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When did Linux/x86 overtake proprietary Unix/RISC?

2 points by greatquux ↗ HN
For those of you working in the late 80s and early 90s, when was the moment and context when you realized that Linux on commodity x86 hardware was faster/better value than the proprietary Unix and RISC boxes you were using? And how did you use that knowledge? And I'm not knocking too hard on the excellent tank-like hardware and great build quality of the expensive stuff, but when you saw the speed of Linux/x86 and realized what you could get at that cost, it must have been a huge shift in your thinking, and I just want to know more about that particular time.

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simonblack
I used UNIX all through the 1990s, first with AT&T UNIX, then Novell's then Solaris (both SPARC and x86).

From time to time I'd look at Linux, and was always astonished at how fast it was developing, though it was always a 'second OS' that I'd put on laptops or whatever.

Around 1997-2000, it was not much different from the Solaris I was using, but I remained with Solaris as my main OS.

In 2001, I had a problem with Solaris and my new x86 desktop machine, so I put Linux on it. I haven't used any other OS but Linux as my everyday OS since then.

I have wandered around the distros, however. Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, Mint were the main ones. If I had my druthers it would be Slackware combined with the Debian/Mint apt software package system.