Granted, I don't think that many people were thinking in gigabytes then, but:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr/src/sys/h/param.h.html and also: "To insure that it is possible to create files as large as 2^32 bytes with only two levels of indirection, the minimum size of a file system block is 4096 bytes. The size of file system blocks can be any power of two greater than or equal to 4096." [1] So I don't think Linux *invented* this UNIX(R)-ism, per-se - although they might have copied it's behavior :) HPUX11 requires that you specify 'mkfs -o largefiles / mount -o largefiles' - and that was released in '98 fer some pretty beefy hardware.. but,: Of course, our lab used Berkeley Unix, as do all right-thinking folks. East Coast people were said to be biased towards AT&T Unix, but then, they hadn't discovered hot tubs either. [...] "We're watching someone who's never used Berkeley Unix." He sucked in his breath and whispered, "A heathen." [2] As true as ever, 20 years on, imho :) -- [1] Marshall Kirk McKusick, William N. Joy, Samuel J. Leffler and Robert S. Fabry. A Fast File System for UNIX. Technical Report Computer Systems Research Group, Computer Science Division, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720. [2] The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, Clifford Stoll, 1989, ISBN 0-7434-1146-3