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Linux Turns 10
An AC sent in: "The IBM PC may be 20 years old, but they're not the only ones with a birthday coming up. Check out www.linux10.org for an invitation to a birthday party on August 25 for the Linux kernel. The big bash is in Sunnyvale, just down the peninsula from the San Francisco LinuxWorld Expo, but there are also links to local parties around the globe (or if there are none near you, plan your own and add it to the list)."
Will any of these parties be put on the web via live stream?
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
I think you're missing one of the major ones impacts. Just five years ago e-mail viruses were virtually unheard of. Without Visual Basic, tech support people would still be telling people "No, that's not an e-mail virus, it's just a hoax." Now, with the recent innovations by Microsoft and embedded visual basic scripts, 9 chances out of 10 it IS an actual e-mail virus. Without Microsoft's passion to innovate new and exciting technologies like these many people would be out of a job... instead the security and anti-virus industry is absolutely booming! Thanks Microsoft. Happy 10th Birthday Visual Basic! May you keep infecting emerging technologies with new and innovative viruses as you have for the past 10 years well into the next decade!
Wow. Somewhat of an interesting story for me. I just got through with a long car trip with the audio book of Linus' "Just For the Fun of It" to keep my brain occupied during the mind-numbing journey.
It talked a lot about Linus himself, how Linux started, his views on Open Source, politics and the meaning of life. (His take on the meaning of life was not insightful, but at least interesting.)
Did you know that Linux started out as an overgrown terminal emulation program to read USENET newsgroups from the University's computer, and ran under Minix?
Neat stuff. Linus was taken completely by surprise that Linux has gotten to where it is today. On one hand, had he known of all the work that was ahead of him, and that he'd be spending ten years of his life on it, he would have given up. But on the other hand, seeing all that it has done and the benefits that it has brought, he said he probably would have went forward with it.
If this sounds schizophrenic, at least according to the book, that partially describes a number of Linus' views. Like on intellectual property.
Anyhow, glad to read there will be a Linux anniversary celebration, and for an intersting commute, pick up the audio book. Five CD's full.
Suitcase contents:
:-)
Stake
Holy Water
Crossbow
Sig-Sauer with carbon fibre bullets (Ultraviolet has much better weapons!!)
Ancient volumes on Vampires, Demons and other creatures of the night..
Oh, damn thats Sunnydale not SunnyVale.
Anyway, why did a vampire who gets sunburn very easily, decide to live in California ? Maine or Seattle whould be much better for his complexion.Ah, that explains Microsoft!!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
www.linu x10 .org
I know I almost did. Those damn cameras are going to ruin this world...
Regards,
KGraci
If ever having left someone's prescence, you feel as if you lost a quart of plasma, AVOID that prescence -W.H.Burroughs
There is no such thing as a user-friendly kernel.
I don't know about that. Of course, the "users" in question are the authors of programs that use the kernel's services. And I'd say that Linux is moderately user-friendly. It could be better, but it's certainly much, much friendlier than any of the OSes ever made by MicroSoft.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What you don't do is *Address* the kernel directly on a daily basis. You DO interface with it constantly. That's what an *interface* is. It sits *between* you and kernel.
Inter-face. Look up the word and then look up "inter."
bash is an interface. KDE is a GUInterface.
THEY face the kernel. YOU face them.
Inter. Get it?
Perhaps you are getting confused by your advanced knowledge that Linux is just the kernel. You are correct.
bash and KDE are not Linux. They are among the many kernel *interfaces* available to address the kernel and for the user to address.
I wish to God that Sun had taken half the money they spent on testing Gnome and KDE. I would have written them a long letter telling them everything they learned with a lot less wasted time on everybodies part. They suck, for everybody, newbie and expert alike. They don't need to.
bash, on the other hand, is an excelent interface. . . for those that already know everything.
The joke is funny, as many jokes are, because of how painfully true it is.
KFG
Yes, you are a bit confused. He didn't say *Linux* software from the 80s, he said software.
.of the 80s.
The point of fact is that Linux was specifically developed to run existing software. .
You'll find most of it at gnu.org.
KFG
"Hey honey, want to go to a Linux party? Right off I-95 in Philadelphia. Yeah, near New Jersey. Honey? Honey?..."
...also related to infrastructure, can be found here. It's so interesting to compare what both have done to the internet. ;)
"Turn the Page" -- Bob Seger
"Turn Turn Turn" -- Pete Seeger
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Great. You had to go and violate copyright laws by posting the lyrics to that song on this board. How will you feel if Slashdot now gets sued for millions of dollars? ;)
I actually live in Joisey. :) You have to have a sense of humor to live here.
A usable interface? :)
For those east coasters, there will be a party held in Philadelphia. Check here for details. This link is correct as the one on the main page of linux10.org is broken.
I get dips on spanking the kernel!
Is that the new euphemism for what we do when pictures of a naked Tux get us far more excited than we should be? Just pick up a linux magazine at the local computer store and ask to use their bathroom for a few minutes. I can see it now...
Eew, that's dirty.
See also this history of linux.
Linux user since early January 1992.
[note - XP =18, etc. depending on how you count it.]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
bash? ssh? What about us korn fans? We shouldn't be discriminated against just because the music sucks.
A standardized set of video codecs in a single stable player.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Is it really worth celebrating that two things that were originally intended as quick backwards compatibility HACKS has stayed around this long, spending huge amounts of energy on maintaining backwards compatibility?
The IBM PC never was very well designed to begin with, and neither was UN*X. Still, both technologies keep their life force because they've already become standards.
The IBM PC was designed to make porting easy for already existing x86 CP/M software. Check the documented CP/M backwards compatibility interrupts if you don't believe me. It used commodity parts because time-to-market was the most important issue. CP/M itself wasn't used because of a legal fight between IBM and Digital. (I believe this was mentioned in a documentary film labeled "Triumph of the Nerds".)
The reason that Linus got so much help with creating Linux, was because they wanted it to run already existing UN*X software, quickly.
As any low level coder can attest, the IBM PC as it is today is a kluge on a kludge on a hack. Just the process of making it boot is a tedious job with pitfalls around every corner. It's got an entire 16-bit computer inside that's only used during the first couple of seconds after you turn it on. The CPU is full of instructions that are never ever used by the programs that 99.9% of PC users use.
I'm almost amazed it still works.
Linux on the other hand has been totally redesigned since its hack days. There are still a major limitations with the way it's designed, though. It's a monolithic kernel, an ancient design principle, where everything is running in the same place, intermixed like crazy. The increased modularity of the recent kernels help with some things, letting you add drivers during runtime, but doesn't help much with larger upgrades, or making it easy to develop for. A more modern kernel design such as the Hurd can let a regular user develop and try out larger kernel parts during runtime, whereas with linux a reboot is still required for upgrading most nonessential parts of the kernel. And since it's just one big heap of code, a mistake in one place can make the whole thing crap out. It's a stroke of fortune that Linus has the inhuman ability to maintain such a beast.
And that's just Linux. For UNIX, the main word is Inconsistency. The inconsistencies of the API are quite hair raising, and many of the calls are practically hacks that remained, and never got implemented proper. The security model is laughable, a philosophy that you either are God (root), or you are not. The commandset is just as intuitive as you'd expect, where practically every program has a different way of recieving command line arguments. The X Window System is an add on that is also full of kludges. It eats more and more memory and can never release it. It is optimized for a situation that is hardly ever the case, namely that the applications are running on a remote computer, making every tiny little bit that's going to appear on your screen pass through a bunch of network abstraction layers. That's one of the reasons X on a monster workstation often feels slower than the actually hundreds of times slower machines we were using in the 80's...
Excuse me for hardly even touching the surface on that one, but I started feeling nauseous.
All the while we were focusing our efforts on what was already there, smart new designs came and went, because they weren't backwards compatible.
Great new designs have been researched, which would help the totally different demands of computing today. But still people cling to what they know, and prefer to hang on to what they have no matter how much extra work it'll take in the long run.
Why is this? So we can run software from the 80's? Modern versions of Windows won't. Linux will, but what is the use, seeing that practically everything has been rewritten since anyhow?
The reason not for switching to something new is not to rewrite the software, but that's happening continuously anyhow, so why would that be a problem?
What's holding us back then? To put it in Slashdot terms I think it's FUD. Not the technique, but the feelings themself. Human nature.
We pretty much like it better the older it gets, no matter how many wrinkles and scars it accumulates.
Happy Birthday, PC and Linux.
We love you more each year.
Sunnyvale? Isn't that sitting directly on top of a fat hunking Hellmouth...?
A word can paint a thousand pictures
Wonder why they didn't wait to release 2.4.8 on that date.
Je ne parle pas francais.
I'd say the last time I interfaced with the kernel was when I ran top. Or maybe it was the last time I looked at the /proc filesystem. Or maybe it was when I mounted a filesystem. It was pretty recent, nonetheless.
Those systems COULD use a better interface. You're right, but you're wrong.
In Just for Fun Linus marks the first release date as September 17, 1991. The version was 0.01
Anyone planning on a party in the Baltimore/Washington/Arlington area?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
No media, no raging drunkards, just Bring your own entertainment, plug in your laptop, and make nice with the neighbors. The question remains as to whether or not Linux has just plain outgrown the grassroots ambience that is planned.
Geeks go fucking crazy when surrounded by even a dozen people. How the hell do you think they'll react when surrounded by a DOZEN THOUSAND at a LINUX RAVE? Good god, at least let them hang out in the cool-down room. There aren't *too* many people in those.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
what's wrong with read, write, and ioctl?
er, OK forget ioctl, what's wrong with read/write?
The verses you quote refer to "swearing" of the kind one does when taking or giving an oath, like "I swear that the testimony I am about to give will be the truth....", or "I swear to protect and defend...", not to the kind of vulgar language that 2 or 3 generations ago was referred to as "swearing" or "cursing" and is nowadays known as the way most people talk, and the way that ACs with nothing worthwhile to say chose to say it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...and everyone that is a part of the open source community, including "mere" users. In ten years we have come further than any comparable OS in that same amount of time. Remember, this isn't ten years since Linux 1.0 - this is ten years since the project was announced _at all_.
What's most amazing is that we've done it all on our own sweat, blood and tears. We've created something for ourselves (and others) that is powerful, useful, and has shaped the world of technology (and thus the world in general) in many important ways. All of it was for just one goal: to create something cool.
Congratulations, everyone!
Sept. 9. at 01:46:40 GMT, the unix system clock is 1 billion seconds old.
SkåneSjællandLinuxUserGroup has a page that counts down to it (it's in danish, but most people should understand the numbers) at http://www.sslug.dk/~chlor/1000000000
We're celebrating the anniversary of the announcement which got the community involved in Linux. The first beta testers and offers for help came in after this announcement. August 25, 1991 was when Linux changed from being just Linus' hobby to involving others. Yes, it does pre-date the first kernel posting by a few weeks.
You can choose different criteria and arrive at a different day. Linux10.org will respect your choice and still link to your local celebration's web site if you pick a different day based on Linux history. The first involvement of the community was what we thought made this date stand out among other candidates. But as a counterexample, SSLUG in Copenhagen chose Sept 17 based on the actual posting of Linux 0.01. As long as you have a reason grounded in Linux history, it's an equally good choice. (Though I think Aug 25 and Sept 17 are the only two you're going to find.)
For those who tried to argue one date over the other, don't bother. You will never settle it because there are different criteria by which these dates can be picked. However, I urge you to respect the choices of the volunteers who go to the time and effort to organize a Linux 10th anniversary event in your area.
(BTW, sorry that I didn't post this earlier. I was at the Moffett Air Show all day.)
I'm afraid she's not on the guestlist.
Got friends?
No, this is not flamebait. It's an honest (and somewhat sadened) remark by a very long time Linux fan (cfr. my signature) who just finally managed to get the sysadmins at his office (very much against the desires of their NT-minded (blinded?) boss) to seriously consider Linux SMP servers with Gigabytes of RAM for some heavy E-CAD work as a replacement for our aging HP-UX boxes. In fact, one such Linux sweety will likely be ordered quite soon for evaluation purposes. And what happens? Precisely now the 2.4 kernels are taking over the various distributions while having major trouble with their VM in exactly the kind of conditions we want to use them for.
Just to short cut one kind of replies: Of course we can use an older distribution or build our own combination of things (heck, I don't even use a distribution at home and compile everything from scratch). But at work, I'm not a sysadmin, and we have to make do with a few UNIX and NT experts and lots of people who how how to fix NT problems, but whom one might suspect of fearing that a Linux box will explode if they push the wrong key. And no, the latter is not a reproach, its an simple observation. It's quite normal given their backgounds, but it's also a major problem for us Linux zealots.
I absolulety hate to say it, but Linux still has a few more years to go before really making it, even in certain non-desktop roles. It needs a several more improvements in the technical department. It definitely needs to loose its tendency to have stable versions that aren't stable at all until several months after initial release. But most of all, it needs a whole class of people who know a considerable amount about using computers (read as: Windows machines), but don't really understand them, to get used to something which, to them at least, is completely new and exotic.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Linux is just more proof shit does not sell.
Well, actually...
Yes, We are planning an East-Coast event in Philadelphia right off of I-95, very easy to get to. http://philadelphia.linux10.org for more info, it's currently being written/updated.
I get dips on spanking the kernel!
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Are there any parties planned for the Denver metro area (including Boulder)? If so, drop me a line and give me some details.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
These 'problems' were well known for a long time. What the study did was quantify them and test them to determine if they were the random gripe of someone with sour grapes or something that really did confuse the average user.
One thing here, however, is that most users are now used to Windows, so anything different from Wintendos is likely to confuse people who first face a new system.
I would, however, be the first to complain about the gdm login window, and I've been using Unix since 1983.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
What do you get for the kernel that already has everything?
Lotsa birthdays coming up! Be sure you don't miss these high-tech celebrations:
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