31 May
2006

Comment on "Porting UNIX to the 386: The Initial Root Filesystem"

A read found another way
[PORTING UNIX TO THE 386] 

One of the series readers is a friend of many years, now in retirement. He reminded me of another clever way the initial root could have be formed.


Continue reading "Comment on "Porting UNIX to the 386: The Initial Root Filesystem""
Posted by william at 19:37 | Comments (0)
16 March
2006

What was it like launching the "porting" series

Setting the stage for 386BSD in the early 1990's
[PORTING UNIX TO THE 386] 

At the time Jon Erickson and I agreed to do the series, DOS was the prime platform for the IBM PC/AT. Windows 3 wasn't very well regarded, and the most common alternative platform was probably a Macintosh 512K.

Less than 10% of those with a PC had a machine as advanced as a 20Mhz 386 with 4MB or more memory with a 100 megabyte hard drive. CDROM's were anticipated, but the primary storage medium was 5 1/4 inch floppies.

So the primary goal of the article series wasn't UNIX or BSD types, but PC DOS programmers. Which is why the focus was on a console only BSD system, knowing full well that "real" bitmap graphics was still years off from being commonplace. This shows up in the goals of the first article "DESIGNING THE SOFTWARE SPECIFICATION".

If we could just get a OS out there, PC developers would go crazy and build out whatever was necessary. The only problem would be holding them back from what should probably not be done ...


Posted by william at 21:41 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Why the name Jolix?

[Why Jolix?] 

So why call it Jolix?

In short, because to many that was all 386BSD was.

No one ever understood why we named 386BSD as we did. Everyone had a different view on everything we did - including many at Berkeley who we introduced to UNIX in the PDP-11 years.

So we've brought it back as a commercial entity, to examine the past and present of 386BSD and its related descendants as a way to speak about what is yet to happen.

Many have communicated to us that we're in a world that is clueless of where to go, because it refused to learn from the past many years ago, sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind.

So now may be the time to talk about it once again.


Posted by william at 19:27 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Welcome to Jolix

Blogging the history of early open source OS
[Why Jolix?] 

Greetings to Jolix, where to interact with the past and current items about 386BSD.

Its been 15 years since the article series and many questions and stories remain. We owe it to the wonderful readers of our series and users of 386BSD to reengange with them after such a long time. Especially as much that 386BSD tried to do still has not been done by the other open source OS's, or even by big, bad, old Microsoft itself.

Thanks to all of you, look forward to hearing from you.


Posted by william at 19:09 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)


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