How pervasive is the OSHW movement into the professional EE feild?

[Karel]

What I said is still 100% true... Linux was lucky to take advantage of a mature professional hardware platform many very rich companies spent billions developing...  Without that platform, no Linux as we know it today would happen..
Maybe something else, but not what we have today...

You can say that about all operating systems. In addition, Linux has proven to be flexible enough to adopt all kinds of platforms.
Not just one or two like most os's.
That hardware platform you were talking about, was already available before DOS was ready.
And Linux was able to (stable!) multitask while microsoft was still offering win 3.11...

Your timelines are wrong...

Nothing wrong with my timelines.

First, Linux needs 386+ processor and at about 1995, first Linux wasn't running on 8 bit 8088 from 1985,

I never wrote that. What I meant is that the pc was ready before DOS was ready. So, it was not microsoft who invented the pc platform or who made it possible to exists.

but on a 10 years old PC platform, that was quite mature by then.. So, yeah, it benefited from Intel/IBM/COMPAQ/HP/MICROSOFT and bunch of clones industry, that was allready a many billions industry...

It benefitted from the IBM clones, not from microsoft. Without microsoft, we still should have had pc's, but probably running
DR-DOS and later OS2-warp.

And it wasn't flexible enough at first, it had to rewritten to became so..

And it didn't have real SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) capabilities until kernel 2.6 (cca 2003.). It had them, but it didn't work well.
And those SMP fixes that were first steps to making Linux serious OS we have and admire today were contributed  by IBM..
And,no, they are not so good, they did it because they needed alternative to Windows, and for their own development..
They were decent enough to publish it though, so it was merged to Linux...

And at the time of first Linux, and Windows 3.11,  we were running Windows NT 3.51.. Real SMP system, designed by Richard Rashid (the inventor of MACH microkernel, the version of which is NT kernel), and Dave Cuttler designer of VAX VMS, a legend in OS world...

So no Linux wasn't some magical thing that dropped from the sky.. For years was no more than a toy... It grew to be real OS, and that's fantastic thing... But it benefited that PC were done by somebody else at somebody else's expense and effort...

Let's say that, at that time, Linux was already in a better state than win 3.11 and win95.

Well I see...

After all this now you invent what I said... LOL

I didn't say Microsoft invented platform... 

And although, technically it was better architecture than WFW3.11, WFW 3.11 was useful as a platform with thousands applications..
You could use it to do work... Networking too.. Primitive, but file sharing and printing worked just fine..
And Windows 95 was actually quite good... And good GUI for the era... It was expensive Macs or Windows 95...


Linux then was a joke if you wanted to use it for something useful... I know, I had separate PC running Linux so I can play with it.. It was fascinating learning tool.. nothing more..  Much different from today where today you can have a workstation running Linux and do actual work...

And Microsoft Reference Hardware platform was de facto industry standard, especially for those clones you mentioned.. Intel would make reference platform for motherboard and clone makers were at first simply implementing reference designs without changing a thing...

It is not I say it was Microsoft that we have to thank for being so great and worship it... I didn't say that.
All I said that hardware manufacturers wanted to be able to have "Compatible With Windows" sticker on their boxes  ( and they still do ) because they wanted to be compatible with 98% of PC computer owners...

That created standardization effort in industry, that drove volume, price drops etc., that, thankfully helped other platforms...

And if it was OS2/Warp that had won the race, hardware manufacturers wanted to be able to have "Compatible With OS2/Warp" sticker on their boxes.
Or any other os for that matter. At the end of the line, microsoft has contributed nothing to the evolution of the pc.
In fact, they slowed down by obstructing competitors and sabotage standards.

[2N3055]

And if it was OS2/Warp that had won the race, hardware manufacturers wanted to be able to have "Compatible With OS2/Warp" sticker on their boxes.
Or any other os for that matter. At the end of the line, microsoft has contributed nothing to the evolution of the pc.
In fact, they slowed down by obstructing competitors and sabotage standards.

I'm going to go out on a limb and venture a guess: You really hate Microsoft ? 

That's fine mate, it's not that I have any special love for them.. They're just company....

And if that OS/2 scenario materialized ( full disclosure : I really liked OS /Warp, more than windows of the time ),
than all I said would apply to IBM... Opens source didn't drive the industry, but quite cleverly used momentum that somebody else spent HUUUGE amounts of money to develop hardware that was really good that could be used to run their stuff too...

It's not an insult but a kudos to how smart small guy can outsmart giants...

But if you don't mind I would not like to stretch this any further... I respect your point of view..

And we are hijacking this post that is about something completely else.. We should stop.. If you feel this topic should be continued, I suggest you open new post for this purpose...

All the best Karel!!