[Info-vax] Waiting for a UNIX-like kernel (was: Re: bootcamp ?)

[John Wallace]

On Apr 25, 9:30 pm, Keith Parris <keithparris_deletet... at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> On 4/25/2013 4:51 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
> > JKB wrote 2013-04-25 12:34:
> >> Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderh... at telia.com> écrivait :
> >>> 7. Port to an open source OpenVMS compatible OS, if developed
>
> >>     This open-sourced VMS only waits for active developers...
> >>    http://www.freevms.net.
>
> > Maybe. But I do not think there are even *one* single
> > (professional) VMS user waiting for it. So, so what?
>
> There was not even *one* single (professional) UNIX user waiting for
> Linux at the time Linus Torvalds first released that.

Is it strictly true and meaningful to say that ?

The GNU people had been waiting since the 1990s for a UNIX-kernel
replacement to sit underneath the GNU userland, in part to avoid the
licencing restrictions that came with "real" UNIX, and also to benefit
from the (alleged?) benefits of microkernel architecture.

As far as I can tell, twenty odd years later, folk are still waiting
for a usable Hurd release.

Meanwhile, Torvalds' contribution is perfectly well accepted by a lrge
number of customers, in business and at home, sometimes visibly,
sometimes invisibly (in your smart TV, your router, your phone, etc).

So pedantically it may be true to say that no one was waiting for
Torvalds' kernel (did anyone other than Torvalds know it was on the
way?), but some folk in the business were definitely waiting for a
different flavour of UNIX-like kernel. OSF/1 should be sufficient
evidence of that.