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Linus Torvalds Celebrates 20 Years of Windows 3.11 With Linux 3.11-rc5 Launch

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-it-out dept.

hypnosec writes "Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.11-rc5 yesterday wishing that it would have been a lovely coincidence if he were able to release final Linux 3.11 as on the exact same day 20 years ago Microsoft released Windows 3.11. 'Sadly, the numerology doesn't quite work out, and while releasing the final 3.11 today would be a lovely coincidence (Windows 3.11 was released twenty years ago today), it is not to be,' notes Torvalds in the release announcement."

75 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Best DOS window manager by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ever made

    Captcha: Birthday

  2. I feel old by philip.paradis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've got many memories of evenings spent with Windows 3.11, although I spent far more time in DOS back then. Later on, I spent a few few years with Linux (starting with Mandrake) as my primary desktop OS, and wound up with Mac OS X for the last few years.

    I'll still raise a toast to over a decade of Debian or FreeBSD on the server side for anything I care about.

    --
    Write failed: Broken pipe
    1. Re:I feel old by Hatta · · Score: 4, Informative

      For those feeling nostalgic, Windows 3.11 works in Doxbox quite nicely. Grab the microsoft entertainment pack and play some skifree.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    2. Re:I feel old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ah, memories. I remember the day my brother and I were playing that game. He discovered that you could go faster using jumps properly. Well, he was playing and finally passed the Yeti and kept going. The Yeti disappeared off the top of the window and he kept going for at least another minute or two. He then stopped and said, "I think I outran him." Right after saying that, the Yeti comes charging down and eats him. After about 20 seconds of silence, he closes the window and mutters, "I hate that game."

    3. Re:I feel old by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      Seconded. Those Entertainment Packs have other fantastic games too: Chip's Challenge, Tetris, JezzBall, Taipei, etc. 2D graphics implemented using only Windows GDI, and damn solid shit.

    4. Re:I feel old by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      I never did run Windows 3.11. I was on DOS 3.1 until 6.2 came out with doublespace. Windows 95 because Road Rash wouldn't run in DOS. W98 when none of the newer games would run on W95. XP when XCP vandalized my computer and I didn't have drivers (lost the CDs).

      I got Mandrake then when XP started getting flaky. Turned out that Linux is just more fault-tolerant than Windows; Windows crashed every hour or so, Linux kept chugging until that power supply failed completely.

      This notebook is running W7, because I'm lazy. The one that uses the TV as a monitor is kubuntu.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    5. Re:I feel old by isorox · · Score: 2

      I've got many memories of evenings spent with Windows 3.11, although I spent far more time in DOS back then. Later on, I spent a few few years with Linux (starting with Mandrake) as my primary desktop OS, and wound up with Mac OS X for the last few years.

      I'll still raise a toast to over a decade of Debian or FreeBSD on the server side for anything I care about.

      Well I had dos 5 originally (with dosshell), then at some point windows 3.1 and 3.11 on a dos 6.22 background, then of course windows 95, installed on about 50 floppies.

      Moved exclusively to debian in summer 2000, and them to ubuntu in 2006. I have a mac laptop too which I use for testing programs (that I write on the linux machine), and I have a small windows fanless machine for the same reason.

      So my main machine has moved from a 286 mainly running railroad tycoon and qbasic, to a thinkpad running mainly firefox and vim. 13 years of linux, 8 years of dos/windows.

    6. Re:I feel old by msobkow · · Score: 1

      You feel old?

      I cut my teeth writing Z-80 machine code (not assembler) for the TRS-80 Model I Level I and POKEing it into memory, saving periodically to cassette tapes.

      BIOS? DOS? What's that?

      A *real* machine has a ROM interpreter and boots up instantly because of it. There is no need for a "BIOS" when you can just program to the hardware. :P

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    7. Re:I feel old by philip.paradis · · Score: 1

      Ah, a fellow Z80 fan :). I think there's still two Sinclair ZX81s sitting in a box somewhere at my dad's house, likely with the old cassette deck as well. The one I used had a little black and white security monitor/TV hooked up to it for video, with a luxurious full size keyboard from an industrial floor spliced into it to provide relief from the horrendous membrane keyboard.

      I've got to admit that I greatly preferred moving to an AT&T PC-6300 8086 box. It felt like a supercomputer by comparison, and was also the first machine I wrote any C on. Good times.

      --
      Write failed: Broken pipe
    8. Re:I feel old by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      I played the hell out of Chip's Challenge. It was pretty much the only reason I saw to have Windows installed, at the time.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    9. Re:I feel old by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Grab the microsoft entertainment pack and play some skifree.

      No need!

      http://ski.ihoc.net/

      It's been recompiled for modern Windows and it runs great under wine as well. It also works fine on the largest monitors you're likely to have.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    10. Re:I feel old by Hatta · · Score: 2

      Indeed, Windows 3.11, being a DOS program is officially supported by DOSBOX now. Windows 95, being mostly a DOS program, is unofficially supported by DOSBOX.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    11. Re:I feel old by Tyler+Durden · · Score: 2

      For those feeling nostalgic, Windows 3.11 works in Doxbox quite nicely.

      That or you could just bash your head against a brick wall until you begin to taste brain. Using Windows 3.1/3.11 felt about the same.

      --
      Happy people make bad consumers.
    12. Re:I feel old by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Great, thanks! If I eat something bad and need to throw up, I'll use that pack

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    13. Re:I feel old by akeeneye · · Score: 1

      Cassette tape?? You were lucky. We used to *dream* of having cassette tapes. We had it rough. After going to high school for 14 hours a day, day in day out, we had to POKE our machine code into memory, run it, and if the machine didn't crash, had to write another program to PEEK it out again while we took snapshots of the screen with a Polaroid camera.

      --
      The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
    14. Re:I feel old by Teresita · · Score: 1

      Indeed, Windows 3.11, being a DOS program is officially supported by DOSBOX now. Windows 95, being mostly a DOS program, is unofficially supported by DOSBOX.

      Win 3.11 works great in DOSBOX under WIn 7, XP, Ubuntu, except it won't fly under Puppy Linux, because of mouse issues. Win 98 will install under VirtualBox but there's some display driver issues, it will default to 640 x 480 x 4. Better to run that raw, not virtualized. Win95 it's a case of "why bother?".

    15. Re:I feel old by Teresita · · Score: 1

      Last time I used dosbox was so long ago that back then their April fools joke was that it could run Windows - complete with a fake screenshot. Amazing progress by the project if it's routine to run it now.

      There was a /. article about some joker got Windows 3.1 to run on a phone under Android, sure as shit, I installed DOSBOX to an Android Mk802 PC-on-a-stick and got it to run Windows.

    16. Re:I feel old by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I recall one occasion where I was helping a colleague help his sister over the phone work w/ Windows 3.11 w/ her mouse disabled. Like using the ALT and arrow keys to navigate and select the choices. Was an interesting exercise on a disabled system.

    17. Re:I feel old by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I miss NEXTSTEP - too bad a complete OpenSTEP/GNUSTEP DE has never emerged.

    18. Re:I feel old by M1FCJ · · Score: 1

      Why bother? Because once in a while you got to remember why people went and used Linux and OS/2.
      Even with Slackware and Ygdrassil, using Linux wasn't for everyone those days (but still much fun and a better user experience than Windows, still is, I was screaming at my Windows 7 laptop yesterday because I had to use something I didn't have time to see if it works under wine - how can people use such a pile of crap day to day, I cannot comprehend).

    19. Re:I feel old by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      Meh. Chip's Challenge is where it's at. And Jezzball. :-)

      Those were great games.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    20. Re:I feel old by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 1

      They had to be good games, because they certainly couldn't rely on flashy graphics. There is still an active community for Chip's Challenge, an open-source implementation of it, even today.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  3. Linus still even come up with an original version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What a loser. Just let your project stand on it's own instead of always trying to copy everyone else.

  4. Re:More of a party pooper by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Funny

    At least he didn't insult anyone.

    That is party spirit in Finland.

  5. And there's the difference by sjames · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If Linux was a proprietary OS like Windows, Marketing would have been so rabid for the idea that they would have successfully forced the premature release.

    1. Re:And there's the difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What like Microsoft does with almost all their products? // Sorry I'm sure this is flame-bait, but I just intend it to be funny/ironic.

    2. Re:And there's the difference by sjames · · Score: 1

      It's funny how a simple statement of fact can end up being considered flamebait.

  6. What?? by Dishwasha · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought Linux added on networking to the OS a LONG time ago.

    1. Re:What?? by philip.paradis · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hey man, don't rain on the parade. Better late than never, right? I mean heck, I call Linux finally getting networking a win. If you're gonna be such a Debbie Downer, you should just put a sock in it. I bet there's a stack of users rejoicing right now.

      --
      Write failed: Broken pipe
    2. Re:What?? by Chemisor · · Score: 1

      It just isn't the same without the trumpet...

  7. Re:Linus still even come up with an original versi by tysonedwards · · Score: 1

    Yep, damn his using of numbers to convey iterations of his code. Bastard!

    --
    Thirty four characters live here.
  8. Re:Linus still even come up with an original versi by powerlinekid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hes no thinker or dreamer like that Steve Jobs was. Incrementing by the name of cats is a much more agile system.

    --

    can't sleep slashdot will eat me
  9. Re:mad libs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    genius

  10. Re:mad libs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    one dimensional, bread obsessed electrical appliance.

  11. Re:More of a party pooper by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    exactly! and after the party we stab someone! HARD!

    and now for some real afterparty feeling here is a clip from a finnish movie, about what dudes go do after a wedding party! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MozzPH2IEV0 (just watch it full).

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  12. there are no coincidences by frovingslosh · · Score: 1, Informative

    "... while releasing the final 3.11 today would be a lovely coincidence ..."

    Apparently Linus does not know the meaning of the word coincidence. If he had hit the target date deliberately and with advanced planning, it would not have been legitimately called a coincidence.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:there are no coincidences by BitZtream · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, it shows he does understand the word, as he would never plan a release time based on something silly like that, he would always do it based on quality and readiness ... in which case, it would be a coincidence if it happened to be released today.

      It didn't happen, and thats why its not a coincidence.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:there are no coincidences by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      Yes, sure, but if he REALLY wanted to pay homage to the spirit of windows 3.11 he should have released an early beta.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
  13. Re:mad libs by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 2

    git

    Come on, he said so himself ;)

  14. Re:Linus still even come up with an original versi by tysonedwards · · Score: 2

    I see your Lion and raise you an Oneiric Ocelot!
    Oh, you counter with a Mountain Lion... Tremble before my Precise Pangolin.

    --
    Thirty four characters live here.
  15. Windows 3 lives! by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    16 bit windows lives on. In the form of the windows installer.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:Windows 3 lives! by tibit · · Score: 1

      Windows 95/98 installer, because IIRC NT-based ones use itself for the installer IIRC.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    2. Re:Windows 3 lives! by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Last I heard, that was not true. Your not running NT until the first reboot.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:Windows 3 lives! by EmperorArthur · · Score: 1

      Many older 32 bit programs come with a 16 bit installer. Back when 64 bit systems were the hot new thing this caused quite a few problems. You had to either find an extraction utility and do manual installation/registry edits, or you had to install it on a 32 bit machine with something to see what changed, and bundle those changes into a new installer.

      Of course, Windows XP x64 didn't help there. It was just like XP, except almost no one provided drivers for it, and you had to disable code signing to install half of the drivers you could find. I had less driver issues with Linux on the same hardware. I wonder if anyone's still masochistic enough to be running that.

      --
      So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
    4. Re:Windows 3 lives! by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      What bothers me is that VMware can run 64 bit and 16 bit code side by side, why the frak can't Windows! Yes, VMware does much more than just context switch and VMware does actual binary translation and processor emulation, but FFS, Microsoft could have easily added a 16 bit interpreter to make it work.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    5. Re:Windows 3 lives! by petermgreen · · Score: 2

      95 and 98 use a graphical installer that ran under windows for the early stages of install. You could either run the first part of the installer under your existing version of windows (if upgrading) or if you ran it from dos it would load "mini windows" which afacit is a very stripped down win3.x. IIRC the installer required the hard drive to be already paritioned and formatted as it would use it for temporary storage space. After the first reboot the system was then running windows 9x as it sorted out the final details. The boot floppies included with some copies of windows 9x and the later bootable CDs loaded the corresponding version of DOS (win9x came with it's own version of DOS)

      2K and XP use a textmode installer for the early stages of install which I'm pretty sure is based on the NT kernel but without any of the win32 stuff loaded. This can be seen in things like the fact it needs a windows driver to see your hard drive (rather than being able to see any hard drive the BIOS can see). It would then reboot into the system it had partially installed to finish things off.

      Vista and later use a graphical installer, which is based on winPE which is a stripped down version of modern windows.

      I dunno what other versions do.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    6. Re:Windows 3 lives! by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      What is even more amusing is that wine can quite happilly run win16 applications on a 64-bit linux system.

      Afaict the only reason 64-bit windows can't run win16 applications is that MS couldn't be bothered to implement/debug support for it.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    7. Re:Windows 3 lives! by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      AIUI there are two types of 64-bit wine setup. A pure 64-bit wine and a WoW64 wine with the former only able to run 64-bit apps while the latter uses a 32-bit wine to run 32-bit apps within the context of the 64-bit wine. I don't see any techical reason why such a system couldn't run 16 bit apps but I couldn't findd any documentation either way. Indeed in general the ability of wine to run 16 bit apps seems to be almost totally undocumented.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  16. Re: mad libs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    penile visionary.

  17. Stable release by gwstuff · · Score: 2

    It seems appropriate to celebrate the release of a Windows version with a pre-release edition of Linux.

  18. Re:This was a triumph! by Entropius · · Score: 1

    Why would my computer want to talk to another computer? Gee, that's silly.

  19. It was 20 years ago today... by Jharish · · Score: 1

    Sgt Pepper brought his band to play.

    1. Re:It was 20 years ago today... by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      That's taught the band to play, doofus.

      Yaz

    2. Re:It was 20 years ago today... by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      Wish I'd thought of that when Linux itself turned 20 -- oh, wait... http://iki.fi/teknohog/music/col_torvalds.php

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  20. Re:This was a triumph! by rvw · · Score: 1

    Why would my computer want to talk to another computer? Gee, that's silly.

    Talking would be crazy, but lending some extended memory would be nice, like an extra megabyte or so.

  21. Trumpet LinSock by future+assassin · · Score: 1

    one one see it? I pulled it out of the dryer and one was missing. I need both to connect.

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  22. Re:mad libs by rhyder128k · · Score: 3, Funny

    The Bolivian Navy on manoeuvres in the South Pacific.

    --
    Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
  23. Re:mad libs by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    purple

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  24. Very fitting by 32771 · · Score: 1

    Windows 3.?? made me switch to Linux. At some point Windows' reliance on the x86 real mode and other hacks had me look at the squandered possibilities of the M$ empire and also at possible ways out. While one of my buddies switched to OS/2 I switched to Linux.

    Since then I had only in the rarest case any chance to actually program for Linux while on the job. Fortunately I mainly do embedded programming nowadays and have to work with VxWorks, VDK, or no operating system at all, which is great.

    --
    Je me souviens.
  25. Re:This was a triumph! by Entropius · · Score: 1

    Meanwhile, I have some software that currently requires 9GB of memory -- I could pare it down to 7GB if I really wanted to.

  26. Microsoft Bob by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Now we need a Linux version of Bob.

    1. Re:Microsoft Bob by Gothmolly · · Score: 2

      It's called Ubuntu.

      --
      I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
  27. Re:This was a triumph! by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    What software?

  28. Re:Linus Torvalds by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    well.. Torvalds just lives in the real world, not some gnu fairyland and in the real home/work computer users world you can't ignore 3.11, someone would have made the jokes so might just as well be him.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  29. Re:This was a triumph! by Entropius · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lattice gauge theory simulations, so there's actually an excuse for the bloat. It runs on a 24*24*24*48 grid, so you need buckets of memory to store everything; this isn't as bad as the more ambitious groups, who are up to 192^3*384 (I think). It's pretty obscene how much computing power goes into this field -- the computation I've just started will take two months on 100 GPU's (which is about 10^18-10^19 floating point operations), and it's a small one compared to some of the things people do. It's also very heavily memory bandwidth bound, so I don't think we could do ASIC's like the Bitcoin folks do.

  30. Re:mad libs by Teresita · · Score: 2

    Windows has been quickly going downhill after version 3.11.

    I run Win3.11 as a hobby on one of my boxes. There ain't no more BBS's out there, except I can get out to Seattle Community Network and King County Libraries with Terminal, at 19,200 baud, woo. I sure as hell ain't going to get an AOL or Netzero dial up account for a hobby. There's a lot of great Windows 3.1 CD-ROMs I get at thrift shops for no more than three dollars. Vetusware has everything. Excel 4.0 for my family budget. Word Perfect for my Great American Novel. There's nothing wrong with running old school.

  31. It was inevitable. Linus has forseen it. by VortexCortex · · Score: 3, Funny

    Linux 3.11... So, it's actually happening. I thought it was sarcastic, but now I see the prophesy was self fulfilling.

    In other words, we'd have an increasing level of instability with an odd release number, depending on how long-term the instability is.

    - 2.6.<even>: even at all levels, aim for having had minimally intrusive patches leading up to it (timeframe: a week or two)

    with the odd numbers going like:
    - 2.6.<odd&gt: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two).
    - 2.<odd&gt.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for several releases (timeframe: a year or two)
    - <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic. (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from the mental institution in a decade or two").

    - Linus

  32. 3.11 is not a special number by Askmum · · Score: 1

    I'm just waiting for Linux 3.14 and then to see the version numbering go wild in the subdigits.

    1. Re:3.11 is not a special number by plankrwf · · Score: 2

      Sorry, Linus is not Donald Knuth ( http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=TeXfuture )

  33. Re:This was a triumph! by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Sounds like the sort of thing that could be optimized for Itaniums

  34. Debian with be 20 soon! by antdude · · Score: 1

    http://lwn.net/Articles/563204/

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  35. And he signed off with by ksemlerK · · Score: 1

    Quit giving birth to my kittens!

    --
    Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
  36. xp-rc5 by cavok · · Score: 1

    can't wait 20 more years for linux xp-rc5

  37. Re:Server 2003 installs by default, as... by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    Server 2003 installs by default, as "Workstation/Pro" desktop class OS - you modularly ADD server modules to it, as is needed...

    Maybe so but the fact that you can add those features and the fact you can allow more than a handful of clients for file and print serving makes it a "server edition".

    * I think you're attempting to state, perhaps, that XP 64 had all the PATCHES that later caught it up to Server 2003... right?

    Server 2003 is NT5.2. So is windows XP professional x64 edition. Both use the same hotfixes, service packs and drivers (though drivers can support more than one version). They are by all reasonable measures different editions of the same version just like 2K pro and 2K server were different editions of the same version. Presumablly it was marketed as XP so they didn't have to explain to customers why they had to use a 64-bit OS to get the new version.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  38. Re:This was a triumph! by oreiasecaman · · Score: 1

    Who knows? Maybe he feels lonely...

    --
    This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...