Linux still largely invisible in the marketplace

billt-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org billt-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
Fri Dec 9 22:55:55 UTC 2005


On Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 01:31:05PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 10:06:19AM -0500, Rick Tomaschuk wrote:
> > The reason all of the list server recipients are aware of Linux is
> > through years of 'community' effort. For the average newbie the concept
> > of Linux or an alternative to Windows simply does not stand out. We are
> > readily aware of McDonalds, Wal Mart, Canadian Tire, Dell, Windows,
> > Goodyear, Molson, Saturn, CNN, CBC. Would Linux fit into the list? No.
> 
> Well I am not sure I quite understand this part.  I found out about
> linux by looking at what was new in the usenet binaries section for unix
> back in late 92/early 93, and found the disk images for SLS 1.03, which
> was labeled as a free unix for i386 type machines.  Being an Amiga user,
> and never impressed by DOS when I encountered it, and having used QNX in
> the form used on Unisys Icons, I started downloading the disk images
> (took a few weeks with a 2400 modem), and installed it and was impressed
> (It installed, and booted, and worked.  I had to be impressed.)  I
> didn't realize it came with source code at the time, since not being
> much of a programmer yet at the time, I had no idea I might want to
> change anything.  I did not learn about linux through friends or the
> community, just through searching what was new on usenet.
> 
Ah the memories. I ran into linux on a usenet as well. The year was spring of 1992 and I spent a few months reading about it in amongst the minix newsgroups instead of doing my thesis. I then graduated from university and promptly forgot about it as I had no access to the internet. 

A friend of mine from university mentioned that he had grabbed a walnut creek cd with linux on it. I handed him 40 floppies the next day and aquired slackware and a set of printed how-tos a week later. It took all day Sunday to install on a 386 SX 16 MHz machine with 4 M of memory. I even got X up and running! My first project was to recompile the kernel. Kernel vs 0.93.1 was what came with it, but on two of the floppies was source for 1.0.9. Compiling that kernel took four days. 

Anyone remember using /dev/fd0 as swap space?


Bill
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