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Linux Turns 8
Skogshuggarn writes "The initial public release of Linux - version 0.01 - occurred on the 17th September 1991. The world's best operating system is therefore 8 years old this Friday.
Happy Birthday " Seems like only yesterday that our little kernel was in potty training, and now here it is all grown up and ready for
world domination.
Looks to me like it's actually GMT instead of EDT.
Nope, world.std.com was selling access earlier then that. But they were selling access to their machines, which just HAPPENED to be on the internet.. ;-P
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The GNU tools are a separate project on its own.
When Linux was released, there are a complete set of GNU tools working on UNIX-like systems. If Linux was (and is now) too tied to them, is because there was not (and there is still not (no, I'm not forgot GNU HURD, but HURD is not ready yet)) an official GNU kernel, so Linux took the vacant.
So today is only the Linux birthday. Somewhere at GNU.ORG you can get the GNU project/tools birthday...
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
No, you can't make that comparison. NT is still loaded with code that's been around since DOS, and OS's with Linux as the kernel are generally loaded with code from GNU that's been around a similar amount of time.
Unless you want to compare the NT kernel with the Linux kernel... :-) (But who can separate the NT kernel from anything... heck, you can't even pull it away from the GUI!)
Tux predates 2.0. I think it was around 1.3 something. I think 2.0 was the first to include the pengiun in the kernel release, though..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Ever heard of the Mozilla project? That's the Nestcape source code....
And IMHO, I think IE is a helluva lot better than Netscape.
- Damnit, I'm dead Jim
The real (live) Tux was adopted 1997-01-27 (http://penguin.uk.linux.org/).
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
This guy Ghandi's got me impressed. "First they laugh at you...," that's witty stuff. I wonder if he bears any relationship to a guy who did some big things in India, who's name was Gandhi?
but otherwise have been left behind by the Linux movement and its creator
No one's leaving you behind. You're staying there of your own free will.
I naively hope the focus will return to technical things and all the non-techs will forget about Linux
Naive, no. A tad pretentious and self-centered? Perhaps.
Your word's echo many a Punker's lament "I remember those guys...their first record was Excellent. After that, they got popular and they sucked. I used to listen to 'em when...blah blah blah"
I've been guilty of it myself, and come to the realization that when I do that, I'm looking for Status and Approval from my audience, whomever they may be. Trust me, it's a waste of time and earns you nothing but closed ears. Self-professed 'old-timers' are some of the Greatest Bores around.
I like running scaled-down systems on slower computers too. I have a lean and mean SuSE system running on a 486 Compaq laptop which is a total blast.
Try grabbing a low-end Celeron system (you should be able to find one fully loaded for around $300) and check out some of the new 'bloat ware' that everyone's gabbing about. It's fun and extremely interesting! There's lot'sa junk and quite a few gems as well. That's ALWAYS been the case with Linux. It's just on a larger scale now.
Sit there and gather dust if you must, but remember: In the dusty, musty annals of history,
NO ONE can hear you sneeze...
**>>BELCH
I think you've just earned yourself the World's Greatest Mom^H^H^HSlashdot Poster mug. :)
fou aje oym asoyf ueyf jaffaq afset su!6j!/\ op 'ua>|7!>| ppn7
That's like saying
oooo Linux has DOS and Windows code from the early 80s. Wine and DosEmu!
And some of those gnu tools go way back to the 70s, Linux is CRUD!!!
Lamer.
Windows NT was designed from scratch - the kernel ISN'T tied to the GUI, it's tied to the GDI - there is a big difference.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
|
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Oh, come on. Linux *users* aren't that bad. Do you hate Neil Stephenson?
It's not the users; it's the Zealots. I've had the displeasure of getting into an E-mail argument with a Mac zealot over FireWire (hey, Harry Zink!), and let me tell you there all idiots. Mac zealots, Linux zealots, Amiga zealots, BSD zealots, any 'minority' operating system seems to breed them. People to immature to realize that different things have different qualities, and different qualities attract different people.
Please don't judge Linux, or Linux users in general based on the most vocal minority.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You mean, personal opinion is flamebait? There's nothing wrong with lynx -- it has something that most GUI browsers tend to lack -- stability. It does crappy table handling, but it's good for the most part, especially if you're in a console-mood (I get this a lot). Not to mention it has pretty colors and everything, and is in active development.
You know back in the day when the net was young(er) and we all had shell accounts....
Well, I used to find it was faster to Shell into my VAX account to FTP stuff from Sunsite (was that site ever not busy?) to grab stuff, then SLIP into my VAX accout to get stuff onto my PC at home, rather than SLIPing straight to Sunsite to grab stuff.... does that make sense?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
happy birthday to you,
happy birthday dear Linux,
happy birthday to you...
Gorfin
Man, I remember the very first day I used Linux. It was in a 'new' pentium 120. It was running a slackware dist, with doom instaled.
I also remember using win95 for the first time. It was even funnier because it kept on crashing the p90 not letting us try the new features of the OS.
I first ran Linux about 5 years ago, when they first opened up the Net to commercial access, I got a dial-up unix account (never even heard of unix before) and found it was realy cool. I got UNIX for Dummies and was pretty impressed with the capabilities and the idea of 100 people accessing the net at the same time on one box.
:p ) But I have linux to thank for my new career!
I started to hear about this "linux" thing and got a slackware distro, ftp'd each dir to my dial up and then downloaded at 9600 baud to my PC. At least I had just got a second HD so I could do a HD install from the windows partition to the other drive.
The first kernel I had was 0.9.18
I figured if it was crap i'd just blow it away. Well needless to say since I was running Windows 3.1 at the time, it was the Windows partition that ended up getting blown away. But it was more than a month of frustration before I could get X to work though.
The difference in performance between the 2 OSes on the same hardware was a real eye-opener and really got me thinking about software and OSes. In fact I ended up returning to school to do CS and now I make lots of $ writing software for a living (ironicly its for windows
The last linux kernel i had was 2.0.?
I think OSS is a good idea but im not religious or political when it comes to that. I used linux initialy because 1) it worked properly and 2) it allowed me to learn about computer systems.
When I heard about BeOS it sounded really interesting and innovative, so when they released it on x86 I thought I'd give it a try. I bought a nice dual proc box from the guys who made the development machines for Be (no HW support problems that way) figuring if I didn't like it i'd just put linux on it instead. Well 1 1/2 years later that box still only has BeOS on it and I use it daily because, for me, it does what i need it to better than anything else out there!
EGADS man. I thought I'd forgotten about minicom. Now you have to go an remind me again...
:-) I was hi tech, and used to run ka9q with the hacked telnet and finger clients as a TCP/IP stack since I had SLIP access at school.
A little later (once there was hard disk support among other things
Oh yeah, over a 2400 baud modem no less.
Now THOSE were the days.
-Rich
no GMT is 5 hours ahead of Eastern time. (or maybe its 4 with daylight time)
Really? So you're fairly new to the industry.. If your total background consists of Linux, OSF/1 (or DEC UNIX or Tru64 or the name of the week), and AIX, you have missed a large chunk of the UNIX world my friend.
So it's acceptable to say that Linux is the world's best operating system, yet a previous post of mine that stated that lynx is the world's best browser gets knocked down to -1:flamebait? Double standards? I love it. -3209
I guess my point wasn't obvious enough for you. Let me try again.
I was pointing out that just as a baby undergoes development before it is born, so the first Linux distribution required a certain amount of development from GNU before it could be born, too.
Conceived has two meanings: "thought of", and "the genesis of a living being e.g. at the time the sperm and egg combine." I was referring to the latter definition when saying that the first GNU code (like a embryo's genetic code) constituted the true beginnings, the conception, of Linux, whereas Linus's kernel release on USENET constituted its birth, its first viable release to the outside world as a full OS.
Get it?
--LP
P.S. But of course, as with babies, the conception date of GNU contributions like gcc and bash and the GPL is too fuzzy (try getting a precise date for all three from gnu.org,) so we only celebrate the birth date.
Totally agree (and would add that non-confirmed rumors suggest NT has some actual VMS code, too). I'd say DOS has always been less essential to NT than, say, bash or especially gcc+bash+XFree86, but this hardly merits quibbling over. If the DOS and GNU+X contributions cancel one another out, you could still make the comparison, but I don't pretend at all that it's a precise comparison.
--LP
This is typical Linux weenie FUD.
The Linux kernel is simply a re-implementation of the Unix kernel, which was started in 1969. There we no design decisions made in the Linux kernel. All the design was done already. As anyone professional software engineer knows, the design takes as much or longer than the coding, so this fact sped up the Linux kernel development significantly (at the expense of quality of course: the Unix, and therefore Linux, kernels are very weak compared to those in superior operating systems).
Second, the core Linux utilities (GCC, BASH, X, etc., etc.) existed long before the Linux kernel did, and are not included in the 8 years.
Again, most of the GNU tools are simply re-implemtations of the commercial product, so
the development cycle was much sorter here.
In contrast to both of these, Windows NT, the kernel, the utilities, and the applications
were all brought up from scratch, except for some of the command line stuff, which was borrowed from DOS, and the GUI which was borrowed from Windows 3.1 and later 95.
If you want to talk about very fast development, look at Windows 95/98 applications. There are by leaps and bounds more applications for this platform, and it has existed for just over four years. Most of these applications are very high quality, and are what practically every office professional uses in their daily work. Whereas the UNIX API has been around forever, yet all of the applications avaiable for it are difficult to use, inflexible, powerless, and have arcane misdesigns such as case sensitivity.
The API design was; the design of the implementation wasn't - they may well have adopted published ideas about UNIX kernels, but NT's I/O subsystem adopted ideas from VMS. (No, I'm not saying NT ripped off code from VMS; I have no reason to believe it includes VMS code.)
E.g., Internet Explorer 5? :-)
(If you're going to say "all", make sure you mean it.)
If you're referring to case sensitivity for file names, that's the fault of the OS, not of the applications, unless you're arguing that they should all have included code to work around the OS's case-sensitivity. (No, I am not defending case sensitivity here, nor do I plan to defend it.)
Anyone else remember alt.linux?
.12
I remember being surprised that there was another linux user in the world to create it!
How about the MCC release (the first distro ever)?
I thought that distros were for wimps. I managed to resist them for (literally) years, until I had some hard drive randomness that sent me running to Slackware.
I'd love to find some of the other early users (pre-1992) and swap memories...
I started with version
I downloaded it from Compuserve with the standard (of the day) 2400 baud modem. It took hours. I could not believe that I had a multitasking Unix for free.
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/lin ux-0.01.tar.gz
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
it's true.
I might still have some 5.25" floppies with SLS on them around here. I downloaded it from the college's machines (ZMODEM at 14.4 kbps...or maybe it was 28.8; can't remember when I made that switch). Haven't used 'em in ages, of course...I think the kernel at the time was 0.99pl14, or somewhere around there. The machine was a 386SX-25 with 4 megs of RAM, 125 megs of disk, and Hercules mono graphics that got upgraded to mono VGA with a 256K Oak VGA card. (Managed to push a fixed-frequency mono VGA monitor to 800x600 when running X...wasn't too bad if you didn't mind the 50-Hz refresh rate.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Yes, young linux just turned 8. The b-day party went like so: "I want more features! mine! mine! Gimme gimme gimme!" :) So go and give young linux a present - patch up a few bugs in the source.
--
Oh No - I've been slashdotted
-- Phil Hunt, philh@vision25.demon.co.uk
Check the posting times. Maybe it's a Linux bug? Just kidding. Go Linux!!1
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Party At Rob's Place!!!
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
Never pet a burning dog.
I bet there aren't any boxes out there still running 0.1 somehow - now that would be an uptime worth having (joke).
How about a slashdot poll - my first booted kernel was ... or have we done that one? I'm too lazy to check.
-- Oh Well
actually "world domination" is the professed goal of Linus....so it appears in many many Linux press releases, speeches, etc.
Werd.
This is what Richard Stallman is really working for. Freedom to learn and really use our own computers, and to allow communities to form around those systems.
We are lucky to be living in these times. I think that, in the future, computer science students will learn about the creation of software engineering in the 1970s, the genesis of the personal computer in the 1980s, and the explosion of the Internet and free software in the 1990s. That can only be a good thing.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Man, it's nice to see how far our kids have come.
"World domination" was something Linus put in his .plan file a looong time ago, is was ment as a joke. Noone could imagine that it ever was going to happen.
Yes it is! World domination, fast! But we have to do it carefully... Personally I don't think too much hype is good for Linux. I think it scares some people away. "I just want to do my word processing". User friendliness is the next great step for Linux. Having people choosing Linux as their first OS (and getting them to continue using it).
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
No, you're using the wrong base. It's actually 100 years old.
-ElJefe
Anyone else remember alt.linux?
When I started using Linux in Jan 1992 it was like a gift from God. No more begging root accounts from stressed Unix admins at school; and I had a system I could use to get work done on at night when the lab was closed. On a lowly 386sx/16 w/4MB of RAM, no less!
How about the MCC release (the first distro ever)?
How about that doctor (Dr. W-something) from a cancer center who deployed Linux in production (in a hospital, no less!) as early as late '92? He would write these great, long, detailed big reports to the kernel list.
I'd love to find some of the other early users (pre-1992) and swap memories...
The way I see it, it's better to have world domination through more valuable signal strength from fewer geeks than more noise by bums-on-seats windoze lusers.
It's *mindshare* that counts as to "who wins", if you're playing that game, not how many slave-peasants you have in tow...
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I'm sure we all remember the recent 30 year mark for the internet (how could I drink that much and not get hungover? Not that I'm COMPLAINING, mind you . . . (-;), so a little quick math shows that the net is 3.75 times as old as Linux. We've (not me personally, I'm afraid) been hacking for more than a quarter of the time the net has been in existance. Specifically 26.63142% Is there any significance to this? Yep. I'm bored and I don't want to work any longer, and obviously you are in a similar position or you wouldn't have read this entire post!!! hehehehehe . . .
Anyway, geek party again tonight! Black Russians all around! (Finlandia vodka though . . . . the closest I can think of to being appropriate!)
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
NCLUG is celebrating the 8th birthday of Linux with a Linux DemoDay and install fest here in Fort Collins, Colorado (at the University Park Holiday Inn by the CSU campus). The DemoDay event is being coordinated at www.linuxdemo.org and is a worldwide event. Take a look at the demoday site to see if an event is being held in your area.
The "Worlds Best Operating System" can mean different things to different people. For some, Linux, for others, Windows. Or for you, FreeBSD. It's all subjective. Myself, I prefer Windows because it's the best for me.
one of these has led to and been supported by the largest ($$) company in America.(now under investigation for widespread anti-competitive behaviour)
the other came out of a (10,000) garage and is free (speech and beer).
Yet now they compete.
Which do you think is more impressive?
+&x
C:\WINNT\DRWTSN32.EXE
cpeterso
Heh heh.
That's a good one, you forgot to add ", but Win98 beats them all!".
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Fair comment. At most though, this makes Linux look either six months older or NT look four years younger, as elucidated below, neither of which helps the Linux "case." On the Linux side, see one of the Linus-authored Linux history files around the net for a definitive discussion of Linux in 1991-1992. To summarize, even Linus doesn't remember or have records about exactly when the very first work occurred. But I've never seen any suggestion that he was working on it in 1990. It's clear that he had a few device drivers and the hard disk support in the kernel working in July 1991 and posted his first USENET request for POSIX specs around then. The first code release, a privately emailed notice of 0.01 source-only came in mid-September 1991 (hence the current 8th-year celebration.)
So back to your question, what are the comparisons for (a) start dates and (b) release dates for as close as you can get apples-to-apples comparisons?
a) In terms of start dates, defined as "first work on the kernel", it's slightly pre-July 1991 for Linux and October 1988 for NT. 8-8.5 yrs (Linux) vs. 11 yrs (NT)
b) In terms of release dates, defined as first release to outside parties, this comes with Linux 0.01 in mid-Sept 1991 and with NT on July 5-6th 1992 according to my local NT guru. (For the pedantically challenged, note this is a Linux source release vs. NT binary release. For a "cleaner" apples-to-apples comparison, the first Linux binary release was on October 5, 1992.) In any case, that makes Linux older! 8 yrs (Linux) vs. 7.25 yrs (NT)
Other issues such as conceptual origin, DOS/VMS code and GNU/X code discussed elsewhere in this thread. Is the pedantic geek in you satisfied now?
--LinuxParanoid
"Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it" (or in this case, misinterpret it and act/fail-to-act based on resulting misperceptions.)
Don't be so cocky, son. The first MCC release, in fact, pre-dates SLS by a year or more.
/bin /etc /lib basics together for the first time so you didn't have to bootstrap them all yourself.
It was a two-disk boot/root combo that put all the
SLS, when it arrived, looked more like today's mega-distros with every package under the sun. Until recently, I always preferred to know what exactly what was on my system because I had put it there myself, so I avoided them.
-Peter
Wow -- welcome back! What a pleasant suprise.
Your contributions are certainly remembered -- as much for providing some of the earliest wow-we-really-are-building-something-useful realizations as for their technical content.
(I'm impressed with the diversity of your skills, BTW -- backhoe operator and all. I wish I had something like that to fall back on for when the e-economy collapses and we're all holding "Will code Python for food" signs...)
-Peter
ok, i'll take up the argument
how is case sensitivity an arcane misdesign?
it sounds like M$ has rotted your brain, my friend.
Dave Cutler (Windows NT architect) went to work for M$ in October 1988.
Which raises the question: if Linux is growing so much faster than any other OS ever, how much worse/better is NT for being three years older?
Something to think about before you make the claim and the MS marketing team tries to shoot it down.
--LinuxParanoid
Binary: 1000
.sig here.
Octal: 10
Dec & Hex: 8
No matter what it looks like, there isn't a
No matter what it looks like, there isn't a
....since I assume that the penguin didn't spring into being the moment Linux was released.
(Whoa, lots of internal server errors today, what gives?)
--
This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along.
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
So if Linux was born in 1991, does the development of the GNU tools in the mid-late 80s count as the act of conception?
... Reproduction of the asexual kind I suppose. ;-)
(That labor took a lot longer than 9 months, eh?)
--LP
(Hmm, this fits better than I thought. It's true, the development of the GNU tools *was* an act of passion, right?
Rule #1: Never trust a consultant.
Is this just a troll, or is it actually true?
Given his enthusiasm for Linux (which was similar to mine: a gift from God), I find it hard to believe...
-Peter
I find it interesting that they call "Netscape Navigator" open source on this webpage (listed under the various programs used to create the page)..
AKAIK, Netscape never was "open source". Just think about how much money Netscape would've lost if they'd made their code open source - heh. I suppose there's the flipside, that Netscape would've become so stable, so quickly, that it would've crushed MSIE. A game of what-if's...
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
Did you know when was release 1.0, 1.3, 2.0, 2.1 2.2, 2.3... 2.4:)
Oh, and Happy birthday Linux!
World's best operating system? ;) Eh happy birthday but don't let that ego grow too much