zlacker

I agree with you about the massive damage caused by Microsoft, but ... it was there. In the DOS times, there was no choice between DOS and Unix on PCs -- there was effectively just DOS. Aside from niche things like Coherent (IIRC), Unix was only available on workstations and up, too expensive for small businesses and consumers.

Also, VMS and other OSes were the ones that ran for years without rebooting. Unix at the time was not so stable. Before Tcl, John Ousterhout wrote a log-structured file system for Unix because their Unix systems crashed often enough and took so long to boot that a possible loss of data but fast boot-up was deemed better than the lengthier downtimes with the existing file system.

So the PC market went with Microsoft and its encompassing environment, much to everyone's detriment. Fortunately, we've all moved on to the web and JavaScript and everything is now sunshine and roses. :-)