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?"

Comments

over 40

[Anonymous Coward]

Is he going to invent anything else? Or after 40 do you just give up on life?

Now if only the kernel was stable

[babaloo]

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.