> Linux always had the least amount of friction to get stuff working. Back in the early days, trying to get any rando program to compile and work on SunOS, AIX, HPUX, etc -- it was a touch and go / pain the ass process. IF your system had a compiler, you were probably missing any number of dependancies. Linux, you could always get stuff to compile and work.
Yeah, the proprietary vendors really shot themselves in the foot with unbundling, or the practice of moving packages out of the base install and into "products" people had to buy separately. Linux distros could be batteries included because of the GNU tools and, to some extent, the BSD tools that got ported, not to mention other ecosystems like X and LaTeX and various browsers, etc.
Yeah, the proprietary vendors really shot themselves in the foot with unbundling, or the practice of moving packages out of the base install and into "products" people had to buy separately. Linux distros could be batteries included because of the GNU tools and, to some extent, the BSD tools that got ported, not to mention other ecosystems like X and LaTeX and various browsers, etc.