Linux Dealt a rest BLOW by Apple !!!!!!! 2444

I was using Torvalds' code immediately after he posted it. But with ATT UNIX at home, and I had to go out an purchase a 486 PC to run Linux on, that took awhile. Sounds like David was booting it 3-4 months sooner.

*Nothing* could be farther from the truth. Even WinNT didn't *fix* the problems with Windows, and that was *years* later.

The point is well taken: it was not designed to multi-task well, never mind be multi-user.

I was forced to use Windows and OS-2 at work, and both were an abomination compared to the functionality available from such things as an ATT 3B1 or a WGS386, in particular with network access to an ATT 3B2 and a large Sun-4.

Prior to Linux, various versions of emacs and of course n-troff. After Linux I switched to TeX and XEmacs, both of which I use today. (Can you imagine the ease of use for something like that after that many years of practice?) I even managed to install TeX on an OS-2 machine at work, because it was *disgusting* to try using the so-called "word processing" and other "office apps" of the day. I needed *quality* results, not a product so "easy to use" that every idiot did use it.

Same reasons *you* need them today! Would you even begin to think of going back to something that doesn't have that functionality? Well, for those of use who had it then, it wasn't within the realm of reality to use something that didn't provide the same functionality.

(Which is to say that just because you didn't know how to use it doesn't mean others were equally unqualified.)

At the time I always got a laugh out of Windows supporters, who insisted at each step of the way that *nothing* UNIX had and Windows didn't was necessary... But as each was added (usually in a nearly non-functional way) to Windows it too became the cat's meow, and was an absolute necessity once it was available from Microsoft.

What a hoot. Mulbreastasking and multiuser desktops were available and absolutely essential long before Microsoft had even a foggy notion that it could be done.

No substance??? X did *networked* graphics years before the others caught up. In the early 90's the University of Alaska Fairbanks was processing digital images on an SGI machine. The Geophysical Insbreastute owned the satellite tracking facility and the Insbreastute of Marine Science had the Internet connection and the SGI (along with Sun workstation). I had a guest account at IMS, and could access all of that from home, about 50 miles away. Later on I did systems admin for the first two ISP startups in Fairbanks, and did things like NFS mount whole file systems at home over a 24kbps link.

Trust me, Windows was never even in consideration.

I might point out though that one of the first ISP's there was actually started using the then new WinNT. That was a total failure, and I was eventually one of the two fellows who sat down one night and converted them to BSDI Unix.

WinNT was better, but it is-was still a waste of time.

What has mbutt marketing got to do with whether it is adequate or not? I first booted Linux early in '93 because it would *do* the things I wanted. Windows didn't have the same facilities for *years*, by which time Linux had advanced even farther ahead.

Let me give you a clue from the Xtal Ball: Vista will be a flop, and within 5-10 years after its introduction, Microsoft will be moving to a Linux based kernel.

--