[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Scott Dorsey]

Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey <kludge at panix.com> wrote:
>>When Linux was new, that was all it was.  There were some competitors like 
>>xinu and minix, but Linux actually provided a full functional system.  Because
>>it was unixlike, there was plenty of existing software for it (including the
>>whole gnu back catalogue).  Because it was free, the barriers to entry were
>>very low.
>
>Neither Xinu nor Linux was a competitor to Linux; both were
>pedagogical systems designed for teaching.  I do think they
>filled a bit of a niche among enthusiasts, but Linux's early
>competitors were things like COHERENT (absolutely killed by
>Linux) and commercial distributions of System V.  I suppose
>Arne will now tell us those are doing just fine.

Linux was ALSO a pedagogical system designed for teaching, and came very
stripped down without much more than a kernel at first.  But it grew.
And folks added other stuff into the distribution, most of it from gnu.

It took a couple years before Linux was able to compete with something
like COHERENT or QNX.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."