

Twenty Years of Linux according to Linus Torvalds - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/twenty-years-of-linux-according-to-linus-torvalds/8663

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narrator
Long time desktop Linux user here. I used Linux on the desktop in the late 90s
when the only usable GUI apps were Netscape 4.7, Xemacs and terminal windows
and there were some half-baked Windows95 like window managers. I got a heck of
a lot of real work done on that config though.

The darkest day for Linux was when Windows 2000 came out. It was a Windows
that didn't crash, had good networking and performed pretty well. A lot of
people I knew who had been using Linux up to that point switched back.

I think with Android and Ubuntu over the last few years there's been a new
dawn and Linux has caught back up as a end-user OS. For instance, I needed to
scan a document and I was prepared for the hours of fiddling that I thought
was probably necessary to get this to work with my Canon
scanner/printer/copier. I used Simple Scan, it worked perfectly the first time
I used it without reading the manual and with no configuration and it saved to
a multi-page PDF. Mind=Blown!

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bergie
Big deal with GNOME and Ubuntu for me is the six month release cycle. I know
every half year I will get a new version with lots of fixes and improvements.

This kind of expectability lacks from almost all other desktop OSs

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Sodaware
When I first wanted to try Linux on my laptop, it took an age just to find a
distro that could recognise the display. A few weeks ago I bought some new
wireless hardware, and it took longer to get it installed on Windows than it
did on Linux. 95% of my time is spent on Linux now, and there are only a few
programs (Flash Develop) that I need Windows for.

I don't think it will ever be the year of the Linux desktop, but that
certainly doesn't make it a failure like the wonderful comments on that
article would suggest.

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burgerbrain
_"October 5th 2001, when 0.02, the first public release was made?"_

Uhh....

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jrockway
_SJVN: Looking ahead, any thoughts on where Linux will be at 40?

LT: Bah. I don’t plan that far ahead. I can barely keep my calendar for the
next week in mind. I really have no idea._

So true. At work they want us to set all of our goals for 2011. I don't even
know what I want to do _tomorrow_.

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sasvari
I only became a user some day in 1999/2000, but still it's impressive how
Linux has changed and developed since then. I literarily could see void
bubbles above people's head when talking about Linux. if only they would have
known that there mobile is running on Linux in 2010 ...

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juiceandjuice
Wow those comments are really something. I'm lovin' it.

