[mechanical_fish]

Man, BSD conquers the desktop and it still can't get no respect.

(Of course, its non-free "Mac OS X" disguise does fool a lot of people.)

What I'm trying to say, of course, is that there's no reason why multiple takes on the Unix kernel can't live happily next to each other in the marketplace. Also, you can't just blame Linux for stealing potential mindshare from the HURD... it was a group effort. There was also FreeBSD, as well as non-free but well-respected options like Solaris.

[gaius]

Well, kinda sorta. Why, for example, didn't Oracle choose FreeBSD as their preferred platform? They've gone with Red Hat, and include a long-ish list of stuff that you have to install on top of RHEL to get their software to work. It's crazy really. As in, one of their premier platform simply doesn't work out of the box. Solaris, Windows, you name it, you just install and go, but RHEL is a complete pain in the arse.

So, why? 'Cos Linux has the mindshare, and it got the mindshare because it has legions of activists (e.g. Slashdot) with nothing better to do than repeat the message to anyone who will listen. Linux hoovered up basically all the non-geek consciousness of free Unix, which means you show up to work and the company has already bought a squillion RHEL licenses and can't understand why all the engineers are slack-jawed with horror...

[pmorici]

Tell me about it RHEL is a pain in the butt. I much prefer Suse (SLE) from a usability standpoint. I think the reason BSD isn't more popular though for example with Oracle is because there is no company that sells BSD as a business platform and is as well known as RH. Sure it's a major part of OSX but not many people use OSX as a server.

[gaius]

There did used to be a company called BSDI that sold BSD/386, I wonder whatever happened to them. Way back in the day, Oracle had a project called Raw Iron in which they planned to sell boxes as dedicated Oracle appliances, they used FreeBSD for that, so somewhere within the company they do acknowledge that it's the best of the free Unixes (for their app).

My cow-orkers and I all run OSX, FreeBSD, Debian/Ubuntu on our own kit... No-one I know uses Red Hat by choice. I'd love to deploy XServes at work, but again, it's a mindshare problem... Dells running Red Hat, yuck.

[ehedberg]

BSDi merged with Walnut Creek, then sold its software operations off to Wind River in 2001. That was a bit of a rocky period for FreeBSD releases, if memory serves, since a good chunk of core had worked for Walnut Creek before the merger...