UNIX V7

[Zane H. Healy]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2009, Liam Proven wrote:

> I think one of the most powerful things in Linux's favour is that it
> shares a native hardware platform with the world's most successful (as
> in, in the marketplace) OS.

I would agree with this.

> Linux runs very well on cheap, commodity kit. Solaris, from what I
> read, still runs best on Sun kit, especially Sun SPARC kit; I just
> today tried the latest 2009-06 build of OpenSolaris on my own PC, to
> find that it can't drive either of my on-board Ethernet controllers,
> so I can't even get online to download drivers.

I was wondering about this, but haven't had time to try OpenSolaris, and the
last version of Solaris I tried on x86 was Solaris 7.

> Linux may only have 1% of the desktop PC market, but that's 1% of an
> awful lot. It is now a mass-market OS, with significant support, lots
> of drivers and so on. This isn't true of the BSDs, OpenSolaris, Mac OS
> X or Darwin, or indeed of *anything* else except Windows. All the
> other x86 PC OSs other than Windows and Linux are still specialist,
> minority tools...

If Linux only has 1% of the desktop PC market, it is a *LONG* way behind Mac
OS X which has been increasing its market share at a nice pace.

> But still, this is why I am always glad to see relatively obscure
> minority OSs making it to the PC. The commercial versions may dead or
> as good as, but there's a small chance of survival for AmigaOS (in the
> form of AROS) and BeOS (in the form of Haiku) because they're now open
> source projects running on commodity x86 hardware.

BeOS ran for a number of years on x86.  If Amiga wanted Amiga OS to survive,
they'd port it to x86.  Thanks for mentioning Haiku, I couldn't remember
what the name changed to, and haven't had time to google it.  What is its
current state?  Do you happen to have any idea which is closer to a V1.0
release, AROS or Haiku?  It has been way to long since I've had time to
follow such things.

Zane