;-]
On 7/19/06, Roger Critchlow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 7/19/06, Robert Holmes <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
> Not strictly true I think. Sure, Linux can't run without a PC but does that
> mean it can't exist without one? Linux started its existence in Torvalds'
> head before it appeared on a CPU and if all CPUs vanished tomorrow it would
> still exist in his and other experts heads.
>
There's a funny sort of ontology here.
Linus wrote Linux because he was inspired by Andrew Tanenbaum's Minix.
Andrew Tanenbaum developed Minix on a PC using Coherent, a UNIX clone
from the Mark Williams Company, because it provided the necessary
tools. It also provided an existence proof, but he didn't really need
that. Coherent was the brainchild of Bob Swartz, but it was
originally developed on a DEC PDP-11 and ported to the Zilog Z8000
before the 8086 or the IBM PC existed. The Mark Williams Company
itself was originally a subsidiary of Embosograph founded to market a
7-Up knockoff soft drink formula called Dr. Enuf. Coherent was
written by a core of students from the University of Waterloo, working
in Chicago under sometimes questionable immigration status. The work
took place in a huge brick building at 1430 West Wrightwood which had
the word Teletype engraved over the entrances. But the only
profitable part of this family commercial empire was Embosograph
itself and its profits derived from the manufacture of plastic beer
signs, embossed graphics on plastic augmented by lights and waterfall
illusions.
So beer rating, or the rating of the fizzy alcoholic beverage which
many americans call beer, is where Linux started.
-- rec --
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