Adam Tauno Williams said the following on 12/01/2009 09:09 AM:
[...] UNIX was around then too.... I used it then, but it was *crazy* expensive and way beyond the reach of most users and companies.
Students, perhaps, companies, I disagree Back in '78/79 I installed a one of the early UNIX-on-a-16bit-micro for an 8-man company in North Wales to control an automated test facility. It cost less than a small car or reasonable motorcycle. Through the early 80s I made a good living installing UNIX for small companies or departments, the largest being about 40 people. Although SCO may be a hated name now, they, Convergent a few others had quite reasonable UNIX offerings. SCO on a 386/486 plus Progress plus a few Wyse-60 terminals was a very good alternative to XBASE plus one of the awful PC file servers of those days. Around '85 IBM brought out the AIX and addressed that at small companies and that grew from the initial "desktop" unit to a more complete range, but initially was a great "departmental" machine. No, UNIX was not crazy expensive and it was most certainly *NOT* beyond the reach of most companies. -- "Key escrow to rule them all; key escrow to find them. Key escrow to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the land of surveillance where Big Brother lies." -- Peter Gutmann -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org