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Linux Turns 27 (omgubuntu.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the godspeed dept.

It's been 27 years since Linus Torvalds let a group of people know about his "hobby" OS. OMGUbuntu blog writes: Did you know that Linux, like Queen Elizabeth II, actually has two birthdays? Some FOSS fans consider the first public release of (prototype) code, which dropped on October 5, 1991, as more worthy of being the kernel's true anniversary date. Others, ourselves included, take today, August 25, as the "birth" date of the project. And for good reason. This is the day on which, back in 1991, a young Finnish college student named Linus Torvalds sat at his desk to let the folks on comp.os.minix newsgroup know about the "hobby" OS he was working on. The "hobby OS" that wouldn't, he cautioned, be anything "big" or "professional." Even as Linux continues to have lion's share in the enterprise world, it has only managed to capture a tiny fraction of the consumer space. Further reading: Ask Slashdot: Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'?

Which Linux-based distro do you use? What changes, if any, would you like to see in it in the next three years?

8 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. A tiny fraction of the consumer market? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linux the kernel.

    You know, the kernel in all those android phones and tablets.

    Quite frankly Linux is in most smart phones and tablets, and is the most popular phone os kernel of all time.

    Therefore itâ(TM)s incredibly popular and successful in the consumer market.

    1. Re: A tiny fraction of the consumer market? by jd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except that Google is replacing it with an in-house kernel.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re: A tiny fraction of the consumer market? by jroysdon · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's still a Linux kernel, just because it is customized doesn't make it not Linux.

      Android OS - Linux kernel

    3. Re: A tiny fraction of the consumer market? by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Presumably jd was referencing Google's experimental Fuscia OS, which may or may not ever actually replace Android (but they hope it does). Fuscia has a non-Linux (but still open source) kernel called Zircon: https://fuchsia.googlesource.c...

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      This space intentionally left blank
  2. battery life on laptops by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    Improvement of battery life on laptops would be nice. I'm planning to work on that myself but I have three other projects I need to get through first, so it might take a few years before I get around to it. Hopefully someone else will have done it by then.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Slackware! by Sooner+Boomer · · Score: 3, Informative

    For the win!

    --
    Chaos maximizes locally around me.
  4. Re:Distro: Debian Change: Scrap Systemd by gweihir · · Score: 3, Informative

    My thoughts exactly. Make it complex, behaving arbitrarily, reduce diagnostics possibilities (binary logging) etc. and many enterprise system administrators will just have their bosses pay for support instead of wading through the mess themselves.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  5. Re: Distro: Debian Change: Scrap Systemd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    There are more non-systemd choices now:
      http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Linux_distributions_without_systemd

    I have been using Antix for awhile, and I just installed Devuan on one of my machines with no problems.