From: drew@hamlet.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt)
Subject: Re: What's LINUX? And other misc questions....
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 17:20:47 GMT

In article <92248.014958U20565@uicvm.uic.edu> <U20565@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>First off, I looked for a FAQ list. The only thing I found was information to
>sites that had the LINUX source. This may be useful down the line, but not
>right now. Other searches such as a thread on "Linux history," more
>specifically, followups to the latter, seemed like a personal conversation
>and yielded nothing.
>
>Specifically, I would like to know what LINUX is? Yes, I know an operating
>system. Yes I know, very similar to UNIX. But what's the catch or impetus for
>people to own it? How old is it? How stable?

Linux is free.  Linux is small.  Linux has been fairly stable for quite some
time, with new releases being almost entirely new features (Such as a modern
VM, with unified buffer cache and user memory pool, extended / DOS 
file systems, etc).  I first used Linux last November/Decemeber, and since then
it's become quite stable.

>
>There's MINIX which offers you all the source to the OS and utilities. There's

Minix also costs money. As it comes out of the box it can't run 
much of the freely available software, because of process size
restrictions and the lack of VM.  

There are patches available that rectify this situation, but it won't 
be as clean, or easy, as starting with a real 32 bit VM OS from the 
start, like Linux.

>Coherent, now in its fourth version, supporting COFF executables and a 32
>OS and compiler. Not to mention all its utilities and other facilities, such
>as UUCP.
>

Coherent also sells for $99, and there's no way you'll get source code for it.
While it is a 32 bit OS, it doesn't have VM.  

>So, iterating, what's LINUX's tune? Why should one bother with it now that

>you can get BSD's UNIX for the 386 for free? MINIX and Coherent looked good,

But can you use the Jolitz port of BSD?  

Linux is significantly more stable the the Jolitz port of BSD.  Spend some 
time over in the comp.unix.bsd group, and you'll find a lengthy list of known 
bugs that MAY be fixed in the next release.  


BSD runs on less hardware than Linux - , Linux
runs on IDE, RLL, MFM, ESDI, Adaptec 154x, 174x, Seagate, Ultrastor 14f, Future
Domain 16 bit, and Western Digital 7000FASST SCSI disks, does enough 387 
emulation on hardware lacking a FPU to use a GCC with hardware floating 
point support, and has extended text mode support in the console driver 
for most SVGA boards plus CGA, MDA, Herc, EGA, and VGA.

BSD also requires more resources than Linux - without Linux's
shared libraries, X applications can grow from < 100K to > 400.  

Bill is also running a one man show - which makes it very difficult to get 
neat features into the kernel.  On the otherhand, Linus will integrate
any netter-contributions provided that there are clean context diffs 
and they fit cleanly into the Linux scheme of things.  Consequently,
Linux has lots of nifty features that BSD lacks, such as shared libraries, 
the MSDOS file system, virtual consoles that emulate VTxxx's, etc.

>however personally I don't see much motivation to use them now that you can
>get the "Real McCoy," 386BSD UNIX for free.
>
>So what does LINUX offer that these other operating systems don't?

It's smaller, has more features, runs on more hardware, consumes less 
resources, and is more stable.  
-- 
Microsoft is responsible for propogating the evils it calls DOS and Windows, 
IBM for AIX (appropriately called Aches by those having to administer it), but 
marketing's sins don't come close to those of legal departments.
Boycott AT&T for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit.
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux