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Linux 3.17-rc2 Release Marks 23 Years of the Linux Kernel

An anonymous reader writes Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.17-rc2 today in commemoration of the 23rd anniversary of the original kernel announcement. It was on 25 August 1991 that he announced his new OS project to the Minix users list.

106 comments

  1. So, 23 years ago he was trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Posting in an incorrect listserv about his new OS. Good work, Linux, on 23 years of hardcore trolling.

    1. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by LordKronos · · Score: 1

      Furthermore, in the very first reply, somebody is already trying to port linux (to an amiga)

    2. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody on Slashdot cares about Linux any more. Just let it go.

    3. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by AchilleTalon · · Score: 2

      Wow, time flies! Soon it will be the 20th anniversary of Linux on the Desktop Year.

      --
      Achille Talon
      Hop!
    4. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by GreatDrok · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Wow, time flies! Soon it will be the 20th anniversary of Linux on the Desktop Year."

      You think you're funny but I first had Linux as my desktop in 1995 and shortly after I was one of the founding members of our university Linux User Group.

      --
      "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    5. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      in the timezone about 1995-1996 linux had better drivers and more drivers than windows 95. I ran linux on desktop back then because it was better in almost every possible way!

      isdn worked pretty much "out of the box"(out of the stack of cd's bought from local pc shop).

      graphics cards worked just fine. when 3dfx voodoo came out, it worked on linux just fine. soundcards worked just fine. you could run bigger virtual desktops than on windows with ease. friggin realmedia released software at the same time for linux and windows - so did a lot of other big name companies of the day.

      it was a bit of downhill from there though.. so yeah it will be the 20th anniversary of linux on the desktop soon.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    6. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Linux on the desktop" does not mean your desktop, you narcissistic asshole. It's referring to a majority of desktop computers. You are not part of the majority. Stop letting your ego twist things.

    7. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i.. so yeah it will be the 20th anniversary of linux on the desktop soon.

      That anniversary will happen in 2017 in my case. . .

    8. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by lkernan · · Score: 1

      in the timezone about 1995-1996 linux had better drivers and more drivers than windows 95..

      So a 3 year old OS had more drivers than a 3 month old OS, big surprise there. Newsflash, at that stage, DOS had more drivers than Win95.

    9. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by whereiswaldo · · Score: 1

      Ever stop to think that maybe it was just a simple statement of fact and not meant to take all credit for being the first goddam person to get a Linux desktop install working? Chill out.

    10. Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      Ok, but then let's consider the fact that in 2002 you could install the powerpc port of linux on a powerbook and have everything, gigabit ethernet, 3d, wireless, sound, firewire, working with open source drivers (the modem required a blob). While now you have trouble with firmware, drivers, boot process, even finding the keys to boot into bios/uefi mode. No I am not talking about the crypto keys, the KEYBOARD keys are not so well documented for new laptops.

      In other words, if hardware makers hadn't all these advantages with OSes where upgrading is a commercial, not technical matter (windows, OSX, and possibly systemd/linux if I know my onions) you'd already have had a trouble free desktop linux experience 10 years ago. I switched around that time and am quite satisfied. Captcha: "prouder"

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
  2. "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like by BeanBagKing · · Score: 4, Insightful

    heh :)

  3. A Fat and Bloated 23! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Like many of us it needs work at trimming down its size. So take it easy on the birthday cake etc.

    (Before moderators get all wound up, Linus has been saying it himsellf for years.)

  4. Hail Eris by Richy_T · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hail Discordia.

    1. Re:Hail Eris by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      Fnord to the Hagbard Celine!

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    2. Re:Hail Eris by Nimey · · Score: 1

      The Law of Fives is a hoax. Hail Eris!

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
  5. 23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But...but...the man...

  6. The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know you're just trying to disturb shit with your comment, but you do indirectly bring up a good point: systemd and how it's contrary to everything that UNIX stands for.

    Like almost everyone else, I'd heard about it. I heard the complaints, but I didn't take them seriously. Then, almost three weeks ago, I had to install and use Fedora for the first time in a number of years.

    Everything negative that people have said about systemd is true. The problems they point out are as real as can be. Binary log files? Jesus Christ. One daemon that does just about everything? Jesus Christ. systemd shits upon the UNIX philosophy in every way possible.

    More and more distros have started using systemd. Soon people won't have a choice; they'll be subjected to systemd whether they like it or not. Decades of UNIX and Linux knowledge is being flushed down the shitter, replaced with a something that's more at home in the world of Windows than it ever should be in the land of UNIX.

    Over two decades on, the Linux community is facing its biggest threat yet. systemd is the kind of software that will render Linux irrelevant in the server market, just because it disregards decades of wisdom in favor of a one-size-fits-all approach that has never worked well in the past.

    The Linux community needs to discuss systemd, before it's too late!

    1. Re: The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You ignore the benefits like vendor lockin. They kill bsd compatibility with xorg and make it hard to adopt way land. They forgot Linux is a clone.

    2. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think anyone should mind too much so long as systemd is optional. If it ever becomes required...

    3. Re: The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by x0ra · · Score: 0

      BSD is hiding behind "incompatibility" to justify its own death. Truth is that in a lot of area, they're just relying on others work to keep going without taking part in the process. That being said, nowhere is it written that the Unix-way is the Only One True Righteous Way.

    4. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by x0ra · · Score: 2

      I've been using Fedora and BSDs for a few years now, I didn't notice any specific difference in using any of them. Editing text files is fun, but there has never been any such thing as a standardized configuration syntax. At some point UI are just better to use. I used to be pro-textfile but I'm fed up of looking up the syntax. Sendmail is a mess, bind is a mess, exim is a mess, samba is a mess...

    5. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      That's OK, there are still Microsoft Solutions...

    6. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's your Final Solution, you mean? That's a Godwin right there.

    7. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by AchilleTalon · · Score: 1

      FUD about systemd is grossly exagerrated. I, myself, migrated to systemd about two weeks ago because I was required to do so (before I learned afterward I could have stick with the openrc scripts stuff) in a migration to Gnome 3, outch! I mean I had a hard time with all these migrations, including GRUB 2.

      I really hate the Linux world that very day I manage to migrate. I wasn't able to find what I was accustomed to and do my things the old comfortable way I was used to. However, I must say after two weeks, that is not that bad and you will always find people that resist any change. Once I worked for IBM many decades ago, we were often depicted as evil because AIX was a sacrilege in the face of the SunOS sysadmins with its tool to ease system administration with clever checking of options and so on. It was perceived as a OS for the faint. What was really important to a customer? Preserve the machism of his sysadmins or improve the management and reduce the costs to manage the infrastructure making it possible to build more complex environment without spending all the money on the system administration?

      It is about the same story with systemd, even if it is not as sophisticated as the AIX administration tool, it standardized many things. It is just a matter to take time to learn the new system, something not everyone is willing to do, I must admit, but it is not more complicated than the set of scripts used by the old initialization system.

      And, yes, I must also admit I was really hating Gnome 3 at first, now I took time to understand better the desktop shell and I like it more than Gnome 2, the weak point being not everything is yet properly documented. Since it is open software working on a voluntary base, it will take time and if people are just reluctant to work with the new system and learn it, it will just be longer before a better documentation becomes available. Remember what Open Source is all about? Scratch a itch.

      --
      Achille Talon
      Hop!
    8. Re: The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The BSD people were Super Angry About SVR4 in like 1992 , they made the decision to follow the retro OS path along time ago.

    9. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by armanox · · Score: 1

      Actually, being good at Exchange requires being good at PowerShell these days.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
    10. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What, why don't you want to have single PID 1 daemon to start your system, handle power meter/-buttons, provide dns cache and ntp, system logging and even hide the core dumps into its own database storage? Why don't you want to reboot your server whenever this magic binary blob is updated?

    11. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      Binary log files?

      Im still not sure I understand the issue here. All data is binary, some of it is simply encoded ASCII in a way that many utilities can parse.

      But if you have a better encoding that is widely known and supported, who cares if its not ASCII? mySQL isnt ASCII, but you dont here people blowing their lids that you cant fix a borked mySQL instance with cat and vim.

      Point being-- I get that its nice for "cat" to "just work" when your system is hosed, but if theres another utility that all distros have that "just works", who cares?

    12. Re:The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fuck systemd - it breaks the one tool for one task idea.
      There is no need to include pam, logging, init, dbus, ... into one big thing.

      Gentoos openrc works fine with paralellboot too and does not need all the systemd bloat.

  7. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After 23 years of consistently having your ass handed to you by Microsoft, you think Linus would have a little more humility. You know your software is complete shit when people willingly shell out hundreds of dollars for a superior product rather than use your product for free.

    Ya, windows is winning. Except for the server room. And the tablet and smartphone spaces. And the embedded world. In fact, Linux is kicking windows to the curb pretty much everywhere except the desktop.

  8. Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Enry · · Score: 0

    In the US anyway.

    I started in on Linux a year later after buying my first 386-40(?) system and wondering what I'd install on it. Wound up with Linux after trying OS/2 and kinda avoiding the *BSDs because that just looked like a cluster----. Got a small stack of floppies and my career from there was set.

    I've done a lot in that time - three books, two computer-based training CDs, lots of work on the LDP, was at Red Hat going for my RHCE the day they had their IPO, worked for VA Linux, designed and ran rather large HPC environments for two Major East Coast Universities(tm).

    1. Re:Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell us more about your life story! Did you ever use OSF/1? Did you ever use HP-UX? Did you ever use Ultrix? When did you first use IRIX? What is your favorite memory of SCO OpenServer?

    2. Re:Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. What a bore.

    3. Re:Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, yes, yes, 1993 as a user and 2002 as a developer, not having to use it. This is fun! Let's play some more.

    4. Re:Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      enry I can tell by your low uid and what you're saying that you've probably lived the most interesting life of anybody here at /. Like that other guy said please tell us more about what you've done and what you've seen and who you've met and the software that you've written. Inquiring minds want to know.

    5. Re:Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a couple of jerks green of envy. Fuck you both.

    6. Re:Well we can tell it's legal to drink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Summary: more than you'll ever do, judging by your shitty attitude. I already don't want to know you - good job. Enry, ignore these losers.

  9. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Shell out is funny :>

  10. So what does Linux offer me over... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Say, a train, which I could also easily afford?

    Is it disrespectful to dirt? Does it have awesome power?

  11. Hurd is still MIA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    23 years head start. No problem. Just a little weekend coding and linux will be forgotten.

  12. Oh Lord by Greyfox · · Score: 2

    Doesn't feel like that long. Admittedly a lot of the 90's is a blur. Hey, hey, you guys remember that time when the Linux kernel went over 10 MB and we predicted it would destroy the Internet?

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:Oh Lord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends. Are you talking about the source tarball, or the compiled binary?

    2. Re:Oh Lord by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      The source tarball. Everyone was like "Oooh all the people downloading a 10MB source tarball will DESTROY THE INTERNET!"

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    3. Re:Oh Lord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And now, many websites are multi-megabyte

      It makes me cringe.

    4. Re:Oh Lord by Richy_T · · Score: 1

      *looks around*

      Are you sure it didn't?

    5. Re:Oh Lord by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Or downloading one CD over a 56K modem took a better part of a week?

    6. Re:Oh Lord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In a few years we'll be getting called "old foggies" for complaining about single pages that cause more than 1GB of data to be loaded...

  13. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by x0ra · · Score: 1

    Base product cost is not the only determining factor. You can hardly go against Microsoft indoctrination of people, or the myriad of course for basic spreadsheet & words processing software, just the same way you can hardly use anything but Adobe product when you are doing image processing.

  14. If you sand out my mistakes" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nick still doesn't have an answer to his question about BTRFS locking on multi core machines. If you can "help" him it will further
    his understanding of Linux. You insensitive clods.

  15. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Step 1) Learn to speak english
    Step 2) Shut the fuck up because what you have to say is stupid regardless of your ability to speak the language.

  16. Kinda amazing by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

    "won't be big and
    professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."

    "It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
    will support anything other than AT-harddisks"

    Yet it runs on about 80% of all cell phones, runs on routers, servers, even on my orange iMac (G3)

    Give that man many thanks...

    --
    I've got better things to do tonight than die.
    1. Re:Kinda amazing by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      It's always interesting to browse the Linux 0.01 source tree. I would say that it was pretty good code from the very beginning.

    2. Re:Kinda amazing by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 1

      Red Hat used to hand out a poster with the complete Linux 0.01 source code, at trade fairs etc. It's pretty neat.

      --
      Eat the rich.
  17. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google isn't perfect, but it's far less evil than Microsoft.

  18. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Hamsterdan · · Score: 1

    That's because you can buy a 400$ PC at Walmart. (the laptop's gonna break in 2 years, but people don't really care about that since they'll be able to buy a new one)

    --
    I've got better things to do tonight than die.
  19. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

    It has little to do with "indoctrination" of people, but familiarity is something of a factor, of course.

    More critically, I think, Microsoft established a very large software ecosystem that Linux was never able to match as a relative late-comer, and catching up was nearly impossible without a critical mass that Windows enjoys. The simple reason people use Windows is because of the massive ecosystem of products available for the platform. Linux has some fine software, but there are many, many times the number of applications available for Windows, some of which are pretty damned specialized and are simply not available on other platforms.

    There's a reason Linux is able to complete so well in other areas. In the server market, for example, the job is largely about serving up standard internet protocols, and so a free product is a huge win with no compatibility-related downsides. In the small-form device market, the open and free nature is also a big win, where margins are very tight, and vendors want to be able to customize their offering.

    But the desktop relies on software written for specific platforms, so the ecosystem is everything. Microsoft has been extremely effective at courting third-party developers with excellent tools, services, and documentation. Windows has also enjoyed excellent long-term binary backward compatibility, which is hugely important for business software and the businesses that use them. So, to me, it's not hard to see why they've maintained their domination on the desktop.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  20. 23 Years of LINUX by hackus · · Score: 2

    Year of the Linux desktop!?

    Sorry, just had to post that.

    Thank God for open source LINUX.

    Seriously.

    I would be running a chain of Indian Restaurants long ago if the only thing I was doing was product management of Wind0ze machines.

    LINUS thanks for the greatest occupation anyone could want: LINUX Admin/LINUX Programmer.

    PS: I need to buy LINUS something, but what do you do for a man that has all the source code? MMMmmmm....

    --
    Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
    1. Re:23 Years of LINUX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would be running a chain of Indian Restaurants long ago if the only thing I was doing was product management of Wind0ze machines.

      So instead you chose to fellate men in the alleys behind other people's Indian restaurants?

    2. Re:23 Years of LINUX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong mouth behavior. He's easing the spicy burn on the way out....

    3. Re: 23 Years of LINUX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He loves it when people send penguins. Not. Send him a cool new gadget to play with.

  21. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...Windows?

    You mean that malware-infested OS that was always crashing my dad's computer 10 years ago, back when they were these huge boxes that sat on a desk?

    Or that one that runs on that pathetic game console that can't sell itself without remaking Halo every few years?

  22. Poll idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How many years have you been using Linux:
    1-5 Years
    6-10 years
    11-15 years
    15-20 years
    I am Linus!

    FWIW: I started back in 1993! 21 years, back in the pre-1.0 versions!

    1. Re:Poll idea by bigfinger76 · · Score: 1

      I "started" around 2000 or so with Mandrake. I learned the hard way about winmodems that year.

    2. Re:Poll idea by x0ra · · Score: 1

      around 2000 with a Debian Potato.

    3. Re:Poll idea by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      I started in 1999 with Red Hat 6.

      Looking at the replies, I'd say that during the change of millennium Linux had one of it's biggest breakthroughs.

    4. Re:Poll idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1996. Slackware.

      Still using Slackware now for a server. Interesting fact: never installed or used X on slack.

    5. Re:Poll idea by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      I started in 1999 with Red Hat 6.

      Me too :D And now for the obligatory shameless plug.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:Poll idea by thsths · · Score: 1

      I had some pre-1.0 versions, but no internet connection. The first version I really used was 1.0.8 -nli one via the university 128kBit link. Luckily that got better soon afterwards.

      And later I was really excited about KDE 1.0. I think it had many good ideas and was quite nice to use, if a bit RAM hungry. Unfortunately many of those nice ideas got removed in KDE 2.0 :-(

    7. Re:Poll idea by Gollum · · Score: 1

      0.99p30, IIRC

    8. Re:Poll idea by Gollum · · Score: 1

      Ah, that would be 0.99p13, I know there was a gap there somewhere.

    9. Re:Poll idea by xming · · Score: 1

      22 years give or take, started with SLS, can't remember which version probably older than this one ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/hist... as I can vaguely remember kernel 0.97 but SLS 1.03 has kernel 0.98pl.

      FWIW this is the first Linux distro (there are earlier versions but I didn't bother to search) ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/hist...

      And the place to get your kernel was ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/linux/

    10. Re:Poll idea by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      I'm relatively new to linux...only 12 years. It was a Red Hat 6 variant.

    11. Re:Poll idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I started with FreeBSD (I think) as it had a functional Sound Blaster driver and Linux didn't at the time. Migrated to Mandrake, couldn't take RPM dependency hell and went Gentoo as soon as I found it. Many years (and many BTUs of waste heat) later I still use it. Flexibility trumps ease of use when there's problems to be solved.

  23. How so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought Being a direct spy arm for the NSA/CIA was a little more evil than a falling corporate monopoly?

    1. Re:How so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft gave the NSA their information more freely and less transparently than Google.

    2. Re: How so? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Faulty logic. They don't need to ask for information that they have direct access to...

  24. You're not making much sense by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 1

    Sendmail is historiy just as bind is history. Sendmail uses m4 for it's configuration files (you shouldn't edit the "compiled" stuff), so it's not sendmail that is culprit here. Bind is history because there's powerDNS now. Exim and samba aren't a mess, but they do use "text files" for configuration.

    Anyway, they all use a standard, since it's human readable ascii. It may be obscure since there isn't much if anything that uses their format apart from themselves, but it's a standard. You could argue that all these apps should standardize on XML, but then you'd have all the tags that need to be standardized too. Going for binary files means humans will need extra software just to edit that and machine generating those will be harder too. The Windows Registry is a mess if I ever saw one and after about 20 years it's such a myriad of patches and additions that it's hardly managable.

    Standards are great, which is why everyone invents at least one new one. Pushing very different requirements into one standard usually makes it either too crippled to be useful or too bloated to be maintainable. Maybe it's you that needs to find something else to do if you can't muster up the energy to deal with these inconveniances anymore. There will always be incompatibilities and annoyances if you have to deal with technology so either put up or move on.

    --
    I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
  25. Using an old version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks to some proc changes breaking my wifi adapter drivers (no update available), I'm stuck with a rather old kernel version. :(

    1. Re:Using an old version by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      Which WiFi chip you have?

    2. Re:Using an old version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      rtl8812AU

      in an Edimax EW-7811UAC.

      Driver works like a charm on my Mint install with 3.5.0, but refuses to compile on newer kernels. (Both the official and the github "gnab" version).

  26. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by SlashRAH · · Score: 1

    Last I heard, Chromebook sales were good... Linux inside there too.

  27. 23 years for a server OS and a mobile kernel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nice, if slightly quirky at times, as a server OS.

    Google thinks it works as mobile OS kernel (with a ton of stuff on top of it).

    Perhaps we'll have a good desktop in 10-15 years too.

  28. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...Windows?

    You mean that malware-infested OS that was always crashing my dad's computer 10 years ago, back when they were these huge boxes that sat on a desk?

    No, not that one. That was your father's Windows.

    Modern Windows is fast, secure, and stable.

  29. Poll idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Had a look at it in 1994 - but not much use for linux on a machine with no network. Continously used since 1997, when I got rid of os/2.

  30. Synclair QL by DrYak · · Score: 1

    at that point of time, Linus Torvalds was already used to constantly have to fix things himself and write the software he needed for the buggy and ill-supported Spectrum QL of his youth. Linux was far from his first project and he had a good experience in writing code at that time.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  31. relying on others work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're trolling, ain't you?

    In case your post it's genuine...

    The BSD folks may have their quirks (who hasn't?), but to counter your very skewed perception, just one word: *OpenSSH*

    This application alone would justify all of the *BSDs together (and as someone living in the Linux side of the fence I say that we owe BSD much more than just that).

  32. Hey TROLL, fuck off back to Usenet .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey TROLL, fuck off back to Usenet ..

  33. Is this what slashdot is reduced to .. by lippydude · · Score: 1

    Is this what slashdot is reduced to, providing a platform for a bunch of wintrolls ..

    1. Re:Is this what slashdot is reduced to .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... which starts to balance the 99.99% of articles where comments take the opportunity to bash MS. If there was a story about Steve Balmer saving a drowning puppy a contingent here would still find time to post negative M$ type comments.

    2. Re:Is this what slashdot is reduced to .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... which starts to balance the 99.99% of articles where comments take the opportunity to bash MS. If there was a story about Steve Balmer saving a drowning puppy a contingent here would still find time to post negative M$ type comments.

      Get over it Steve - and put that fucking chair down.

    3. Re:Is this what slashdot is reduced to .. by lippydude · · Score: 1

      ... "which starts to balance the 99.99% of articles where comments take the opportunity to bash MS

      Only a wintroll could see criticism of Microsoft in an article marking the release of Linux rev 3.17-rc2 ..

    4. Re: Is this what slashdot is reduced to .. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      pathetic bunch eh? My guiding principal is use linux if the cost of the software is more than the cost of the hardware. Also, if there is a possibility that someone on the planet might have to touch the machine it gets windows. But if you need a file system that is supportrd by a man who is willing to kill, linux wins hands down. Soon linux will have a registry, then they will take over the desktop.

  34. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Richy_T · · Score: 1

    If it were just about being good software, Lotus, Wordperfect and others would still be around. Make no mistake, if Linux were a regular closed software vendor, it would have become a vague memory long ago.

  35. What would you like to see most in Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hello everybody out there using Linux -

    I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
    professional like gnu) for x86 clones. This has been brewing
    since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
    things people like/dislike in Linux, as my OS resembles it somewhat
    (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
    among other things).

    I've currently ported bash(4.3.24) and gcc(4.9.1), and things seem to work.
    This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
    I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
    are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

                                    AC (ac@timbuktu.org)

    PS. Yes - it's free of any Linux code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
    It is NOT protable (uses x86 task switching etc), and it probably never
    will support anything other than SATA-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

    1. Re:What would you like to see most in Linux? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      There is a major flaw in your post. You are asking for people to reply with things they dislike about the Linux kernel. By definition this means you are asking for feedback from people who have no knowlege of Linux, since everyone who knows about software and is familiar with Linux likes it :-)

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  36. Re: 23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also the fact that distros can't get their act together. Each distro is slightly different from the other, that it is extremely difficult as a commercial software vendor to release a product that installs and works properly on a variety of distros. At best, I will pick one or two of the most popular distros and forget about the rest. The limited amount of distribution makes me rethink whether or not it will be profitable for me to create a Linux version of my software. As for Windows, until recently my software could run on WinXP, Vista, Win 7, and Win8 without any problem. That is at least a 15 year stretch across millions of desktops. I know that any investment that I make in creating a Windows port has a reasonable chance of making me money. That ecosystem that you talk about never gets created for Linux because there is no incentive for software vendors to participate in. Instead, you get the half-baked, unpolished, bug-filled, undocumented free software that exists in the repositories, that is full of gotchas. For Linux to succeed on the desktop, it must allow both the free and the commercial to coexist.

  37. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

    If it were just about being good software, Lotus, Wordperfect and others would still be around. Make no mistake, if Linux were a regular closed software vendor, it would have become a vague memory long ago.

    You know, I was around during the transition from WordPerfect to Word, and from Lotus 123 to Excel. Both of those products were held back by their legacy DOS codebases, and were extremely slow to transition to Windows, which is where everyone started moving, of course. When they finally did release Windows products, they were horrible. So, no, WordPerfect and 123 just lost out to competitors because they couldn't keep up with advances in technology - simple as that.

    I'm not sure what what had to do with Linux being a closed software vendor, though...? I agree that being open source is certainly one of it's strengths.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  38. For me it was 1995 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My first Linux install was late 1995 (Slackware version 3.0) with the Platypus on the disk. It was my first year of university and I replaced OS/2 with Linux. It was occasionally a bit hellish because I needed to do assignments on it and it wasn't quite as polished then as it is now (I started with kernel 1.2.13, and I had to compile a new version because I had to change interrupts on my CD rom drive (change the software then re-compile), and to add Hannu Savulainens SoundBlaster sound card drivers), and even installing needed a boot-line install parameter (again so that it would install from my cdrom with a non-standard interrupt). It's all gotten much easier since then.

  39. Re:23 years of being a rounding error by Richy_T · · Score: 1

    Microsoft would have had a way to kill it.

  40. Re: 23 years of being a rounding error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    you forgot your sarcasm quotes. because windows is none of that