On Fri, 1 Feb 2002 13:21:24 -0500 Noah Meyerhans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 12:01:50PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: > > > AFAICT, Linux grew out of need for an _affordable_ and free POSIX kernel > > > so that you don't have to spend billions just to run UNIX like > > > OS. > > > > It grew out of one man's University homework, and dissatisfaction > > with Minix (a tiny, "teaching" clone of Unix written by Linus' > > Univerity Professor Andrew Tannenbaum. > > No, Tanenbaum was never Linus' professor. Tanenbaum teaches in the > Netherlands, Linus was a student in Finland. During the famous > Linus/Tanenbaum debates of 10 years or so ago, Tanenbaum said that if > Linux had been written for one of his OS classes, it would have received > a failing grade (due to its monolithic kernel architecture).
Thanks for the correction. > You can find the Tanenbaum/Torvalds debates at > http://www.dina.dk/~abraham/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html > > One interesting thing about them is that fairly early on, Tanenbaum > criticises Linux for being closely tied to the Intel architecture. I > find that a bit amusing, since I'm running Linux on SPARCs, PowerPCs, > MIPSes, and ARMs. 8^) Back in the beginning, it _was_ closely tied to the i386. It was the Alpha port which convinced Linus to change that. -- +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81 | | | ! Great Inventors of our time: | ! Al Gore -> Internet | ! Sun Microsystems -> Clusters | +------------------------------------------------------------+
