For Sale: Free Operating System (1998) | Hacker News Reader

For Sale: Free Operating System (1998)

archive.nytimes.com

81 pointsemmelaich40 comments

It's crazy for me to realize that Linux was created the same year when I got the first computer in my house running Windows 98. I didn't know Linux was this old.

Another funny thing I just remembered is how I broke our house computer trying to install Linux (I have no idea how to actually do it, I was barely 10-12 years old back then). I bought one of those magazines which shipped with CDs with demo games and other software. I tried to install Linux on our home computer using that and completely messed the computer up because apparently my hardware didn't support it or something. Anyway, I got a pretty good beating from my Mom after that.

EDIT: correction, as couple people pointed out Linux was created in 1991. I thought it was created in 1998 based on the publishing of this archived news article. I also grew up in a developing country where things came much later than the US.

I remember doing similar but to my own computers. I would install Linux over and over from those CDs until I finally got the right combination of software and configuration. Seems more than silly now. But I sure learned a lot!

Did you make a typo? Linux was created in 1991.

Oh, my bad. I thought it was created in 1998 based on the publishing of this archived news article. I also grew up in a developing country where things came much later than the US.

These kids today have no idea that copyfests and installfests were things.

There used to be a pretty easy way to install Linux on MS-DOS running computers (which includes Win 9x) without damaging the existing system in any way. You would place the Linux filesystem inside a C:\LINUX folder on the FAT partition, using the UMSDOS filesystem support that used to be included in the Linux kernel for fs metadata. Booting Linux would be accomplished by first getting to MS-DOS mode (which could be done either at boot or when shutting down Windows 9x) and then running LOADLIN.EXE, a bootloader that ran entirely under MS-DOS (similar to how modern bootloaders run in UEFI).

I am aware of that now. But back then, I was a dumb 10 year old kid with a magazine CD and our home didn't even have internet (this is in a developing country). I was so dumb, I used to keep launching the IE browser again and again hoping it would somehow magically connect me to the internet.

Didn't that limit you to conventional memory (640K)?

No, linux would make use of the full memory once loaded. I had forgotten about loadlin, but I think I used it when I had installed slackware from a stack of floppies or redhat from a CD back in the day.

I highly doubt you had Windows 98 in 1991. Did you mean Windows 3.1?

Sorry, made correction.

3.0, 3.1 came in '92

> The movement, known alternately as free software and open source ...

Ha, I can think of someone who might take issue with that.

I know it's 20 years ago, but I'm interested to see it reported like that first-hand.

> James Cameron's special-effects company, Digital Domain, which used the operating system to help create the illusions in "Titanic."

I know this is a random tangent from the core theme of the article. But I found it funny that in 1998 we describe CGI as "illusions".

my memory is that the most common term to use there would have been "special effects", and "illusions" would have seemed strange even then

One of the greatest CGI (and more) companies in history is George Lucas's ILM: Industrial Light and Magic.

> "An operating system is a living thing," said Carl Shapiro, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-author of "Information Rules," a book to be published this week by the Harvard Business School Press. "Ongoing investment and upgrades are essential to attract customers. Nice cooperative thoughts are not enough."

Typical economist thinking. Linux will never work.

He wasn’t wrong though. Linux has flourished because many different entities have invested a lot of money in its development, not just because of “nice cooperative thoughts”.

His co-author, Hal Varian, has been Google's chief economist since 2002.

https://www.gv.com/team/hal-varian/

I wonder how different things would be if Windows XP didn't end up being so popular. Or maybe there are benefits of proprietary software that aren't mentioned in this article that ended up naturally overcoming open source software.

Before Windows XP being massively popular it was Windows 98 being massively popular - up until Service Pack 2 (IIRC) the main competitor to Windows XP was Windows 98 and people would simply not move off it. There isn't really a universe where Windows XP is a failure with Windows 98's popularity - there wasn't much of a real choice from people who eventually had to abandon Windows 98 outside of Windows XP and Microsoft was pushing Windows desktops hard as their primary focus at the time. Of course Windows 98 owe part of its popularity to Windows 95.

Around Windows 95 was the last time you could say that other desktop OSes had a chance to become a de-facto standard, but IIRC the only desktop competitor at the time was OS/2 and IBM shat the bed on that one (BeOS also tried but it was too little too late and Linux at the time was a regression from both DOS and Windows UX-wise... assuming anyone knew about it).

Microsoft's sketchy deals with PC vendors where they had to pay an OS license for every PC sold regardless of the PC being sold with a Microsoft OS or not didn't help competitors much.

Like children, it needs two to have a sketchy deal.

If enough OEMs had decided to go their own way, the license deals would have been changed. However they saw it as convenient as well.

As counter example, Android OEMs couldn't care less for Google's roadmap and updates.

OS/2 was not an option for most consumers when I had to pay extra 500 euros on top of an already expensive 1500 euro 386SX computer, on a country where the minimum wage was around 300 euros after taxes. Naturally I converted the escudos into euros.

As for BeOS, the only thing I got from it was the R5 demo disk and the developer book that I eventually found out by accident on a technical library.

It wasn't really on sale over here.

OEMs had no choice, it was either that deal or they wouldn't be able to sell Microsoft OS licenses at all - this was something Microsoft did since the DOS days and they took advantage of their position as the #1 OS provider for IBM PC and the clones. A PC that cannot run DOS and later Windows would be worthless.

Even small shops on Mafia controlled neighborhoods have a choice.

My first PC was bought with DR-DOS 5.0 on it, and at high school we were using a mix of MS-DOS 3.3 and PC-DOS.

Plus the market for Atari and Amiga was still kind of strong, before the respective companies started going astray with their business decisions.

And to make it actual, most Web devs have a choice, yet they decide to put Google in power with their Chrome-only focus in name of convenience.

I think you should read on MS-DOS's per-processor licensing which was the cheapest one: it wasn't technically the only available scheme and didn't technically forbid other OSes, it was just the cheapest by far option, especially for larger PC manufacturers who were the ones that would popularize the OS (some small corner shop using DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things).

Lets not blame Microsoft alone for OEMs having the easiest route out, it takes two to dance.

Poor little OEMs, specially the ones that were installing pirate copies, so they weren't bound to any Microsoft requirement to start with.

Just like they do nowadays with Android updates, producing new handsets with 2 - 3 versions behind, to avoid new development costs, without any kind of updates afterwards, regardless of Treble compliance.

Vendors were the least affected by all this and they just did whatever was most profitable for them. Remember that the original message i wrote above wasn't about vendors but about by the time Windows XP came out it was already riding a huge popularity wave that began back in the DOS days. Whatever vendors took out of it, this sort of tactics made DOS hugely popular.

Vendors were doing what people asked them to put into their custom built PCs, mostly pirate software, while maximizing profits.

That’s an incredibly high price. Of course, 1994 was before the Euro, but I’m assuming there’s a conversion factor you’re using.

That being said, I don’t remember the exact price of OS/2 Warp but it was in the neighborhood of $100 and there were lots of specials to get it in peoples’ hands. IBM was first to market and had software to run windows 16-bit apps. I used OS/2 in college until the CS classes requiring 32-bit windows software that didn’t have OS/2 equivalents. (e.g. Borland C++ Builder)

Microsoft won the software chicken-egg problem.

That was 1991, OS/2 1.x was the current version, with version 2.0 being previewed in magazines.

The 500 euro difference was for an IBM PC with MCA architecture with OS/2 instead of MS-DOS/Windows 3.0.

PC prices were still incredible high during the 90's, everyone was buying them on credit.

2002 was the first time I managed to buy a PC without credit, thanks to a very nice startup salary during the .com wave.

Yeah, I remember the constant begging to upgrade from our C64 to something faster, culminating in a Mac LC in 1992-3 ($2500 with monitor?)

Don't forget windows 2000. For some the peak of Microsoft os's followed by decline.

OS/2

Linux on the desktop

Maybe FreeBSD, but the demon didn’t help. At the time WM, kde and openstep were popular, but like almost everything, it’s an open source copy of a commercial product. So there will never ever be innovation from that field.

BeOS with its beautiful c++ appkit and uikit

I hate myself as I write this, but Mac OS was always closer to desktop support than Linux/*bsd. If Mac support has always been sparse in 3rd party apps, it was even less for os/2 and BeOS, Nextstep.

I really wish BeOS had taken off though!!!

It's interesting to see those early speculations while knowing how they turned out, such as Netscape open sourcing their code and MS fearing the open source approach.

MS did fear the open source approach back then - the 'Halloween' documents were leaked out of MS in that timeframe, and they do make that quite clear.

It's pretty unfortunate that English uses the same word for "no-cost" and "unfettered".

Somewhere there is a sociolinguistic Ph.D waiting to be done on the downstream effects of this.

In this case both are relevant, since indeed, why would you sell something that's also given away by others at no cost, possibly along with your own contributions.

In Red Hat's case we did have CentOS.

Marketing is why. With good marketing investment you can reach people who don't know how to get the no cost version and are willing to pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com