Slashdot Mirror
A Historical Look At The First Linux Kernel
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."
...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
"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."
that that Torvalds guys project never amounted to anything useful.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
To get an even deeper look into the beginnings of the Linux Kernel, I like the book that Linus wrote which is called Just for Fun - The story of an accidental revolutionary (ISBN 1-58799-080-6, google the rest).
;-)
It contains the entire back history how Linux began as a side project and of course the famous spat with Andrew Tanenbaum over Minix and Linux and I found it to be a good (if very nerdy) read.
But the pictures in the article? Just sad, he reminds me so much of myself
I didn't know about this (that the first kernel was completely i386 specific) and consider the article interesting.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
But that's not what happened and I think that's important for people to recognize. This was not unlike Frodo starting off on a quest thinking he wasn't going to get anywhere (though the motivation and implications are not so huge). It's the classic hero-by-accident story and since it's a true story, I love it all the more.
You know, I always thought about writing to Paul Harvey (if he's still alive) and asking him to do a "And that's the rest of the story" on Linus. That would be some classic stuff. Although most the listeners, probably not even sure what Linux is let alone know its creator Linus, would probably think he's suffering from some form of dementia set on by age
My work here is dung.
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
Task Mangler
I have a poster in my office with all the lines of code for kernel 0.0.1. It's uber-geek. A must have for most slashdotters!
The game.
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.)
Well, I was there back then (read my sig) and yet even so I enjoyed the trip down Linux memory lane while going through this article. Sure, this is not top-quality journalism, but if you don't want to read it, then don't.
Slashdot is not anymore what to used to be when I joined (look at my /. id to see what I mean), but even so I still use it as my home page on my home boxen. If there's stuff that I don't want to read, I simply don't.
PS: I happen to be interested in military history as well. So yes, I do still read stuff about WWI, archduke included, even after so many years. In fact, your mentionaing of it just caused me to read what Wikipedia says about Franz Ferdinand.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Besides, for those too lazy to read up the history of Open Source and Linux, just watch Revolution OS. Features Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond and many more.
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.
"Oh, Linux will *never* have a fan base. Never. Ever. Period."
- Bill Gates
This sig left intentionally blank.
Also, there is much discussion about GCC transitioning to GPLv3 license. Apparently once the 4.3 branch is released, 4.2 will no longer be maintained under GPLv2. I believe this is because the FSF knows the compiler is fundamental and the license change is so important they don't really want patches contributing to the version under the old license.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
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.
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?"... :)
...and it was almost ready for the desktop.
Hate to tell you this but GCC wasn't the first free compiler. It wasn't even the first c compile.
There was the Small c compiler that dates back all the way to 1980. There was also the DICE compiler for the Amiga written by Matt Dillon of FireflyBSD fame that was from around the same time frame.
Now GCC is leaps and bounds ahead of those compilers today but without if RMS hadn't written GCC frankly I think Somebody would have like Matt Dillon maybe.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Because I was a computer-room assistant back in college I got a couple of Unix accounts (that's what they were called) to learn and possibly help the grad students who were doing all the "cool" stuff on them (as opposed to showing a freshman how to print from WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS (F7 baby!)). The problem with the Unix machines (a SunOS and an Ultrix box) was that they both had accounting turned on and so I had $5000 of computer time to use until I had to go back and ask for more, which they actually gave only begrudgingly. I guess some departments really paid some $$$ for access.
.01 but some very pre-1.0 version) and somebody else put it on a Gateway2000 486 machine) and all of a sudden I had, along with all the other assistants, a Unix-like machine we could call our own, do whatever we want and not worry about screwing up the "real" work being done. So when it came to learning how the Unix-world worked, I learned far more on that early Linux box than either SunOS or Ultrix if only because I didn't have to deal all the accounting stuff.
Anyway, along comes Linux (not
The funny thing is that I remember feeling that the Linux box responded better than the Sun machine or the VAX in that it seemed to handle more users better (though I suppose on the Linux box we were just mucking about with standard commands instead of doing heavy-duty work).
Well I think that is a bit unfair.
Minix and Linux where different proposes in mind from the start. I would consider them be both be highly successful.
Minix was included with a text book. Minix was written to teach students how a Unix like OS worked so they could learn how write operating system code! Minix was very portable, clearly written, and would even run on an 8088 and 68000. It's technical limitations where just a logical trade off.
Requiring people to own the book to have the OS was probably a mistake but My guess is that the author wanted to prevent people from reselling Minix. Plus he really wanted people to buy his book.
Linux was some guy that wanted to write a free Unix Kernel for his 386 and he didn't care if it worked on anything but a 386 or frankly anything but his own computer.
Frankly at that time I and everybody else was waiting for the real free UNIX that the GNU project was going to write. The future was going to be GNU Unix and it was going to be a state of the art micro kernel based UNIX like OS. Of course the future doesn't really feel obligated to follow our plans.
Minix was a brilliant success. How many of the early Linux Kernel developers read Operating Systems: Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum?
I would say that Minix it did it's job very well.
Now Minix3 is a very new project. Frankly I find it very interesting. It is micro kernel and it runs drivers in user space. The goal is to create self healing OS. AKA a driver crashing will not take out the OS.
It uses BSD instead of the GPL which I am beginning to favor because of what I consider the bad spirited anti-Tivo clauses in GPLV3.
I really hope that Minix3 does get the attention that it deserves. Just as I hope the OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, and Linux continue to grow and thrive.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Maybe not, but your examples don't seem to totally support that
That's correct, but the scope of Small C and GCC are, I think, a bit different... Small C was made for embeded systems and supports a subset of the C language. It was there, true, but GCC was the first ANSI C free compiler. There was also the DICE compiler for the Amiga written by Matt Dillon of FireflyBSD fame that was from around the same time frame.
DICE was shareware (... I sold DICE as shareware and it quite unexpectedly generated a fair chunk of income. This allowed me to expand into later Amiga models (A3000) as well as put together some fairly souped up PC's (for the times), on which I ran Linux...). The source code has been made available (http://www.obviously.com/dice/) but that was in 1997, so quite recently comparing with GCC. I'm not even going into the DICE licence. if RMS hadn't written GCC frankly I think Somebody would have like Matt Dillon maybe.
Sure. That can be said of anything ever done by anyone I think...
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?
``Plus he really wanted people to buy his book.''
He, or the publisher. IIRC, it took quite some convincing on Andy's part to actually allow Minix to be distributed by third parties at all.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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
because they were the companies that made a low-cost Linux-capable machine economically feasible.
...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!
Anyone else notice the two pics of a young Linus were are linus1.gif and linus3.gif?
http://kerneltrap.org/files/linus2.gif
Remember, back around 1990, IBM and Compaq system prices were pretty close to what was being asked for low end HP/Apollo, Sun and MIPS boxes. Now if DEC had been more agressive with the pricing for Alpha and Ultrix...
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.
Strictly speaking, he didn't just "sit down" and write his own compiler from scratch. He spent a lot of time searching for a free compiler that was already complete, and finally he found one. It wasn't a C compiler, so he made the necessary modifications to get it going. Also, he didn't do it by himself--Leonard Tower was working on it full time, and there were other assistants.
I don't recall ever seeing so many 3 and 4 digit /. IDs post. Kind of an odd feeling in a geeky way.