LWN Does Year in Review for Linux

HeUnique was too busy to post, but pointed out LWN's Timeline of 1999 for Linux. Quite a ride over the last year - complete with lots of images and historical markers. It's broken into months or the whole year. This is version .8 - 1.0 will be out after the end of the year.

Comments

Seattle Prophecy? :)

[MAXOMENOS]

Listed as one of the year's events is a series of April Fools jokes, including a fake news story where Anti-MS protesters rioted through the streets of Seattle. And eight months later....

Conspiracy theories anyone?????

The Kulturwehrmacht

A world of CGI�s.

[Nicopa]

This is not completelly related with the timeline, but... why now everything is a CGI? I can expect that from massive consumer products like, say, a Disney site... but people "in the community" should know that to properly build "the web" we need indexable and cacheable content.

Squid will not cache that timeline, so the 200 Linux users of a ISP will each download his own copy. Netscape won't probably cache it either, so you will need to download it again if you come back.

The pages will not be indexed, so if you make a query in Altavista with "+timeline +linux" you wont find the page.

I think there was a Slashdot article abaout this a short time ago, maybe we need some more until we learn.. =)

Note that you could still use a CGI and dont have all the problem I listed. Ask me how.. (and eeeevrybody will give you the same answers =) ).

Re:microsoft

[MAXOMENOS]

. . .

• 4/11/99: 10,192 bugs located so far. Fixed one; patch added more. New count is 10,197.
• 4/12/99: 10,197 bugs located so far. Fixed one; patch added more. New count is 10,214.
• 4/13/99: 10,214 bugs located so far. Fixed one; patch added more. New count is 10,222.
• 4/14/99: Treated the gang to a movie to achieve goal of getting through one day without causing further damage.
• 4/15/99: 10,222 bugs located so far. Fixed one; patch added more. New count is 10,378.
• 4/16/99: 10,378 bugs located so far. Fixed one; patch added more. New count is 10,387.
• 4/17/99: 10,387 bugs located so far. Fixed one; patch added more. New count is 10,402.

The Kulturwehrmacht

ZDNet - hmmm.

[Signal 11]

They left out a critical detail:
The Jesse Berst Timeline!

January: "Leenucks?" -- Jesse Berst
March: "Linux will never amount to anything!"
May: "Linux might give Microsoft a run for it's money
July: "I always said Linux was a contender."
September: "Linux beats NT hands down."
November: "Go linux go!"

Bias

[Wonko42]

Did anyone else notice the somewhat biased nature of the timeline? Obviously this was put together by someone who didn't feel comfortable with marking down some of Linux's losses as well as its gains.

It's biased almost to the point of being propaganda, even. Almost every reference to Microsoft is either exaggerated against the company or in some way worded so as to make Linux appear superior. Sure, in some cases this is fact, but in others, not so much. I noticed specifically that the blurb about the first Mindcraft benchmarks was quite exaggerated and even factually inaccurate. And where was the mention of the results of the SECOND Mindcraft tests? There was mention of the ANNOUNCEMENT of the tests, but nothing about the results, which proved that the original tests were correct.

I'm all for Linux enthusiasm, but Linux propaganda just starts to worry me a bit.

--

Grossest understatement/misstatement of the year

[/]

Under march, you'll be reminded of Eric S Raymond's "Take My Job, Please" essay fiasco. If you go and reread it, as I did, you'll notice the following text at the bottom as one of the qualifications ESR said was necessary to have his job:

"You'll need to be financially secure enough not to need to have a regular job. (This one will give you some perks but no pay.)"

Especially not $36 million. No sir, I wouldn't call that pay. That one's definitely a perk.