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by dr42
5114 days ago
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I was using Unix long before Linux came along, and you're right it was the fork that pushed the most for the desktop. Even though today I am using it as my desktop that's really only because I write server software. I think the main thrust for Unix on the desktop was in fact OS/X, but among us geeks it has been Ubuntu. But that was really my point, it was the distros like RH and Ubuntu that put together something installable with a mostly workable window manager that most people associate with Linux, not the kernel. While I am very much not taking anything away from the work that Linus has accomplished, my point was that much of the credit for today's Linux installations comes more from RedHat than anything Linux did in the kernel. There indeed was the BSD wars, but most of the old timers that started their career with a flavor of Unix (for me, it was HP-UX on an HP9000), since then they have all been much of a muchness, varying only in their applicability to a given problem (including suitability to the desktop.) I am reasonably sure that the number of Linux desktops is very small, nearly every practical use for Linux is running servers. I would wager that OSX dwarfs Linux in terms of unix-on-the-desktop comparisons. Since history provides no A/B testing capabilities, it's very difficult to isolate the impact Linux has had. Would we today be all using some form of BSD, or maybe Solaris/Intel with ZFS. Who knows, but I am thankful to Linus for a number of things including his efforts to promote OSS. |
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While OSX is indeed a unix, it hides this so well that unless you know what you're looking for you would never use any of the things that most people mean when they refer to unix.
I write this on a iMac I use for developing iOS applications, but honestly, if I hadn't been using linux since 2006(Ubuntu, gentoo then arch for the past 2 years) I would never have learned the use of the command line(and tools such as find, sed, grep, etc...) just from using the mac.
For me, the switch to linux was mainly because I wanted an alternative to Windows(when I first heard about Vista) and I could definitely not afford a mac(I was a student at the time). I suspect that many a tinkerer/hacker has gone down this path. In fact, most linux users have met have had similar stories, while mac users have mostly been professionals and/or design/hipster-type people. I have not met a single programmer whose main unix learning experience has come from OSX while I've met tons that have learned from linux(and a few from other unices) even if they eventually ended up using OSX in their daily work.
As I said, this is all anecdotal, but I wouldn't be surprised if these trends were more general.