Making workstations even in the dominant market position that Sun had, was a cottage industry compared to technology today, and it was managed that way. I wouldn't blame management for Sun being irrelevant now.
What everybody except Steve Jobs got wrong was not taking user interface seriously enough. Not even Xerox. I've used aa Xerox Alto, a Sun workstation, an LMI CADR, and a Symbolics 3600, and none of them were as carefully crafted as a Macintosh with a tiny memory and a floppy disk. Next inherited this ethic.
Jobs valued the person using the machine more than anything else about the machine.
> What everybody except Steve Jobs got wrong was not taking user interface seriously enough.
But Linux took over the world and it had a crappy UI. I was there, back when Xorg didn't even exist, running X and messing with modelines on Linux. All the window manager sucked big times.
Sun, just like SGI, got attacked by cheap beige PCs running either Windows or Linux.
I don't think their UI had much to do with their downfall and, arguably, SGI's UIs were better than the competition and they still disappeared too.
Also weren't most machines sold by Sun servers anyway? Their famous "We the dot in .com" tagline.
to be fair, nobody in 1990 decided between NeXT and Linux, because (A) Linux didn’t exist yet and (B) they were / would have been completely different markets and totally different capabilities.
You're off by a year or two at best. Linus announced his kernel project on the Minix usenet group in Aug 1991.
It wasn't until mid 1992 that distros started to exist, and I'd say it took a bit of time for those to be complete enough to be usable for someone with a goal other than smoke-testing the kernel on their PC.
I can say for certain that I, a complete newbie, was able to boot SLS Linux floppies in early 1993, and within a couple months I was installing Slackware to HDD.
"Free", until mid 90s I guess most people bought Linux distros on CDs, later DVD (no downloads). For me the big, big plus on Linux (vs. Dos / Windows), had been all the free compilers.
I'd have to say that gcc is the unsung hero of FOSS. If you wanted compilers on your shiny new commercial-UNIX box, you either had to fork out $$$ or find a way to get the GNU toolchain into place. Even on PCs compilers tended to cost a lot, with Borland being a shining exception.
Somewhere, I still have a Red Hat 5 retail CD. I'm not sure, but I might have bought it at Borders Books rather than a computer shop. I know I bought a few CD-ROM collections at the bookstore.
Zigurd · · focus · HN ↗
What everybody except Steve Jobs got wrong was not taking user interface seriously enough. Not even Xerox. I've used aa Xerox Alto, a Sun workstation, an LMI CADR, and a Symbolics 3600, and none of them were as carefully crafted as a Macintosh with a tiny memory and a floppy disk. Next inherited this ethic.
Jobs valued the person using the machine more than anything else about the machine.
TacticalCoder · · focus · HN ↗
But Linux took over the world and it had a crappy UI. I was there, back when Xorg didn't even exist, running X and messing with modelines on Linux. All the window manager sucked big times.
Sun, just like SGI, got attacked by cheap beige PCs running either Windows or Linux.
I don't think their UI had much to do with their downfall and, arguably, SGI's UIs were better than the competition and they still disappeared too.
Also weren't most machines sold by Sun servers anyway? Their famous "We the dot in .com" tagline.
AceJohnny2 · · focus · HN ↗
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
ch_sm · · focus · HN ↗
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗
Minix existed at the time too, I know because I ran it on an 8088 PC.
But within a few years, linux started gaining mindshare and was starting to replace proprietary unix especially on individual PCs.
saltcured · · focus · HN ↗
It wasn't until mid 1992 that distros started to exist, and I'd say it took a bit of time for those to be complete enough to be usable for someone with a goal other than smoke-testing the kernel on their PC.
I can say for certain that I, a complete newbie, was able to boot SLS Linux floppies in early 1993, and within a couple months I was installing Slackware to HDD.
BirAdam · · focus · HN ↗
You also had SuSE, which really started as German-localized Slackware.
_trampeltier · · focus · HN ↗
flyinghamster · · focus · HN ↗
Somewhere, I still have a Red Hat 5 retail CD. I'm not sure, but I might have bought it at Borders Books rather than a computer shop. I know I bought a few CD-ROM collections at the bookstore.
SoftTalker · · focus · HN ↗