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Happy Birthday, Linus
Glyn Moody writes "Today is the birthday of Linus. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first PC: a DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc. Today, the kernel he wrote on that system powers 90% of the fastest supercomputers, and is starting to find its way into more and more smartphones — not to mention everything in between. What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?"
How would the world look different? It would be a whole GNU world.
BTW, Linus is 40 today, there seems to be no mention of that anywhere.
What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?
Not much different, as the people who built Linux distributions would instead have ported GNU to the kernel of FreeBSD.
spending that cash on a yearly subscription to playboy certainly would have netted the world a new open source porn system providing free as in beer porn to the world!
That's easy: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/win31
We would just have the argue if it should be called GNU/Windows or Windows.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Happy birthday Linus!
Its your mom's birthday, too?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I, for one, appreciate everything you have done for the computing world!
I hope you have a great birthday and had a merry Christmas!
hat would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?
A Lot Less Linux Fan Boys...
*DUCK & COVER*
If he had bought a Trash-80, would we all be programming Motorola chips today?
He could have bought an Official Red Ryder, Carbine-Action, Two-Hundred-Shot, Range Model Air Rifle.
And then shot his eye out.
If linux wouldn't bought a computer, this year would be probably the year GNU\Hurd would be finished. Gnome KDE etc would probably not exist.
Maybe without Linux we would use Minix or Hurd today. While Linus caused an crystallization point for hundreds of developers he did not write the thing alone. these people were already there. More or less waiting for something like this to happen. Most of them were already part of the Minix mailing list. So most likely Linux was already waiting to happen then. From my own time as an undergraduate. all the good programmers wanted to write an OS. And when it Linux came into existence everyone said cool. I take it and I do something with it. The same happened later with the browser as well. And if X11 would have had a better programming interface there would have been more different browsers out there. Still. Thanks to Linus for starting it.
Is he going to invent anything else? Or after 40 do you just give up on life?
A DX33 had a math co-processor, if it didn't it would have been an SX.
2010 will be the year of Solaris on the Desktop!
Wasn't it the SX line that had the math coprocessor disabled? My first computer (not counting my CoCo) was a 386 SX 20, which was cheaper than a DX for want of a coprocessor.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The DX had a math coprocessor I had an SX
Mr. Torvalds may be well known, but when you use just the single name "Linus", most people think of the blanket-carrying kid in Peanuts.
That's the real question. But today is about Happy Birthday to Linus!
Perhaps my memory is incorrect, but I thought the difference between the 80386sx and 80386dx was that the dx had a built-in math coprocessor.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
And, many happy more!
Perhaps better spent on a $699 license from SCO. /sarc
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Today we would have free access to some of the top prostitutes of the world, anytime we want and anywhere we'd want.
Good choice, Linus. Thanks.
You fail your nerd lore. Turn in your nerd badge immediately.
80386DX had a 32-bit bus and came in a small PGA package. and 80386SX was only 16-bit(24-bit address) and generally was not socketable. There was a mathco for each, the 80387DX was a PGA package, the SX was a PLCC package.
80486DX has a math co and the SX did not (both 486 models were 32-bit bus and could fit in the same socket)
I miss my 80386DX+80387mathco system. it was a sweet setup.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Some North Americans really do overestimate the penetration of their own popular culture. Globally, most people wouldn't think of anyone at all. On Slashdot - Mr. Torvalds.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc
That's almost exactly my first computer too. Altough I really had a 20 MB harddisk, but I used doublespace to get 40 MB. And I didn't have the Intel DX33, but the Cyrix DX40 instead. That 7 MHz really made the difference.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
No Linux? Big deal. There are plenty of alternatives. Perhaps we would have ended up without a GPL-encumbered OS - maybe something like NetBSD or FreeBSD - doing these things. Nothing to see here.
The point about Linus's machine having no coprocessor is actually true. This made development a little iffy since floating point math had to be done in software. The i386DX actually did not have an FPU, and the coprocessor was the i387 which was not all that popular but was compatible with both the DX and SX models. It was not until the introduction of the i486 that the SX had no coprocessor and the DX had a built-in coprocessor.
Interesting read.
"What a nerd!"
Everyone kills Hitler on his first time travel... and then there's Bill Gates.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
What if he bought a Mac? It's a dead end for a kernel hacker I suppose.
Whether he's a douche or not is immaterial to his accomplishments. He wrote (originally) and later managed the development of the kernel that allowed GNU to become part of something mainstream. Whatever Hurd may have done, the remains that it was dramatically behind schedule and short of developers when Linus produced his first kernel; and didn't manage to catch up in either capability or developer interest during the years that Linux was little more than a barely functional hobby system. Douche or not, Linus managed to develop a system good enough to interest people, then hold onto their attention long enough to turn it into something useful.
RMS not an egomaniac? Seriously? He's the worst kind of egomaniac, the "Look at me I'm humble! Look! Me! Humble! Just wanna help, but can't help unless you. Look. At. Me!" kind. Flagellating yourself in the public square is not a gesture of humility. None of which should take away from his accomplishments either, don't get me wrong. Just because I happen to think he's a douche doesn't mean he's not a very effective douche, just like your opinion of Linus doesn't change how effective he's been.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
What if Watson was right? :D
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers (quote may or may not be his)
i always thought this was the case with the 8086 but was mistaken. good point!
I'm an optimist, so I'd like to think it would look something like this.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
GPL
For his age, that was a pretty powerful first computer. I'm a few years younger than Linus, and my first computer was a TI-99/4A, followed by an Amiga 1000 (512K RAM, no HDD). I think many people of our generation started with floppy-based computers (Apple II, TRS-80, VIC-20, C64, Amiga) with less than 1 MB RAM. I saved up for and purchased the Amiga from my job as a bagger at a grocery store. Paid $750 for it used, and it came with a monitor and an external floppy drive (really saved on the disc swapping having two drives!). That was right when the Amiga 500 was released.
Better known as 318230.
Heey, DX33? What kind of a Pentium is that?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
his heart must be *truly* klingon.
Ja må han leva uti hundrade år!
OK, I'm showing off - I lived in Sweden 18 years, became fluent in Swedish, and I'm guessing (from his name) that Linus is mother tongue Swedish rather than Finnish.
But we're raising a glass and shouting "Skål" and "Gippis" and so on...
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Open source would be a lot better off with a few less egomaniacs like Linus and a few more - dare I say it? - RMS's.
RMS not an egomaniac? lolwut? The whole GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux thing is nothing but pure egomania on RMS's part.
The open source "competition" to Linux has been *BSD. If Linux had never existed, we'd all be running *BSD. End of story, really. And it would have happened quickly - if memory serves, the only reason Linux took off was because BSD was still in or had just gotten out of the long clusterfrack legal disputes. If there had been no Linux, *BSD would have picked up its steam, only a year or two later.
At some point, someone would have married the best parts of GNU with *BSD and you'd have RMS screaming about GNU/BSD.
HURD, for all practical purposes, has never existed.
Advice: on VPS providers
Maybe he would have bought a mac, developed an appreciation for user experience design at the start of a project, collaborated with usability experts to design a free standardized user friendly UI when he first started work on Linux, and today Linux on the desktop might be light-years ahead of where it currently is.
When Linux is installed on every computer in half a millennium time, we'll be living in a perfect, brave GNU world. ;-)
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
I wanted a NeXT at that time. Man, $6500! But there was no Photoshop equivalent for NeXT, despite their photoshopped brochures, so I called their office in California (seriously) to see if they had any image manipulation software. The person on the phone, a very nice woman, only had scripts to read from. Later that week, though, I happened to see a piece of mail sent from the Free Software Foundation to a professor at my university. (Just the return address, not the contents of the letter.) That's when it first hit ME, that collaboration was an unstoppable idea, because code is modular and such. I had a terrible notion that it would all happen really quickly, that if I borrowed money to buy a NeXT, that free Photoshop-equivalent software would be available almost right away. I'm glad I waited for OS X.
So it's good that Linus came along with a much more realistic idea of time and what could be done with it, with perseverance. Kudos and happy birthday, Penguin person.
I agree with you. Though I really doubt all the different Unix like O/S's would have grown anywhere near what it has if Linux had not created all that interest w Linux. They had been around for decades but never managed to generate anything like the following Linux did. All the different BSD's got a huge boost from the attention Linux generated. I seriously doubt any of them would have grown much by themselves. Linux had, obviously, just the right mix to take off as it did.
Oh, and Happy birthday Linus! :)
Somebody's sarcasm detector isn't working.
Thanks for all the hard work you've done and the world you've helped open! Enjoy your birthday!
Maybe if he had started with something else I would be able to upgrade my machine and not have to recompile the video driver for a point.point.point-point.point release. Linux is the only operating system in my network (Ubuntu, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, Windows XP and Vista) that this is a problem for.
What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?
Well maybe the world's computers would run on hookers and blow?
Even ignoring the fact that we need to make some rather large assumptions about existence of Jesus (As he appeared in the bible. Whether someone else called Jesus existed or not is irrelevant), it is very arguable if the world is better off now than it would have been if he and the christian church had never existed.
If Bill Gates contributed to humanity, I think his contribution was pretty negative.
As for Steve Jobs... I think he was probably pretty great before Apple (being part of the hippie movement, hanging around with the Earth Catalog -crowd, etc.) but after that... He has good business instinct and Apple makes rather stylish products but has he really contributed anything to humanity?
Linus on the other hand... He wanted to create something useful by crowdsourcing it, encouraging people around the world to participate and then shared it all for free with the world. That is pretty awesome thing to do.
So.. you're saying.. this is DEFINITELY the year of linux?
Like if he spent his money on porn
The world is how you make it
I'm grateful you spent your money on that 386 back then.
Norwegian teletext mentioned it: http://www2.nrk.no/teksttv/?channel=1&subpage=1&cd=0&page=456
1969 Den finske datautvikleren Linus
Torvalds ble født. Han utviklet
operativsystemet Linux.
> Maybe if he had started with something else I would be able to upgrade my machine and not have to recompile the video driver ..
...
Why did you have to 'recompile the video driver', what particular make and model video card, how did you get hold of the source ?
Comes Docs online modup
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Linux is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when IDC confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The most recent Linux kernel is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Linux is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Linus Tovalds states that there are 7000 users of Linux 2.1. How many users of the lastest Linux kernel are there? Let's see. The number of Linux 2.1 versus Linux 2.2 posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Linux 2.2 users. Linux 2.2 posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Linux 2.1 posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Linux 2.2. A recent article put Linux 2.1 at about 80 percent of the Linux market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Linux 2.1 users. This is consistent with the number of Linux 2.1 Usenet posts.
Due to the legal troubles of Linux due to SCO litigation, abysmal sales and so on, Linux 2.2 went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save Linux from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Linux is dead.
Fact: Linux is dying
What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?
Good question ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGegKKF2Xpw
Microsft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!!
Uhh, you know that Alan Cox still works on the kernel, and basically apologized for causing the situation? Moron.
Look guys, Linus Torvalds is not the messiah. Barack Obama is.
While i dont want to belittle Linus work i think that GNU would just have another kernel and be about as popular as of now.
The reason i think that is that im my mind the GPL license and GNU was the single most significant factor to GNU/Linux success. If Linus had went for eg. a BSD license Linux would be a mostly one man show were people took Linux code, altered it and didnt return anything back. Now, thanks to the GPL, we have numoreous companies working together on the same code and nobody can take the code and hide it away.
The Linux kernel wouldnt do that much by itself without all the various GPL code that it fits in with. Personally i would love if there was more active kernels in use with GNU. A standardized API for drivers would also be nice. That way it would be immensely easier for new kernel/OS projects to lift off the ground.
HTTP/1.1 400
Surely everybody on Slashdot is old enough to remember 386s? What about 286s? I even remember a 186 ... It scared me that where I worked recently with a lot of Gen Y's, some of them may not have ever used a single-tasking OS like MS-DOS or CPM.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Various people have suggested that FreeBSD or Hurd would have filled the breach if Linux hadn't come along (and maybe been better). We'll never know for sure unless somebody finds a reliable way to view alternate timelines, but, I'd say there is evidence of non-technical issues in the GNU and FreeBSD camps that could have been showstoppers. Somehow Linux stayed on course. Was that a fluke or something to do with Linus and his personality? I suspect that that was where Linus really made a difference, and without that, the suits might really have prevailed. I think it would have been a disaster if Microsoft had captured the server market, and there was a real danger back in the 90s that that's just what would have happened.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
I think it would have been a disaster if Microsoft had captured the server market
Why?
(Father)- Happy Birthday Linus! Go ahead and open your present! ...
(Linus )- (Opens Blank Email) What the hell?
(Mother)- What did you expect, support?
(Father)- Linus, where are you going?
(Linus) - Out!
(Father)- What are you going to do with your life?
(Linus )- I'm going to code the kernel I want!
Code ... Code ... Code ... OMG Code!
Let's write some code.
Let's write some code.
Let's write some code.
Let's write some code!
This code rules.
That code Sux.
This code rule.
That code Sux!
"I think you have too many dependencies."
Shut up!
"I think you have too many dependencies."
Shut up!
Incommunicado Bill... Let's hold a code party!
This code spec has 300 subroutines. Let's write it!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Well, for one thing, /. would not be filled with a bunch of whiny bitches.
I think it would have been a disaster if Microsoft had captured the server market
Why?
Microsoft's strategy has been to come up with proprietary extras that go beyond open standards. Users get hooked on these and they are proprietary. It locks out competition. If you've seen my sig you probably can figure out that I'm in the anti-Microsoft crowd. (It's actually a paraphrase of Cato the Elder, who was famous for concluding each speech in the Roman Senate with the statement "Furthermore, I maintain that Carthage should be destroyed.") I don't want to turn this into a big long Microsoft rant; there's enough of that on the net already. Suffice to say, I'm pretty damn sure that we're better off not having a monoculture dominated by Microsoft.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
As far as I'm concerned he's earned the right to be a douche.
Not that being a douche is a good thing, but IMHO his contributions to open source outweigh that.
See http://www.xkcd.com/680/ why... :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Linux has undoubtedly had an effect on PC world. I wonder if we can know really what that is, since it's hard to run alternative simulations in the real world, we only have this one history that is all-inclusive, if done right.
Linus is an example of how a project being controlled by a single actor can be very efficient in getting a fairly standardized product out (more so than many commercial operators), meaning, of course just the Kernel here.
In the future, I suppose it should become a committee effort, since there will be too many people, who want to influence it for him to work with eveyone, and too many people getting suspicious of the project being controlled by this Finnish-American guy, who may or may not have political ideas, too... Besides, the Chinese and the Russians already have their own ground-up distros that they use. They probably have government backdoors to every system???
And then the committee members will be bribed and boughtt by megacorporations and they will screw the development in behalf of their employers. Et cetera, et cetera...
Then, one day a guy goes out and buys a very basic computer and build a new kernel for a new kind of OS, because GNU/Linux has become such a f*@$kfest that you'll never be able to predict what's going to happen (if it doesn't end in some megacorp's pocket).
So no, I don't think that the world would have changed a lot. Perhaps Hurd would have gotten more attention, perhaps the BSD legal hassles would have been solved. Perhaps someone else would have created a kernel, and then been able to work with many people to make it better.
BTW, seems the Linus-mocking comments come from AC a lot. M$ fanbois or just people who like to yell "fire" in a full movie theatre?
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
I hope that's grammatically correct...
Hjärtliga gratulationer på födelsedagen Linus Torvalds!
If you're not going to pay me in cash; you pay me in code - that simple.
"Today is the birthday of Linus. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first car. Today, the customizations he made to that automobile can be found in 90% of the fastest flying cars, and is starting to find its way into more and more bullet trains and interstellar space ships — not to mention everything in between. What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?"
Cartoon flashback ripples...
"Today is the birthday of Linus. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first PC: a DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc. Today, the MIND CONTROL SOFTWARE he wrote on that system powers 90% of the world's ROBOTIC OVERLORD SLAVEMASTERS, and is starting to find its way into more HUMAN SLAVE COLLARS — not to mention HYPNO-ROBOTIC IMPLANTS. What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?"
o hai
and the emergence of internet access at home
Which, by the way is linked to another positive effect of Linux being GPL :
with the arrival of broadband internet, the number of modem/router running an embed Linux has multiplied.
The same has also happened with multimedia -players / -disk enclosure hybrids, NAS, etc.
Linux has got quite pervasive in the embed world (Well, if we're still waiting for the "Year of the Linux Desktop", at least the "Year of the Linux on everything-else-but-the-Desktop" is now past long ago).
Had Linux been under a different license, the situation would be much like the iPhone : there are bits of BSD inside, that's cool, but that's about all you can say and do about it.
Whereas GPL has enforced distribution of the code and better possibility to modify said embed system. Nowadays you find lots of 3rd party open firmware (like OpenWRT), whose quality is ever increasing and some are even starting to get picked up by vendors (some models from Buffalo feature DD-WRT)
The same kind of collaboration as what is nowadays the norm among the "big players" in the server field, is now slowly starting to appear in the embed world.
(And of course, if the companies are attracted to Linux in the first place, that's probably due to its qualities. Qualities that it managed to accumulate, thanks to a license that strong pushes toward collaboration and up-stream contribution, unlike other license which would more favor "each on its own approaches".
Well a benevolent dictator, good at managing the whole project and passively encouraging people to contribute - as you point out - also makes a strong argument for Linux. If this wasn't a requirement, Hurd would have succeeded).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
We'd be in a nice safe BSD world, without the awful Linux crap.
Yet, now, like Betamax versus VHS, the poorer version becomes the most popular
Mod parent up!
I'm a FreeBSD guy through and through, but it does seem possible that without Linux, Microsoft could have indeed captured the server market, as you say.
Where I worked in the late 90's, they started replacing alot of their working unix systems with more expenesive, less reliable windows servers, where different departments (os support/db support/application support) had to 'book' time on the machines to get work done without clashing with anyone else :-(
Needles to say, they effectively went bust a few years later, but at that time, MS was making real inroads that linux has helped thwart.
Sig out of date
The story asked a rhetorical "how different would the world look today..." and the answer is: Gates and Balmer are working on a time-machine, and plan to take one of those hermetically-sealed Macintosh machines back with them, along with the tools required to open it, and give that to Linus for his birthday, and hope he ends up as a hardware hacker instead! ~Hal
But remember that before his PC, Linus had a Sinclair QL
You're a real penis user. No penis, no coprocessor. Let's imagine that Linus's 386 was without a copenis. That's hard going.