Linux now runs on almost _all_ of those with a mostly compatible API and ABI, from raspi to Z-mainframe, speaks to hundreds of weird hardwares, and hundreds more network protocols built in.
I'd say it was instrumental.
Kind of cool how randomness creates forks in time.
And btw, is there a list of such points in computing history, where a slightly small change in a decision would have lead to a different computing environment ( i.e. "forks in time") ? This would be a very good read. And a nice practical introduction of chaos theory.
You go on to praise Windows, as if it's okay to ignore history when it comes to MS.
Eh... I think people in HN get overly offended when people state the fact that Linux has been historically revolutionary.
That's disingenuous, not every market has the same weight. Microsoft owns the desktop market, and there are many countries where it also owns the enterprise/server market.
> people in HN get overly offended when people state the fact that Linux has been historically revolutionary
There is a big difference between saying "Linux was revolutionary" (considering the impact it had, absolutely true), and "Linux was revolutionary from a technical standpoint" (it wasn't).
AS/400. VMS. Plan9. Amiga. QNX. Even NT. All of these date to before Linux was created. (Strictly speaking, I believe Plan9's first public release was after Linux's, but work on Plan9 started at Bell in the mid 80s.)
VMS and NT handle async IO much better. QNX, and to an extent NT, are more reliable¹ by design (as microkernels²). AS/400 and Plan9 are based on more powerful and coherent abstractions ("everything is an object" and "everything is a file" respectively).
--
¹The NT kernel really is quite reliable, it's everything else that gives Windows a bad reputation for reliability.
²NT isn't strictly a microkernel, but it's very microkernel-ish.
Ok.. reluctantly, I'll bite.
Why does a shift "need" to take place? What do you believe is broken and how is a developer "understanding the impact" of Linux going to fix it?
Also, what is a "true editor" and conversely what makes an editor not "true"? Do you have examples? Can software development only be done in a "true" editor?
OS X also experiences about a 2-fold increase whereas windows experiences a large decrease in use amongst developers compared to its general desktop usage. I think Windows should just switch to the Linux kernel and build Windows container to run legacy programs and port all their software to Linux if they want to win over devs. The "bash on Windows" doesn't appeal to me at all.
Of course, here on hacker news the culture is really more corporate than hacker.
People forget that Linux is the dominant
kernel/os because it dominates nearly every
market that isn't the desktop
And people forget that there are other very popular markets[0] using other toolsets[1].
So, when you say:
here on hacker news the culture is really
more corporate than hacker.
0 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/16/sony_playstation_4_k...
Yeah but *BSD isn't nearly as wide
spread as Linux.
This is mostly correct while referring to the kernel. Nevertheless, a kernel by itself is just one component of the low level system. And I personally definitely do not consider the Android experience a "GNU/Linux" one - even the base libc is replaced with a quite broken (e.g wrt POSIX) Bionic. This is leaving aside all the firmware issues, lack of administrator control without "rooting", etc.
So in other words: it is natural to "forget" that Linux is widespread on mobile devices, simply because the experience is extremely different.
"CLI" stands for "command line interface" and has been a very standard abbreviation for a very long time...