It's also amazing how many Caldera tentacles snaked into so many things.
Who is still alive that might have it?
There's a level of moral obligation to do preservation.
But even for "up to 7.5.3", it is just binaries; no source code.
Always wondered why they didn't come with Linux.
Even discounting Android, Linux is much better nowadays, but in the early 21st Century, it was temperamental and finicky enough to install and use that it scared away nontechnical users.
It has gotten better-I remember having to muck around with modelines in X11 (not sure if this was 1990s or early 2000s-you get to a certain age and the decades start to blend together in your memory)-but who has to do that nowadays? Still, a HW manufacturer preinstalling Linux could have done that for you
Are you trying to tell us that a dos operating system was better because it didn't involve using a command line to use?
OpenSuse and Mandrake were already a thing in early 2000's and they were pretty much targetting any user, offering YAST and drakconf that were extensive gui tools to configure pretty much everything on a linux system. You had little to do on a terminal already if you chose your distro correctly. Also if you bought the box version it came with a book guiding you through pretty much everything. [1]
Arguably the biggest hurdle/struggle on linux at the time was getting internet connection through a winmodem but it was a struggle that wasn't better solved with a DOS operating system.
[1] My theory is a lot of people have struggled with linux in the early years because they just got the CDs from magazines, then later downloaded the ISO versions, instead of purchasing the complete box versions with full documentation. How do you consult online documentation if you only had one computer, smartphones weren't a thing yet and you couldn't get the damn modem or gui working? Dual booting was the only way but this is the kind of experience that makes you soon grow tired of rebooting and give up if you don't get stuff corrected quickly.
While mandrake and suse where expensive, some editors released compkete dvd sets for 20 eur, around $15 or 20 for its day.
Because those were people trying to escape the command line, or they would not have been using Windows.
You write that as if past tense.
Didn't seem to sell very well though
And yeah, MS was particularly adversarial to Linux (and any other GNU licensed software) around that time. I've softened a bit on it, but will generally prefer BSD/ISC licenses over GPL for anything I can. Don't mind it for complete apps, but avoid it for libraries.
Sure graphics had two drivers to choose from and you had to craft your X11 config by hand but that taught character and perseverance
It came with at least three DEs, olvwm and xfce and whatnot.
Driver were never of an issue for me maybe just luck.
It was definitely luck.
Lack of drivers was definitely a problem but it made me spend a lot of time researching whatever I bought first. Lots of reading Linux HOWTOs and Usenet forums about whether a particular card was supported or not.
I had to install from 30 floppy disks because my brand new IDE CD-ROM wasn't supported for another 6 months. Same with my new Diamond Stealth 64 graphics card. I had to wait 6 months to be able to run X11
Those both came with my new Pentium 90 PC. After that I bought hardware specifically for Linux like my BusLogic 948 SCSI card
Debian 3.1 was tons better than 3.0. Miles ahead.
As the article notes, DR-DOS didn’t become a product until many years later.
You are referring to Windows 95 trick from Microsoft, regarding DR-DOS 6.
Windows 95 doesn't care what version of DOS you have because it replaces it with its own - MS-DOS "7.0".
This book has the background history about it, if I remember correctly.
https://archive.org/details/unauthorizedwind00schu_1
And there was the whole court case.
https://www.wired.com/1999/06/more-legal-trouble-for-microso...