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> Linus was a 386BSD user, or hoped to be. A lawsuit stopped people like him from getting their hands on the BSD code to play with, so he wrote a UNIX clone himself using MINIX as a model.

Torvalds himself said that he couldn't use 386BSD because it required the 80387, which he didn't have.

http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2010/02/18/freebsd-and-the-gpl/

Apparently this is wrong because I misquoted. Damn.

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Maybe I'm reading the story you linked to incorrecty but wasn't that a quote from his friend, Lars Wirzenius?

The gist of what I was trying to say, poorly perhaps, is that in 1993 Linux was available, it was free and it worked on previously DOS-controlled, home PC's. BSD wasn't as available nor as ready for use on the home PC. At least not as I remember it. It certainly is now. But it wasn't then.

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