> In fact, there were plenty of competing free operating systems too (e.g. MINIX).
I don't think there were many (any?) free UNIX or UNIX-like OSs at that time. MINIX wasn't albeit Tanenbaum wanted it accessible to as many students as possible so teh licence fee was relatively cheap compared to other UNIXes of the time. 386BSD (the precursor to FreeBSD and NetBSD) wasn't released until around a year after Linux albeit they started quite a bit before.
I guess there was lots of free OS's in the hobbyist sense but nothing that actually competed with MINIX.
I don't think there were many (any?) free UNIX or UNIX-like OSs at that time. MINIX wasn't albeit Tanenbaum wanted it accessible to as many students as possible so teh licence fee was relatively cheap compared to other UNIXes of the time. 386BSD (the precursor to FreeBSD and NetBSD) wasn't released until around a year after Linux albeit they started quite a bit before.
I guess there was lots of free OS's in the hobbyist sense but nothing that actually competed with MINIX.