[geeks] The best things in the world

[nate at portents.com]

> That's it right there. There were lots of PC's around, you could get
> a decent 80386sx system in 1990 for around $1500, a lot less than what
> you could get a 68020 or 68030 system for.

That's certainly true.  In 1989 a Mac IIci started at $6,700, not
including A/UX (which was UNIX System V Release 2.2, with some additional
features from later releases and BSD). In 1990 the Atari TT030, with 2 MB
RAM and 50 MB hard drive, retailed for $2995, however you couldn't
purchase Atari UNIX System V Release 4 until 1992.  The Amiga A3000UX,
bundled with UNIX System 5 Release 4, a 200MB hard drive, A2410 color
card, and ethernet retailed for $4998.

I knew about the BSDs well before Linux mostly because I was a Mac user
well before I ever used PCs, and NetBSD was around and supporting 68k Macs
well before Linux ever did.  I've watched Linux get unnecessary attention
since 1993, when I was very surprised to see the enthusiasm other early
college kids had for it.  I was also surprised to learn upon re-visiting
my college around 2000 that they were replacing their SGI workstations in
the computer science computer labs with PCs running Linux, and when I
asked one of the CS lab admins why they didn't choose one of the BSDs, he
said "because students were more familiar with and excited about Linux."

- Nate