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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Nice explanation, except IBM has been one of the largest Linux contributors since forever, they saw it as a means to reduce Aix development costs.

Linux only took off during the dotcom days as IBM, Oracle and Compaq started adopting it into commercial workloads, back in 2000.

Visual Studio Code isn't in the same ballpark as Visual Studio. It was already an Azure project, as the Monaco editor, and it was a way to kill Atom.

ARM is only successful on mobile devices and Apple hardware.

If you mean ARM on server, the most successful company, Ampere, is largely owned by Oracle, and there are some ongoing discussions about a full acquisition.

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> ARM is only successful on mobile devices and Apple hardware.

Your "only" is funny. That is by far the biggest computing market worldwide.

Until phones get to replace laptops and desktops, it doesn't matter much.

We're literally watching this happen.

For some niche segments, yes.

If by “niche segments” you mean everyday computing tasks, sure.

Linux took off when PCs were finally able to run operating systems with virtual memory. All of a sudden devs did not need to pay for licences for C/C++ compilers and other dev tools, but most importantly they no longer had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for Unix workstations or servers. It coincided with the commercialisation of the Internet (it started as a non-commercial project funded by DARPA).

Linux took off AFTER PCs were finally able to run operating systems with virtual memory.

I was using VM systems running on PCS from 1989 (OS/2) Linux only started in 1991 and did not take off for say 10 years, by then Windows NT existed.

So VM was necessary for Linux but was not the reason for it taking off.

In my experience Linux came in for servers replacing other Unix servers. Windows NT servers continued for some time.

As for desktop you still need Excel and to a lesser extent Word and these are still best on Windows.

Linux definitely replaced Unix servers. I remember calling Digital Equipment Corporation rep in the UK in 1994 for a quote for a server and was told I'd need to pay a minimum of 100,000 GBP for a minimum running config. That's 200,000+ GBP in today's money for something that had less power and storage than a RaspberryPi with an 32GB SD card. Yes, the price included the license for the operating system and the http server.

Linux was nowhere around when PCs were already running OS/2 and Windows NT, it was something to toy around at home, for doing university homework, and only because Windows NT POSIX wasn't good enough.

Had Microsoft known better, and Linux would never taken off on PC.

Paying for software was never an issue back then, piracy was quite common, you could get whatever you wanted on the countries where street bazaars are a common thing.

Check the list, make your order, come around the following week.

AWS Graviton servers are ARM. These tend to be cheaper and more reliable than Intel/AMD counterparts.

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