
If Linux Never Was – imagining an alternate reality without Linux - parvenu74
https://lunduke.com/posts/2020-02-14/
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gshdg
Nah. If Linux was never invented, this would just be the 20th time in a row
someone declared it to be “the year of BSD on the desktop”.

~~~
eesmith
And there would have been a Beastie Racer.

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mariuolo
If not some version of BSD, we might be using Minix or perhaps Hurd.

~~~
tetris11
This, I feel like Linux was just sexier for kernel devs, robbing Hurd of
potential support

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skinnymuch
I don’t know anything about Hurd besides GNU working on it when Linux came
out. What was sexier about Linux? Was Hurd any good?

~~~
eesmith
I don't know how "sexier" has anything to do with the topic.

Linux was available _now_. Hurd ... was not. Still isn't.

Hurd is based on a microkernel architecture, which was/is enticing because
(quoting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd)
), "In theory the microkernel design would allow for all device drivers to be
built as servers working in user space" and "According to Hurd developers, the
main advantage of microkernel-based design is the ability to extend the
system: developing a new module would not require in depth knowledge of the
rest of the kernel, and a bug in one module would not crash the entire
system."

There is a long debate about microkernel vs monolithic kernel. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel)
for one such summary.

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skinnymuch
Like everyone else is saying. This is silly. Another open source kernel and OS
would’ve taken Linux’s place.

An easier example is Git. If Git wasn’t made. Or perhaps it was made by an
unknown and thus didn’t gain traction, the world would be pretty close to how
it is now. Another DVCS like Hg would’ve been widely used or a split of a few.
However it would’ve ended up, the world would be, relatively speaking, the
same.

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krzepah
NooooOooOOoOoooOOOOooooOoooooooo :'(

We'd be all on win :((((

Joke aside : BSD would probably at it's place - one thing that we could
advocate as being unique to unix is it's viral open license system

~~~
oehtXRwMkIs
> unique to unix is it's viral open license system

GNU is not Unix

