Oh wait, Minnesota does have most of the world's weather geeks!)
Other factors in the success of Linux seem to be overlooked, as it's fashionable to credit the whole success of Linux on the fact that it's Open Source(tm).
In the early 90's, the power of the average PC was on the rise. With the 386 and 486 processor, it became ludicrous to run a single-user real mode operating system on such powerful hardware.
The Internet came into wide use, and the bandwidth to move big blocks of data around became very cheap. Email became "almost free" which made widespread collaboration efforts possible.
With the advent of low-cost CD-rom drives in almost all machines, it became easy to ship around a lot of data.
As the hardware become more and more cheap, it became an 'easy out' for people needing to harness a lot of raw power to just apply all the old designs to the new cheaper hardware. The 70's and 80's designs, developed for expensive proprietary hardware, could be pasted into a project like Linux. (it's no coincidence that Linux developed as a Unix-like project, it filled the hardware void for all that old code).
It fun, and it gets certain Open Source(tm) Evangalists their honorarium fees and plane fair, but the fact that it's Open Source(tm) is only one of many factors that lead to the popularity of a Unix-like OS for PC hardware called Linux.
Actually, a void opened up in the early nineties as the average hardware continued to become more and more powerful. All the old multi-user software designes that wouldn't ever run on something like an 8088-based machine suddenly became plausible for increasingly more cheap and powerful hardware. Linux fit into that void nicely, and so it took off.
Something else would have filled that void if Linux hadn't. It may or may not have been Open Source(tm).
Wether it would be Open Source(tm) or not is a side issue.
Maybe you can explain more of what you mean by "gone the way of Minix."
Minix is a training OS that accompanies a textbook. It's purpose is to be like the training ships that the Navy puts ensigns on. Not the most elaborate ship in the fleet, in fact too many bells-n-whistles just obscures it's purpose.
In the era when Linus Torvalds developed his new kernel, there were people hassling Dr. Tannenbaum to get him to expand Minix into a "general purpose OS" that they could use for regular computing. Since he wanted to keep it simple, for the above detailed reasons, he basically refused to expand it.
People who claim that Minix "failed" because it didn't grow the way Linux has really misunderstand the entire reason that Dr. Tannenbaum produced it in the first place.
For this article and this book, an Amazon link wouldn't mean too much to me. If I want this book I would just drive to Dreamhaven (can't walk there anymore like in older times).
Nope.
Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter for ROM, and/or Paper Tape/Cassette, that people could bootstrap into their machines. CP/M came much later. And it was a watershed event at the time, when the alternative for hobbiests was to use toggle switches to write programs in machine code (not that 'sissy' Assembly Language).
In order to 'do it again' wouldn't this fellow have to steal off with another open source program like Mosaic that he co-developed with public funding, and turn it into a closed-source success story?
Maybe he could steal Apache this time, or something like that. Oh wait! He didn't co-develop with his peers, as was the case with Mosaic.
I fail to see any other "magic spell" that this man posesses that he could use to strike it rich a second time.
In other words, just participate in Usenet as usual. ;)