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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."

14 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That's it! by tepples · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You may not distibute this for a fee, not even "handling" costs. There's your show-stopper.
  2. Re:"Humble beginnings" by ttnb · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Anyone who cares already knows. Anyone who wants to find out, can find out.

    I'm not interested in learning the history of everything -- I'm just interested in learning the history of events that can teach me significant lessons, e.g. by inspiring me (starting humble can work out really well if there is significant demand and an empowering license like the GPL is used) or by warning of dangers.

    Therefore, articles like this are important to me. I wouldn't know to look for this particular bit of history if it weren't for people pointing out that this is a worthwhile bit of history to read up on.

    (In this particular instance, I knew already, but only because I came across an article on the same topic some time ago. Nevertheless I'm appreciating the reminder.)

  3. Re:That's it! by MindStalker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Back in those days people were selling buckets of free software at high "fee" cost. Linus apparently didn't like this.

  4. Note the mention of GNU by DrXym · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yup, GNU Mach was well into development BEFORE Linux was even written. This is an example why open source projects are more effective when they're driven by pragmatism and not politics.

    1. Re:Note the mention of GNU by sayfawa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe if the GNU folks had only been working on a kernel instead of also doing the hundreds of other programs as well, they would have made more headway with HURD. And if Linus had been trying to do a whole OS and not just the kernel, Linux the kernel would still be early in development.

      The mention of GNU should merely point out how important the GNU is in GNU/Linux. As Linus said in the post: Sadly, a kernel by itself gets you nowhere. To get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library etc. These are separate parts and may be under a stricter (or even looser) copyright. Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft.

      --
      Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
    2. Re:Note the mention of GNU by ajs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe if the GNU folks had only been working on a kernel instead of also doing the hundreds of other programs as well, they would have made more headway with HURD. And if Linus had been trying to do a whole OS and not just the kernel, Linux the kernel would still be early in development. Very doubtful.

      First off, keep in mind that originally, Linux was aimed at being more on-par with Minix than Hurd. Linus would have written it even if the Gnu folks didn't exist, though it would have been written with pcc instead of gcc. Early on, he didn't have or even target creating a "whole OS", just a terminal server.

      The mention of GNU should merely point out how important the GNU is in GNU/Linux. Every time I hear "GNU/Linux", I have to chuckle. It's a bit like Pittsburgh demanding that Ford vehicles be called Steel/Ford. It's the ultimate example of RMS's hubris, and frankly I find it unfortunate, since most of his fundamental ideas are not unreasonable, just his ego and his behavior.
    3. Re:Note the mention of GNU by Peaker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The purpose of the GNU work is to make people aware of Freedom-related issues.

      Saying Stallman insisting on calling it GNU is hubris is funny, when you consider that its not Stallman who named it after his first name.

      Its reasonable to request distributions that are heavily based on Linux and GNU to mention GNU in their name.

      I would also think it is reasonable for a huge codebase such as KDE to request that, too. For example, "Kubuntu" for short, and "A KDE frontend to a GNU/Linux system" for long.

      Calling it "Kubuntu Linux" (or "Redhat Linux") despite that simple request is not "illegal" or even not legitimate, but it is not very considerate of the many people who contributed to GNU in the hopes of raising awareness to the GNU project and software Freedom.

    4. Re:Note the mention of GNU by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is an example why open source projects are more effective when they're driven by pragmatism and not politics.

      The problem is that politics is interested in you even if you're not interested in it. The pragmatic approach involves taking politics into account even if you're personally bored to tears by the subject.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    5. Re:Note the mention of GNU by ajs · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The purpose of the GNU work is to make people aware of Freedom-related issues. Ah... look, young'un... GNU was founded to create a system that wouldn't restrict people's ability to use it to its fullest, which many of the people involved early on, including Stallman, felt needed to involve the ability to read, modify and distribute source code. It was not some sort of "sowing the seeds of freedom among the heathens," effort.

      Saying Stallman insisting on calling it GNU is hubris is funny, when you consider that its not Stallman who named it after his first name. Wherein my example is quite apt... We could say that it's horrible hubris of Ford to have named his company after himself... really, the so-called "Ford" was a result of the tremendous advances made in the previous 20 years by the Steele industry. It's only fair for such a misguided naming to be corrected by the "Steele/Ford Motor Company."

      No. People name things, not to ascribe merit, but in order to provide them with a label. Linux was named Linux. Why it was named Linux is irrelevant, that's it's name.

      Its reasonable to request distributions that are heavily based on Linux and GNU to mention GNU in their name. Not at all.

      I would also think it is reasonable for a huge codebase such as KDE to request that, too. For example, "Kubuntu" for short, and "A KDE frontend to a GNU/Linux system" for long. Great. Enjoy booting your GKXMITBSDBunnix. Bottom line: a name is a label, not a laundry list of ingredients.
  5. Re:"Humble beginnings" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Slashdot is not anymore what to used to be when I joined For a lot of us that's because we are no longer young, we are no longer ready to believe anything, we no longer have people throwing money annd offices with comfy chairs at us for knowing how to use a shell and a scripting language. Linux and technology and the world in general aren't as fun as they were, because we got old.

    Hell, even Dennis Miller somehow became a cranky old right wing blowhard when I wasn't looking. The world has moved on.
  6. Re:How would one build this? by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It got quiet a bit of interest, but was hampered by two major issues initially.

    First, it wasn't free software. It was shared source, you could obtain the source after buying a copy and share that source with others who had also bought a copy, but you couldn't just modify it and pass on your modifications to anyone who wanted. That extra step of "Receiver must already have a license" was an issue, and reduced the number of experimenters and tinkerers drastically. GNU/Linux has achieved much of its popularity through the ability of virtually anyone who has a copy to pass on that copy to others, with freely downloadable LiveCDs and other ways to be exposed to it with little commitment on your part.

    The other was that it was (usually, at least in x86) 16 bit. Applications generally ran in 64k memory spaces (albeit different spaces for code and data.) This severely limited the available functionality.

    Linus, in part, wrote the first Linux kernel to try to overcome the second issue. By using Linux + the GNU toolchain instead of Minix, you had a full blown 32 bit operating system. Things like the X11 Windowing System suddenly became possible. His eventual adoption of the GPL also gave Linux users the freedom needed to ensure they could build a much bigger community around that kernel than Minix was able to achieve.

    Today, Minix version 3 is available as free software, and in 32 bit form, but it happened too late to stop the GNU/Linux juggernaut from rolling right over it.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  7. Re:5 most important OSS figures by SL+Baur · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Richard Stallman - ... I couldn't believe it when I noticed you actually bothered to reply to my e-mail when I asked you something about X window system. Spamming for a donation to the League for Programming Freedom doesn't count.

    You have a strange list. You left out the most important kernel programmer ever - Ken Thompson, you also left out Dennis Ritchie (first C compiler, designer of the first Unix file system), and for promoting excellent modern programming practices and teaching us all how to program the right way - Brian Kernighan and PJ Plauger.

    And what about Larry Wall for Perl? John McCarthy for Lisp (say what you want about Lisp, but it's the only language that has survived with programming mindshare for over half a century)? The lead engineer of the group at IBM who wrote the first high level language compiler for Fortran, proving that assembly language wasn't the end-all for efficient programming? Donald Knuth for his programming books and TeX?
  8. IBM, Intel, and MS say "you're welcome" by ClosedSource · · Score: 2, Insightful

    because they were the companies that made a low-cost Linux-capable machine economically feasible.

  9. Re:More like Phoenix and AMD by IvyKing · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If you're going to bring up MS-DOS, you might as well mention Seattle Computer Products. The reason that MS-DOS was available for other machines was that it was originally written by SCP for their own hardware - and since IBM did not pay for the original development, they had no exclusive rights to MS-DOS. BTW, Compaq and a few other companies had their own forks of MS-DOS. Also BTW, DR-DOS was the result of DR reverse engineering a reverse engineered version of CP/M.


    What made the business case for the IBM PC was Lotus 1-2-3, which was written specifically for the PC. What helped the clone market was that the IBM PC design was pretty generic, allowing for relatively easy cloning.


    As for AMD's market share in 386 systems, it doesn't take much to force a change in Intel's pricing. FWIW, 486 motherboards were cheaper to build than 386 motherboards - the 486 had onchip cache and didn't need a numeric co-processor.