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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?

6 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 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...

      --
      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. Only a tiny fraction of the consumer market ... by quax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... if you forget about Android.

  4. What would I like to see? by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. A return of hardened gentoo and grsecurity's compliance with the GPL
    2. A proper audit of the kernel and critical components to eliminate defects
    3. A formal analysis of SELinux along the lines of SEL4
    4. 7N reliability
    5. Proper funding of RTLinux and further integration into mainstream
    6. VST and malloc replacement Hoard as part of a standard Linux distro
    7. Third-party maintenance of abandoned architectures
    8. Rewrites of XTank, NV and PHIGS
    9. Ports of Elite: Dangerous and Cubase
    A. Hewlett-Packard's pluggable scheduler
    B. Kernel config supporting hardware detection for suggesting defaults
    C. Usable Gnome and KDE
    D. Replace Systemd with something not made by committee
    E. Addition of Occam-Pi/Guppy, Verified C and SystemC to LLVM
    F. Harness for loading Linux modules onto alternate physical devices

    --
    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)