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Old School Linux Remembered, Parts 0.02 & 0.03
eldavojohn writes "Following our last history lesson of Linux 0.01, the Kernel Trap is talking about the following announcements that would lead to one of the greatest operating systems today. A great Linus quote on release 0.02 (just 19 days after 0.01): 'I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix. This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjoyed [sic] doing it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have.'"
Of course, in this case it applies even more so.
Never use a 0.01 Release, especially not in a production environment.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
and the Hurd is still just around the corner. :(
I'm glad simply for the sake of history and preservation they're making these articles. I read the LKML frequently even if I don't fully understand the mechanics for the how and why the kernel operate, but I like to pretend that I do. I find this stuff rather fascinating. It is also interesting to wonder how Linux became what it is today considering its roots.
Linux today is a child of countless contributers, but it is still tied in name and perception very much to one man. I wonder if people think this is a good thing. I've often maintained that Linus is terse, but I've enjoyed that about him. If he rips into someone, I chuckle. But after this latest fiasco with Con and the schedulers, I'm wondering if this is a bad thing.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
At least, it looks as if the Change Log is still being updated. (Click the link titled "ChangeLog in the main directory".)
This article should not have the Linux Tux logo. Tux only came much later. I suggest an egg or something.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
than other times. And dammit, when I say "files don't matter", I'm really
really Right(tm). Which is actually more funny than arrogant, so long as you know Linus' style.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I really enjoyed seeing the quote by Linus (this is a program for hackers by a hacker). He clearly never, ever, expected his little hobby project to catch on the way it did. Hope this gives hope and inspiration to all the OSS developers out there, scratching their own itches. Just looking back on the history of the software industry, it seems like so many tremendous ideas and businesses got started around a small hobby project by one or two smart guys: Google, Perl, Python, Linux, GNU, and so on. Remember that one man change history.
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I don't want to start the everlasting monolithic/microkernel flame war up again, but I think it's pretty clear that it's only the pace at which hardware has advanced in the last decade or so that has allowed Linux to continue monolithically.
There's a lot to be said for the microkernel architecture, and if Moore's Law ever does start to level off, then I think we're going to see a move away from monolithic designs for good. It's just not practical to keep stuffing more features into a monolithic kernel if you're not constantly getting more and more memory to run it on, and only a very small body of users can be expected to ever compile their own. (True, you can always recompile a specialized version of a monolithic kernel, ripping out all the stuff you don't need, but this is a PITA and it only becomes harder as the thing gets bigger.)
Along with probably most other Linux users, I've always wondered how things would be if Tanenbaum had released MINIX under a free license earlier in the game (Torvalds has said at several points that had MINIX been more free, he probably would have simply modified it, keeping its architecture, but since Tanenbaum had no interest in "turn[ing] MINIX in BSD UNIX" [1]...the rest, of course, is history.)
Or perhaps more interestingly, what would have happened if a free version of BSD had been produced for low-end hardware just a little earlier than it actually was. (In reality, 386BSD came out in a working form in July 1992 [so sayeth Wikipedia], nine months after the first Linux release, and 4.4BSDLite didn't come out until '94 [2].) It seems to me that had "real UNIX" been available for low-end systems in the early 90s, much of the impetus to create a from-scratch clone would have disappeared. (Although, maybe not; perhaps the philosophical differences that drive Linux and the BSDs in different directions would have eventually caused a from-scratch rewrite.)
Ultimately I don't think either alternative would really have brought us out at much of a different place than we are right now, at least from an end-user's perspective; the majority of users don't really care about kernels as such anyway. But it's always fun to play 'what-if,' as long as one keeps in mind that although it's easy to fixate on how things could be better, it could always be far, far worse.
[1] Great archive of Torvalds / Tanenbaum Usenet discussions here. There's so much ego going on there, from both sides, ASCII text can barely contain it...
[2] I'm partial to fellow Slashdotter connorbd's BSD History, which is a good primer.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
might tell you something too. All it tells me is that he hasn't checked his email in 4 and a half years
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR