
Linux is 25 today - SpaceInvader
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/dlNtH7RRrGA%5B1-25%5D
======
astrodust
Being able to install a UNIX-type operating system on my personal computer,
one that was _free_ , was a life-changing experience for me.

At the time there were prohibitively expensive UNIX operating systems on the
market, many of which required even more expensive proprietary hardware to run
on, and then you'd have to fork out even _more_ money for a compiler.

An enormous thanks to Linus and the GNU team for changing all of that and
making this accessible to pretty much anyone crazy enough to try and install
it on their computer.

~~~
jethro_tell
You wonder what the innovation curve looks like when people are interested
then can't afford the 20k per year for unix4. Someone probably would have
gotten there (GUN/hurd is only 20 years away, probably because of many people
working on linux instead). A lot of the innovation in tech is a result of
tinkering or being able to run on a low cost platform to make the margins
pencil out. This wasn't much of an option under the commercial OSs that
existed before Linus started.

------
karma_vaccum123
Linux is amazing! From 86% of the world's smartphones to pretty much all of
the top500 supercomputers to millions of Chromebooks in schools to tens of
millions of critical servers to umpteen embedded uses I've never even heard
of!

Linus must be considered one of the greatest project managers ever
(seriously!)...results don't lie. His manner is almost identical to Leslie
Groves, who managed both the construction of the Pentagon and then the
Manhattan Project (greatest engineering project in history). Some tasks seem
to demand people who don't need to be liked.

It is just incredible that we can use something as awesome as Linux in a free
and open manner.

Thanks Linus! I don't care if you're a jerk, you deliver like a freaking boss!

~~~
mikekchar
Most people don't remember (or weren't around to see) what it was like before
Linux. IMHO Linus's biggest contribution to the world was the modern open
source development methodology.

In my 4th year at university I did a project on Mach and was very excited to
continue working with it through the HURD. At the time, getting up to date
source code for the HURD required sending an email to the team and requesting
it. I dutifully did so and was greeted with a reply asking for my CV. I sent
it in (as bare as you might imagine it would be as a university student) and
was denied access since they only wanted experienced kernel developers to work
on the project. I've often regretted not saving that email.

But this is the way it was back then. You waited until something was released
to play with it, or you contacted the team to see if they would grant you
access to the latest development code.

Linus changed all that by giving ubiquitous access to the code and taking
patches from _anyone_. It was a huge revelation. Keep in mind that this
coincided with more open access to the internet, so his attitude was
facilitated by the fact that you didn't need to rely on UUCP to slowly
distribute code. More and more, people had access to FTP (and soon the web).

The reason for Linux's success, IMHO, is down to that. _Everyone_ flocked to
Linux because it was obviously unencumbered by the BSD legal issues and Linus
would look at any patch coming his way, regardless of who sent it. This is now
de rigour -- to the point where I'm sure the vast majority of people using
free software today believe that it's always been that way.

For me, RMS invented the concept of free software. Linus showed how to
actually make it work. There were other good projects at the time, but from my
perspective nothing came close to Linux.

~~~
notaplumber
> Linus's biggest contribution to the world was the modern open source
> development methodology.

OpenBSD made a pretty big contribution as well.

[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-
paper.pdf](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-paper.pdf)

[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-
slides.pdf](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/anoncvs-slides.pdf)

~~~
mikekchar
It's a fair point. I often wonder what would have happened without the
potential BSD lawsuits hanging over everything. I remember at the time being
torn between installing Linux on my box or BSD. When mmap was finally
implemented on Linux, I decided (rather unhappily IIRC) to go with it thinking
it was the "safer" choice.

One thing to keep in mind, though, wrt OpenBSD is that by the time it arrived
on the scene, Linux was well and truly established. The better comparison is
NetBSD, which showed up in 1993, but even then Linux was in the fabled 0.99
version (and rapidly running out of letters). It was really Linus's actions
before that time that cemented Linux as a legitimate contender -- he had
attracted a really large number of very talented programmers. NetBSD, if
memory serves, was suffering from a fair amount of internal infighting which
eventually ended up with Theo de Raadt being ousted.

------
matt_wulfeck
Linux and Linus are amazing, but let's give our props to another humongous
catalyst to the open-source, free software movement: Stallman and gcc.

RMS and his grudge against the brain drain at MIT single-handedly changed the
free software movement forever.

~~~
thearn4
> brain drain at MIT

I haven't really heard about this part of his motivation. What was going on at
MIT that made him feel that there was a brain drain in progress?

~~~
Mikeb85
[https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html)

> In 1981, the spin-off company Symbolics had hired away nearly all of the
> hackers from the AI Lab, and the depopulated community was unable to
> maintain itself.

------
stonogo
Ah, google groups, the only reliable way to download more than a megabyte of
data to render 1kb of text.

Somewhere, I still have a copy of this message, from when it appeared in my
newsreader. It would be an interesting exercise in archaeology to see if
modern linux has the tools to mount that old filesystem... guess the rest of
today's productivity will have to take a back seat.

~~~
brs
Well, another five years until it shows up on
[http://olduse.net/](http://olduse.net/) (which is worth a nostalgic browse if
you haven't tried it)

------
TheLarch
I'm not usually nostalgic but my circa 1994 Slackware CD distro is special.

Incidentally I can't overemphasize how far basic sysadmin skills will get you.

~~~
rconti
Ah, memories of my Slackware (kernel 1.2.8) CD set. Whatever version of LILO
it shipped with munged the lilo.conf, and hence MBR, every time you ran it.

Trial by fire. Good times.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I still remember looking at the screen showing "LIL" at the top. Damn it, what
else went wrong this time around?

~~~
parshimers
Ah, very fond memories indeed. See also: XFree86.conf .

~~~
TheLarch
So much time. _So much time._

------
billforsternz
It's really amusing to see Linus in humble, I'm not really worthy, it's just a
hobby, it might be interesting to someone perhaps, etc. mode.

------
tokenizerrr
> I don't want to be on the machine when someone is spawning >64 processes,
> though.

Ha.

------
itgoon
Huh. What am I going to do with this old 386. This article says this..."Linux"
thing will work on it.

Damn. That's a lot of floppies.

Well, I'll be damned. It works! Let's see if I can't get this Apache web
server (what silly names! Tee hee!) to go.

Ha! That works better than (whatever I was using - I forget).

(still using it)

------
cmdrfred
Been a full time Linux user for over a year now. Windows 10 pushed me off the
Microsoft treadmill. The future is Linux, everything else will be an
historical oddity.

~~~
electricEmu
I don't see a world benefited by a monoculture operating system anymore than I
see it happening.

~~~
sounds
This is not a monoculture!

\- Theo de Raadt

:)

------
eloy
NO! It is GNU/Lin.. oh wait...

Congrats Torvalds, thanks for changing the world!

------
gghh
Since git was born in 2005, the git repository has not even half of Linux'
history.

~~~
Maken
They seem to plan to port the early source control history into git, but it
seems to be a WIT
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/1da177e4c3f41524e88...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2)

~~~
anarazel
There's
[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/history/history...](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/history/history.git/)

which you can graft to happen before that commit. Or just look at separately
if you're lazy ;)

------
elliotec
I love all the parentheses (including nested parentheses!) in that
introduction post from Linus, and how he's careful to make it clear that it's
just a hobby and not professional.

~~~
w8rbt
He probably had a few Lisp classes in college.

------
loafoe
Remember getting Linux root and boot diskette images via FTP mail
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTPmail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTPmail))
and downloading them using UUCP on a "superfast" 9600 baud dialup connection.
Thx Linus!

------
crudbug
IBM backing Linux was the tipping point.

~~~
yolesaber
I remember when they showed commercials during the Super Bowl about Linux. My
12-year-old geek self couldn't believe it! I had a bunch of older people at my
parent's party asking me about Linux. Felt cool to be able to show off my home
built computer running slackware to a bunch of adults who often chastised me
for being in the basement too much :)

------
EdSharkey
Most big and fancy things like Linux start out humble and pokey. Linux
inspires me to do great things!!

------
aidos
Can someone explain how there's a post in the middle of this from before it
all started?

"Thanks for creating Linux." 24/06/2011 John

~~~
justinsaccount
From before? That was posted 5 years ago on the 20th anniversary.

~~~
aidos
Ahhhhhhh oops. Dates are hard!:-)

------
Whostasay
Link for this article goes off to some unrelated page (it's not related to
Linux is 25, it's related to MINIX).

~~~
stockerta
Its the original post in which Linus introduced his minix clone linux.

------
jff
> Most of these seem possible (the tty structure already has stubs for window
> size), except maybe for the user-mode filesystems

And thus Linus dug a hole out of which Linux has only recently begun to
clamber.

