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A Historical Look At The First Linux Kernel

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the to-configure-simply-recompile dept.

LinuxFan writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating article about the first Linux kernel, version 0.01, complete with source code and photos of Linus Torvalds as a young man attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally planned to call the kernel "Freax," and in his first announcement noted, "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." He also stressed that the kernel was very much tied to the i386 processor, "simply, I'd say that porting is impossible." Humble beginnings."

15 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. No sooner had I finished compiling... by kaleco · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...than Gentoo using kernel 0.02 was made available.

    --
    Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
  2. Official kernel development strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "When the first kernel pops, then toss in about 1/2 cup of open source developers and shake vigorously until the popping dies down. You don't want to leave it on until you hear nothing, because then it's sure to be burnt."

  3. Too bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    that that Torvalds guys project never amounted to anything useful.

  4. Oh No! by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

    He looks just like Bill Gates at that age!

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:Oh No! by dn15 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or like Stephen Hawking, looking at that one drunk photo ^^
      I was actually going to say the same thing but decided it was in poor taste.... Insensitive bastard.
  5. At least two people agree on 640kB by Centurix · · Score: 5, Funny
    From memory.c

    * NOTE 2!! When from==0 we are copying kernel space for the first
      * fork(). Then we DONT want to copy a full page-directory entry, as
      * that would lead to some serious memory waste - we just copy the
      * first 160 pages - 640kB. Even that is more than we need, but it
      * doesn't take any more memory - we don't copy-on-write in the low
      * 1 Mb-range, so the pages can be shared with the kernel. Thus the
      * special case for nr=xxxx.
    --
    Task Mangler
  6. Well by akkarin · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Oh, Linux will *never* have a fan base. Never. Ever. Period."
    - Bill Gates

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    This sig left intentionally blank.
  7. Re:5 most important OSS figures by Gothmolly · · Score: 1, Funny

    You're gay.

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    I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  8. Embarassing change of context by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Am I the only one twisted enough to have fixed for a moment on the once perfectly innocent sentence : "Could someone please try to finger me from overseas?"... :)

  9. Ready? by bollucks · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...and it was almost ready for the desktop.

  10. Re:"Humble beginnings" by RockoTDF · · Score: 2, Funny

    Funny....no one in the IT dept where I work (besides me) knows shit about Linux...much less its history. No wonder nothing here works properly...

    --
    There is more to science than physics!

    www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
  11. MS had this too ya know.... by conares · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...only problem is all their correspondance was written in an proprietary format and theres no app to read it anymore....

    --
    That, that really grinds my gears!
  12. Linus gone wild by doorwayboy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Anyone else notice the two pics of a young Linus were are linus1.gif and linus3.gif?
    http://kerneltrap.org/files/linus2.gif

  13. It's too bad about teh Lunix, really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    You know, it really is a shame Lunis couldn't have been bothered to write it properly in the first place.

    All these years later, and he's still trying to cludge it together and keep it working. And let's not even talk about security- naming the problems with that would cause a buffer overflow on the forum.

    Had Lunis and company written it properly at the start, maybe he wouldn't still be chasing Windows 95's tail lights.

  14. Re:OT: Look at all the low-id's come out! by Kilroy · · Score: 2, Funny

    We don't get out much anymore. It takes forever to render these new comment threads in Mosaic.