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Linus on Linux's 25th Birthday (zdnet.com)

The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, posted his famous message announcing Linux on August 25, 1991, claiming that it was "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu." ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols caught up with Linus Torvalds and talked about Linux's origins in a series of interviews: "SJVN: What's Linux real birthday? You're the proud papa, when do you think it was? When you sent out the newsgroup post to the Minix newsgroup on August 25, 1991? When you sent out the 0.01 release to a few friends?

LT: I think both of them are valid birthdays. The first newsgroup post is more public (August 25), and you can find it with headers giving date and time and everything. In contrast, I don't think the 0.01 release was ever announced in any public setting (only in private to a few people who had shown interest, and I don't think any of those emails survived). These days the way to find the 0.01 date (September 17) is to go and look at the dates of the files in the tar-file that still remains. So, both of them work for me. Or either. And, by the way, some people will argue for yet other days. For example, the earliest public semi-mention of Linux was July 3: that was the first time I asked for some POSIX docs publicly on the minix newsgroup and mentioned I was working on a project (but didn't name it). And at the other end, October 5 was the first time I actually publicly announced a Linux version: 'version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already).' So you might have to buy four cakes if you want to cover all the eventualities."
Vaughan-Nichols goes on to pick Linus' brain about what he was doing when he created Linux. In honor of Linux's 25th birthday today, let's all sing happy birthday... 1... 2... 3...

5 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Android is certainly not GNU, just based on Linux.

  2. Re: TECHNICALLY, THE COPIER OF MINUX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No. He used Minix as a tool and example. Linux is monolithic and Minix is a micro kernel. As such, one cannot be a copy of the other - not even closely related.

    All of this is easily verified, including public discussions between both authors where they debate the design merits. They are not even similar operating systems.

    I suspect you're trolling but the truth needs to be told. I would log in but I am not supposed to be online. But, the facts are out there. Just install both in virtual machines and then compare the two for yourself. I have...

  3. The famous post for those inclined.... by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Informative
    https://groups.google.com/foru...

    For me I didn't start in 1991. I hopped on NeXt in college in 1993, then threw slackware on a couple boxes in 1994/95. I hate being late to the party... almost as much as I hated downloading slack floppy sets of 56k ISDN

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  4. Re:Just wanted to say "thank you" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Actually, no it isn't. The NT kernel puts all threads in the system into a shared scheduler, so pretty much every thread switch causes a process switch as well. The Linux kernel puts processes into the scheduler, and schedules threads within that process, so most thread switches do not causes a process switch.

    This is why Linux can handle 10,000 of threads in a single process while Windows shits itself at about 2,000 threads in the entire system.

    So no, sorry, the NT kernel is worse in both design and function than Linux.

    The filesystem is also slow as fuck too, and nearly impossible to extend, which is why you don't have anything remotely modern like ZFS on Windows, until you wait for MS to implement some of the features in NTFS over a long, long, long time. Part of the problem here is the retarded async I/O model, which Windows only needs because it doesn't support large numbers of threads properly (see above).

    The Windows desktop, OTOH, is way better than anything on Linux. But the kernel? You must be smoking some serious crack to think the NT kernel is in any way better than Linux.

  5. Re: Congrats Linus by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1, Informative

    You know very well that that isn't what trigger warnings and safe spaces are used for. They're used to silence dissenting voices and create one dimensional echo chambers. Besides, calling a guy who was raped (which rad fems wouldn't give a shit about anyway) a fag or a pussy would come under "a climate of mutual respect" would it?