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Happy 13th Birthday Linux!

carlmenezes writes "On August 25, 2001 we celebrated the 10th birthday of Linux. Today, it's year 13. Lucky for Linux, maybe?" Congrats to everyone who managed to get their name in the credits! You must be very proud parents.

36 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. puberty by nuggetman · · Score: 4, Funny

    soon its voice will be cracking and hair will be apearing in places it never appeared befeore

    --
    ...and that's all there is to it.
    1. Re:puberty by zymurgy_cat · · Score: 5, Funny

      don't forget that all the jobs in your crontab file will only get done once a week, but you'll now have to configure them to run every 5 minutes. ps and top will now start outputting things like, "yeah, yeah, i'll get to it later" and "i already did it this week!"

      --
      -- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
    2. Re:puberty by doggiesnot · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ah, they grow up so fast!

      You're lucky, when your little penguin is ready for junior/senior prom, at least you won't need to rent a tuxedo.


      rm -rf /bin/laden http://andrewhitchcock.org/index.pl?page=binladen

    3. Re:puberty by b0r0din · · Score: 5, Funny

      young-man$ rm trash
      rm: Aww, Mom! I'll do it later.
      young-man$ set TABLE "now"
      set: But I did it last week! Ask the Sparc5, I'm busy playing Counterstrike.
      young-man$ exec homework
      exec: Command failed.
      young-man$ write paper
      write: paper is not logged on.
      young-man$ kill -9 1
      NOOOOooooooooooo...

    4. Re:puberty by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 3, Funny

      And let's not forget look forward to Tux's first $600 phone bill, nor the constant onslaught of "I need a car."

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
    5. Re:puberty by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 5, Funny

      Before he gets a car, he'll have to pay $699 for a license...

  2. Closed party by tcdk · · Score: 4, Funny
    So I click "Read More" and get a

    Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

    ...message. Inviting people to a birthday party and they not letring them in the door...

    That's just rude...

    --
    TC - My Photos..
  3. it's teenage years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    when the child genius starts getting distracted and all rebelious.

    linus: what are you rebeling against?

    tux: whadda ya got?

  4. Little boy is growing up. by The+I+Shing · · Score: 4, Funny

    Linux is 13? Pretty soon it's going to start liking girls, [sniff] and then before you know it you're handing over the car keys and telling it to please be careful. (oops, I've assigned the male gender to an operating system... all the girls who read Slashdot will be mad at me... all three of them...)

    --
    You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
    1. Re:Little boy is growing up. by MmmmAqua · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey now, don't go forcing Linux into your gender roles! Linux is about choice - so you'll just have to become comfortable with Linux's new companion - Tim.

      --
      Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
    2. Re:Little boy is growing up. by Qzukk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Could be worse, Linux could have chosen Bob ;)

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  5. Linux a Teen? by Manip · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh woot, we've had 10years of calm quiet Linux and now we get 5 of teen Linux.. moody and depressed. :-/

    I for one can't wait until Linux reaches maturity on its 18th.

    PS I bet Linux will get more girls fiddling with it than I did as a teen.. UHH even than I do currently :'(

    1. Re:Linux a Teen? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Funny

      I for one can't wait until Linux reaches maturity on its 18th.

      please, show me one 18 year old that has maturity...

      drinking like everything's a wild party.. no sense of reality..

      call me when it's made it through 4 years of college, 3 of which it had to pay for because mom and adad got pissed and pulled all their funding in the first year because linux was doing nothing but partying all the time at college and getting bad grades.

      more is learned by the kids that get slapped with the reality of having to enter the real world of pain and work and exiting the magical world of everything is done for me. than all the graduate classes at the best colleges on this planet.

      I think every child at graduation from highschool should be FORCED to work 8 months in a public service role locally or part of the peace corps abroad. slap them in the face hard with reality befoer they waste their first year at college getting high and still to this day cant remember where the car he had when he went to school is.

      Yes, I lost a 1982 ford mustang at school my first year... it was one hell of a party (a 3 month drunk play's hell on your Calculus grade) and I still find beer caps in storage boxes I rendomly look in from my first year of undergrad..

      I think I had a couple of roommates... and I am sure the car was red.

      Oh man I really hope that Linux is not going to follow the human maturity cycle... it's going to be a complete know-it-all ass until around 23..

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  6. This is TH and I pronounce Linux as... by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Funny
    It was thirteen years ago today
    Col. Torvalds let the source away.
    We've been going in and out of drives
    but we guarantee to raise uptimes.

    So may I introduce to you
    the hack you've known for all these years
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!

    We're Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band,
    we hope you will enjoy the code.
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band,
    just hack and let the evening go!

    Col. Torvalds' Linux
    Col. Torvalds' Linux
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!

    It's wonderful to post here,
    it's certainly no troll.
    You're such a loyal userbase,
    we'd like to merge your code with us,
    we'd love to grep your /home.

    I don't really want to freeze the code,
    but I thought you might like to know
    this release is going to fix the root
    and we want you all to patch for good.

    So let me introduce to you
    the one and only Billy's fear
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!
    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  7. And that is why... by Gunfighter · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... I got married on the 10th birthday of Linux. That way my anniversary would be easy to remember.

    By the way honey, if you're reading this... Happy Anniversary.

    --
    -- Stu

    /. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
    1. Re:And that is why... by kfg · · Score: 3, Funny

      Don't forget to email her a jpeg of flowers. It would be a bitch to have to play CounterStrike Source alone for the next week.

      KFG

    2. Re:And that is why... by sometwo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe you can get her some Linux jewelry....

  8. Only 13?!?! by SirStanley · · Score: 5, Funny

    I feel kinda creepy for having to fsck my linux partition now.

    --
    --------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
  9. Favorite Unix/Linux Links by Davak · · Score: 3, Informative

    What's your favorite help sites?

    Computer Hope's Unix
    Tech-recipes's Unix
    Tek-tips forums
    Sun's BigAdmin

    Help me add to my favorites...

    Davak

    1. Re:Favorite Unix/Linux Links by itsnotthenetwork · · Score: 4, Informative

      I like this one a lot.
      http://216.218.185.154/index.html

  10. Re:My Experience with the Linux by KrisCowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Woooow buddy. Here in India, we consider it a bad practise and disrespectful to insult someone on their birthday :) So you a VB programmer, huh? To quote ESR,
    Visual Basic is especially awful. Like other Basics it's a poorly-designed language that will teach you bad programming habits. No, don't ask me to describe them in detail; that explanation would fill a book. Learn a well-designed language instead.

    So the Linux server crashed, huh? That's a pretty lame excuse. I'm a part-time administator for a server running httpd, file-sharing, DNS and squid. And the uptime is 55 days and still running. Come on buddy, see what we got here :)

    Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc,

    Well well well, what age are you in? What are ext3 and reiferfs? No SMP support? My server is a IBM Xeon Dual processor with hyper-threading. however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
    You got to be kidding me.
    Note to self: Alter the companies for which this anonymous coward does consulting.

  11. happy birthday! by sometwo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Here's a special birthday package

  12. Colonel? by Glytch · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shouldn't that be Kernel Torvalds?

  13. Re:First words by mqRakkis · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
    Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
    Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
    Summary: small poll for my new operating system
    Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
    Dat e: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
    Organization: University of Helsinki

    Hello everybody out there using minix -
    I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
    professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
    since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
    things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
    (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
    among other things).
    I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
    This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
    I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
    are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
    Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
    PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
    It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
    will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
  14. Come on... by StevenHenderson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Come on, Linux...just tell me you're 18. I'm dying to install you on my computers any play with you all night long

  15. Nah ah! by Nicholas+Evans · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to Linus' book, Linux 0.01 was released on Sept. 17, 1991. (Second to last line, Page 87, Just for Fun). So today isn't the birthday. :(

    1. Re:Nah ah! by suso · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're right, the release date of the first version should be its birthday. So today is more like the 13th anniversary of the middle of its third tri-mester. ;-)

  16. Re:Linux is 13.. by spellraiser · · Score: 3, Funny
    And what a revolution that was!

    I mean, jumping from version 3.1 to a whopping 95 in just over 3 years ... it boggles the mind.

    Here's to the fine people at Microsoft!

    Thank you, thank you. No, thank you. You can stop applauding now. Really.

    --
    I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
  17. Re:My Experience with the Linux by rben · · Score: 4, Informative
    I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology. ... I have evidence to back it up!

    No, you have a story, that's not evidence. Besides, most of what you say here is wrong either because you are uninformed or deliberately spreading misinformation.

    We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop

    Many of my friends now use Linux as their desktop operating system. I also use Linux as my desktop OS when I'm not playing games. Walmart has started selling Linux equipped PCs which are selling fairly well. The fact is that for the average PC user, Linux will work just fine. There will be a learning curve, but that would be true of any new technology.

    After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it.

    Given that so many others have been running Bind and Apache for many years without substantial problems, I'd have to say that you probably misconfigured your system.

    The "weekend volunteers" that you refer to are some of the finest programmers in the world or the code that they have written is comparable with that written by the best. If they weren't, the code they wrote would not get past the peer reviews and into these popular open source projects. The people who write code for Open Source projects are often the same people who write for the large software development companies. The difference is that they write Open Source code out of love for the work and the project, and the respect of their peers.

    While MS might have a "full development team" working on some projects, I doubt they have a full team working on any mature product that isn't undergoing constant new development. What resources they have are devoted to adding marketable features that will bring in additional sales, not necessarily reworking the code in pursuit of engineering excellence.

    Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability.

    Again you have demonstrated that you are badly misinformed about Linux. The 2.6 Kernel does in fact have SMP support. There are at least 3 journeling file systems that I can think of off the top of my head, ext3, jfs, and rieserfs.

    As for being based on "old technology", Linux has caught up and passed MS. Linux now often incorporates new standards and technologies before the large software companies can even get them on the planning schedule. Linux developers have already put in place buffer overflow protection stipulated by new security standards that Microsoft has endorsed but has been unable to implement to-date. Microsoft hasn't even been able to finish and release it's new security patch, SP2 on-time, leaving millions of PC users vulnerable to viruses, trojans, and other malware. It is truely hard to appreciate just what it means to have thousands of people working on a single project and contributing their enthusiasm and expertise.

    There are many places where you can get help on configuring Linux machines. It appears, based on your posting, that you went about it by yourself without much knowledge of Linux. Had you looked for help, I believe you would have had far different results. I suggest you check out The Linux Documentation Project, my own site which is aimed at new Linux users moving over from Windows, and A How To Get Linux HOWTO that I have been working on. Perhaps you'll find that your experience changes when you work with the community rather than on your own.

    --

    -All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
    www.ra

  18. Re:My Experience with the Linux by vivekg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Dude! That was history. (rest /. 's read as trolling of him)

    Today linux offer all of the sutff you mentioned earlier.

    At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult....were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.

    Just look at the sites like google.com, slahsdot.org; I am sure they supports more than 5000+ user less than second without any panic.In one of my past experience (RH 7.2 box) ProFTPD server daily servers more than 100-500 users with 35-50 GB data transfer on just Intel Cel 1.3, 512 MB RAM. Same server gets mirrored every day for backup (at midnight in same IDC).

    Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc

    journaled filesystem - Yes linux got it
    memory protection - Yes linux got it
    SMP support - Yes linux got it
    Read Kernel 2.6 Rocks the Enterprise World - http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/526 3/1/
    Did you read Microsoft Found Guilty of Misleading Advertising http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/25/115625 3&tid=109

    As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.

    Yah it rocks with virues, IE bugs and all sorts of things. I'm dam sure within next 5 years people stop dealing with business those rely of buggy Microsoft technologies.

    Long live to tux. Happy birthday :)

    --
    The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
  19. Re:My Experience with the Linux by mr_z_beeblebrox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool.

    Which version is that? Did you remember to send in your 15$
    I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming.

    Then you should know that 'technically' VB is not kernel level programming. I think the reason that you failed so amazingly in your project is you put no forethought into it. Yes, the Win 2K servers can handle a decent load (albeit insecurely) and they are so simple to run that even an MCSE can set them up (I have an old MCSE cert so that is not a flame, I know the ed level needed for that and abandoned it long ago). However, the Linux servers are enterprise unix boxes and Apache can run circles around IIS. I hope that fortune 5000 company realizes that you were the problem.
    but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.

    Were that the case I would choose to use paper based data processing.

  20. Re:My Experience with the Linux by tigerc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it.
    Uh huh. That's why a majority of the world's web servers run Apache. here These developers are hardly "weekend hackers", but devoted people. Read this

    As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
    So that's why Google and Amazon, for example, run Linux? [netcraft.com]

  21. With apologies to Bill Cosby by gosand · · Score: 5, Funny

    I spawned your process, and I can kill -9 you!

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  22. Re:First words by hoofie · · Score: 4, Funny

    I like the bit at the bottom:

    ...it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(."

    I think the hardware support has moved on a bit from then....[My linux is currently running on a dual-processor pentium with SCSI raid array].

  23. Penguin years... by atomic-penguin · · Score: 4, Funny

    But the average penguin lives 15-20 years. So that is like 46 in penguin years. So Tux would be going through a mid-life crisis about now.

    --
    /^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
  24. Pregnant by Hieronymus+Howard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So today is not Linux's 13th birthday. It's actually the 13th anniversary of Linus announcing that he was pregnant. The date of the first public release of the code should be the actual birthday.

    As someone mentioned earlier, Linux 0.01 was released on Sept. 17, 1991