Linux in a World Where Windows 3.0 Never Happened

covertbadger writes "Larry Osterman said farewell yesterday to David Weise, the developer he credits with getting applications to run in protected mode on Windows 3.0, which led directly to Microsoft choosing to push Windows instead of OS/2. Today he speculates on what the IT world would be like if Weise had never completed this work. Windows 95 would never have existed, OS/2 would be the de facto standard, and IBM would never have put weight behind Linux because it had its own operating system to push."

warning

[X43B]

IBM evil (again) and no Linux? I think you're going to blow a lot of /.'s minds.

Re:Hmm

[TheKidWho]

And we would still be on OS 8 right now, waiting until 2006 for OS 9.

Doom only ran on DOS

[Dancin_Santa]

So all those college-age kids with their DOS computers would still be using DOS.

Microsoft would have ruled the roost.

Nothing is different than it is now.

Wow

[tdemark]

Rube Goldberg [rubegoldberg.com] would have been proud of that article.

- Tony

Obvious

[tubbtubb]

Clearly, in this scenario,
over time OpenVMS would become the defacto standard
on all macs, and BSD would still be dead, of course.

Remember Back To The Future 2?

[Xpilot]

Where Old Biff steals the DeLorean and gives the Sports Almanac to young Biff? Then Doc and Marty come back to a hellish timeline where Biff is a billionaire.

I think something like that happened, where old Bill goes back in time and gives young Bill some tips on how to get lucky in the IT world, plus some source code for Windows 3.0. And we're living in the nightmarish timeline that was created.

Only Doc and Marty can save us now. Or Linux. Whichever does it first :)

Re:Engineer?

[SCHecklerX]

Actually, just having a degree doesn't make you an engineer. Passing your EIT is the first step to that path. "MSCE" is a disgusting use of the word engineer to anybody who is a real engineer.

Re:If Windows had never existed on the home deskto

[datadriven]

Then Linux types would have had to shamelessly rip off the MacOS interface instead of the Windows one.

Maybe they'd call it Gnome, or something like that.

or maybe

[b17bmbr]

maybe microsoft would have adopted linux, maybe we'd have to come up with clever icons for ibm, and be talking about the big blue screen of death. microsoft's control lay ints api's and doc formats. without that control, eventually, they'd have to split from ibm.

Microsoft & Skin Cancer

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

Why Global Warming may be the first question you ask, but think about it. Many of us know that the shorter the wavelength of light, the higher the energy [newi.ac.uk]. We also know that blue and ultraviolet light has a shorter wavelength than red and yellow.

Therefore, due to the increased number of blue radiation [dink.org]given off by windows machines, there has been an exponential increase in short wavelength, high energy electromagnetic radiation - which of course has been linked to skin cancer.

Re:Engineer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Engineer was a term applied to people who ran trains, not something to be passed around like a slide rule or a mechanical pencil.

Damn you pointyheaded nerds for stealing our label! =)

Start as you mean to go on

[ioliver]

>When David got in the next day (at around 8AM), >he saw that his machine had crashed, so he knew >that Steve had come by and seen it. Golly, the world's first ever UAE (what GPFs were called when Windows was young and people didn't even dare to dream of BSODs) and Steve got to see it personally. I hope he gets to personally see all the results from me hitting "Send Error Report" half a dozen times a day. Ian

If This Were Marvel Comics' "What If"

[vjmurphy]

Then this would beget violent OS Wars, in which many many secondary heroes, like Ant Man, Scarlet Witch, Iron Man and Bruce Perens would be annihilated by enemies unknown.

In the end, only Captain America, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange would survive, only to discover their true enemy: a parallel universe Bill Gates, bringing with him Ultra Dimensional Windows Mega Super XP Hyperforce Go 5.4 with him.

Mwahahahahaha!

Been thanking the wrong guy!

[Mr. BS]

And I've been thanking Linus Torvalds for all of these years???

Dave Weise... You 'da man!!!

WOSWESU?

[gelfling]

Which OS would evil Spock use?

MOS/2 - Moustache OS/2, of course.

Re:Per? Were!

[teamhasnoi]

If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas!

If 'buts' and 'ors' were filthy whores...I'm still working on this one.

Re:"What if?" can be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

What the space ship had never crashed in Rosewell and we never reversed engineered all this nifty technology.

Re:"What if?" can be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

What if Spider-Man saved Gwen Stacy?
What if Spider-Man never married Mary Jane?
What if the all new X-Men died on their first mission?
What if the X-Men lost Inferno?

Re:If This Were Marvel Comics' "What If"

[Anonymous Coward]

Iron Man? Secondary? I say thee nay! Iron Man is top tier!

Re:Remember Back To The Future 2?

[Dun Malg]

But there is absolutely no freaking way I'd be getting in a Microsoft time machine. (Or a Linux one, for that matter.)

Hey, if you don't trust the Linux Time Machine project, why don't you download the source and fix it rather than complaining about it! :)

Re:"What if?" can be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

What if Commodore hadn't killed the Amiga market?

Re:Engineer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, sounds like somebody wasted a load of time and money on a fancy EIT certification! How cute. I work among hundred of software and hardware engineers, and I've never met anyone who cared about EIT. But by all means, toot your own horn :)

Re:"What if?" can be fun

[elgatozorbas]

What it all these nerds had girlfriends? /. would not have existed!

MCSE DeVry grad reviews Mac mini

[bonch]

Since Slashdot rejected my submission, enjoy: http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/MacMini2.html [divisiontwo.com]

Re:"What if?" can be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I was about to mod this whole thread "Offtopic," but you managed to draw a connection between Third Reich historical speculation and Linus Torvalds. Sir, I salute you!

If Windows 3.0 never happened....

[boarder8925]

If Windows 3.0 never happened, we wouldn't have funny Flash animations like this:

http://tinyurl.com/44te2 [tinyurl.com]

Re:Who is to say someone else wouldn't have

[dillon_rinker]

"proprietary Gnu license"

Well-played, sir, well-played. I admire the constructor of a good troll, and it's so rare to actually see one these days.