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I don't get it. The article says that hardware is 1974 was expensive but UNIX was cheap to develop. Linus developing Linux just confirms what they are saying. Is the joke that computers used to be expensive and now they are cheap?
The joke is that a couple of drunk guys enduring an eternal winter came up with something better than silicon valley could.
Not to argue about a joke but Linux was 'better' because it was free, not because it was technically better. By the time it got actually better than UNIX tons of people have worked on it, not just couple of drunk guys. I think someone just misread what the article says and missed the 'not' in 'need not be expensive'. But if people find it funny it's cool, it's not for me to judge anyone's sense of humour.
Personally, it's amusing at best. In the same way as the girl in Jurassic Park using "Unix" to hack the system.
That being said, I still give mad props for the development that occurred during that era.
I think you should really ask around about product usage scenarios especially in Redhat/SUSE scenes. Linux is either same price or more expensive than Windows.
I think you say Minix was better but let me remind that it's creator himself says it was created for a very different purpose and still does it well. Its version 3 runs whole Intel World so it may have even "won"
I worked in TV industry and I knew some very high end studios. The amazingly expensive software they use needs a very reliable system without any kind of vendor lock in. They choose RHEL or SUSE on tested, certified hardware. OS price is just a small detail, like coffee machine supplies.
I have worked with very high end Microsoft Windows servers too. Did you know that their browser default homepage is MSN, not about:blank and it actually triggered Flash ActiveX install? I begun to see Windows like abuse of Dave Cutler's kernel. No less.
I think someone just misread what the article says and missed the 'not' in 'need not be expensive'.
You've missed the second part of that sentence - 'UNIX can run on hardware costing as little as $40,000'. The photo is the Finnish hacker making it work on a computer that cost a fraction of that, while drinking a beer. It's a play on the hold my beer meme.
It is still the same deal. Do you think high level suits can really understand the idea of GNU and Linux completely?
Some guy from a remote village in India can climb up to a hill for better reception and upload a couple of a hundred lines to the right place in right format and it could be accepted in Linux kernel which may eventually run in a IBM System Z monster with 40TB of RAM. That code may add 2x performance to a very crucial part. I think those blue suits simply ignore this fact to keep their corporate mind sanity. Seen old S360 photos? They really dress that way.
Btw, I didn't stereotypically make up that Indian guy climbing story. I used his OS distribution rather than multi billion Chinese giant version since it was simply better. Hundreds of thousands did. The village he lived sometimes lost power too. Of course, he added more team members later.
UNIX was a small and inexpensive open source system and could create miracles for such a low price.
When Linus came into scene, UNIX was heavily fragmented, expensive, closed with some insane trickery to make sure nobody cross compiles anything on the "enemy UNIX" (rival). I don't say go and read them but the size of auto tools should give a clue. It is one of the under rated inventions of GNU. Obviously BSD people have their own valid counter point too.
The only serious thing around was still Novell who begun to take UNIX serious right after Linux had a serious shape. I remember my company paid a Novell tech $2000 to restore the files from their SCSI. It wasn't a rip off, that is what happens when you use a closed system. Who knows how much money Novell took for training. For the curious: They still didn't buy a tape backup system.
We should just read first lines, check photo additionally remembering all those suits at IBM, Sun and MS and laugh. That is what meme is for. :-)
I also laugh whenever I see the quote of a open source developer with a cowboy hat in elevator of MS .
MS guy (with BillG tone): I am sorry but who are you? OSS guy: I am your worst nightmare!