The first Unix system I ever used was a 386BSD. The first Unix system I could ever get my hand on by downloading or buying disks was Linux. From the get go, Linux was easy to obtain. I of course preferred the BSDs since that's what I was used to, but just being able to hack on Linux 24/7 from my bedroom without having to share the system with hundred others, and having root access without having to hack someone's else system just allowed me to dive deeper than the BSDs. It was easier to find other folks going through the same and targeting everything first for linux before BSD. It created a tremendous fast feedback loop, easy to obtain, more programs available for it.
The first Unix system I could ever get my hand on by downloading or buying disks was Linux.
I think this is the reason for the early relative popularity of Linux compared to BSD. We have to remember that in the early 90ies, most people did not have internet at home or at least not broadband internet. I got my first Linux CD-ROM in 1993 and started using Linux in 1994, because a lot of computer magazines came with Slackware Linux. It was also relatively easy to get Linux distributions cheaply on CD-ROMs, e.g. through the InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource. I only discovered FreeBSD probably through some Linux documentation and for me the only way to get it was to buy a relatively expensive FreeBSD CD set from Walnut Creek (remember, no broadband internet). When I finally got a FreeBSD set in 1996, I was amazed by its consistency, documentation, and quality. But by then, Linux already had all the attention.
Why magazines shipped Linux? I don't know. Maybe some were afraid to ship BSD because of the AT&T lawsuit. But I think Linux was also the better story: 'a student hacker somewhere in Finland writes a kernel and takes over the world/is going to break down the Microsoft empire'.
I was there for Minix and Linux, I didn't get my hands onto 386BSD at the time (nor knew it existed), only a bit later FreeBSD/NetBSD and eventually OpenBSD. Hence my question: Was 386BSD somehow harder to obtain than Linux?
I guess it was just because at the time, where large transfers over modem were entirely impractical, Linux distributions tended to pop up "everywhere", in book stores as part of books or by themselves, in computer magazines, in rather "micro" distributions on floppy disks etc.? While I guess 386BSD's distribution channels were less fanned out?
I sourced my original Slackware/Redhat/Debian CD image from Infomagic back in the 1990's. This was a common way to get the install media before dialup speeds hit 38400 and beyond since downloading a whole distro was so slow and would require so much disk space.
It looks like they had a seperate BSD image at the time which had the BSD's on it. So probably not much more difficult to obtain than Linux by 1995.
I could access it through network via michnet back then. I had no idea where to obtain one, and I think when I did finally find one for sale through some computer magazine, it was in hundreds of dollars (easily $500+) when I barely had pennies to rub together as a high schooler. When I got Linux, I put money together with friends to get a CD. Our major expense was really buying pack of floppies to transfer and install it since we didn't have a CD drive then.
