
Linux was first released to the world from here 17.9.1991 - K33P4D
http://ftp.funet.fi/
======
spacedcowboy
I was using Linux before things like Slackware came about, when it was just a
boot and a root floppy disk. We had DECstation 3100/5000 machines costing
small fortunes, that couldn’t reliably write a CD. The small 386 in the corner
running “that newfangled thing” was far better at this :)

In my lifetime, I’ve gone through:

\- building (as in: soldering chips to a motherboard) my own computer at home
at age 11*

\- buying an 8-bit Atari and learning about Antic and the 6502

\- eventually getting a “disk drive” which stored an entire 128k

\- moving onto a 32-bit cpu with the Atari ST

\- blowing my student budget for the term on a hard disk, 20MB

\- _finally_ getting connected, at the blazing speed of 2048 baud

\- lather, upgrade, rinse, repeat

\- to where I have a 1gbit internet connection, a 10gbit home network, 100TB
of storage locally, and a server rack in the garage with more than 100 “cores”
available.

Things have changed so much, so quickly, relatively speaking.

~~~
insulanian
What are you doing with 100 cores in your garage?

~~~
spacedcowboy
Generally FPGA place and route, and more recently the same for ASICs. I don't
recommend making your own ASIC as a hobby. It's damn expensive.

~~~
jlokier
You're doing your own ASIC? Very nice. I'd love to talk that over if you'd
care to be in touch. (Contact details in profile).

~~~
spacedcowboy
I'm ridiculously busy right now, and I don't have the time - sorry. What I
will do is point you to the resources I've been using:

[http://opencircuitdesign.com](http://opencircuitdesign.com) is the primary
resource, which gives you layout, design, proofing, and setlist generation.

I'm not aiming for anything even remotely state-of-the-art, I'm looking at a
180nm design and even that might be pushing the hobby funds. You can get
"shuttle service" at various places to share a wafer, or you can use efabless
(link on the magic page above) to do a lot of the work for you, at additional
cost.

The guy who for years wrote and maintained Magic (the layout tool) now works
for efabless, and he's a great guy - especially if you submit patches to him
:)

It's a lot of hard work, you have to worry about all sorts of things you can
take for granted in an FPGA (clock routing, i/o bonding and pad designs,
oscillators for clock multiplication etc. etc. and yes etc. again). But
there's not many people who can say they taught themselves how to make an ASIC
:)

~~~
jlokier
Thanks. Those are great pointers!

And yes, many kudos for teaching yourself how to make an ASIC, that is very
cool :-)

I have a long way to go to get there.

I've been out of the open source silicon field for a while but want to get
back in. My side project is building a small-scale factory for custom ASICs,
rather than getting them made in another factory. It's a very interesting
problem, and quite different from ASIC design issues since a lot of it is
physics, and obviously there are many factors that are different on a small
scale.

The goal is an open source silicon service to the extent of making it
relatively affordable for others to iterate and reuse designs, in the hope of
developing a thriving scene much like happened with open source software,
GNU/Linux etc. But it is proving hard to find the time these days. And as you
say, it's expensive, no matter how you go about it, even though affordability
is a goal of the final service.

Thanks again, and good luck.

------
rvz
The Linux kernel has been the greatest example of a global network of
programmers contributing in the open and it has shown that open-source
software with the GPL works for the contributors and for companies relying on
Linux in production environments. I see most of the FAANG companies (Except
Apple obviously) have at least contributed in some way, which is interesting
to see.

For server-side environments or to some extent Android, I can see those as
reasons for companies to contribute patches but I'm not sure for the future of
several individual distros which are still floating around today, even when I
rarely switch between macOS and Ubuntu these days..

~~~
Aloha
I was under the impression that even Apple used linux for its production web
environments.

~~~
rvz
Well 'using' Linux in production is quite different to actually contributing
to the development to it.

From the FAANMG group of companies: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft and
Google all have employees signing off patches under their company emails and
no-one should be surprised to see no contributions from Apple to the Linux
kernel anyway.

~~~
capableweb
> no-one should be surprised to see no contributions from Apple to the Linux
> kernel anyway

Why not? I know Apple is generally looked as a closed down company, but I'm
still surprised that a company with their caliber, capital, resources and
engineers can't find the time to help out the community that is helping them.

~~~
bregma
As someone who works for a company where the IP lawyers own your soul and
constantly remind you of the fact, I would not be surprised that Apple
contributions to the Linux kernel are few and far between.

Don't worry, the Apple thinktroopers will catch up with those people and then
they'll probably be free to contribute to any free software they want in their
now-limitless leisure time.

------
npongratz
I don't know why I feel compelled to mention it, but 1791991 is a prime
number.

~~~
katet
I was born 17.09.1990, exactly a year off. I grew up with Linux and am
eternally grateful to the "scene" surrounding the magazine CDs with - I don't
know - like 17 distros packed in together and endless tutorials on each of
them.

It's also amusing how many people - my age or so - use Ubuntu as a daily
driver these days that never went through the pain of configuring LILO or
Broadcom drivers from source in Slackware ;)

~~~
danudey
> the pain of configuring LILO

LI

~~~
basementcat
I once made a patched LILO that would print LOL instead of LIL when the second
stage bootloader barfed.

------
jjuliano
I remember my first Linux distro, Monkey Linux, downloaded from the BBS. It
fits on 5 floppy disks, with XFree86. You have to use `arj` to extract it, an
alternative to `pkunzip` during that time.
([http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-
linux/distributions/monk...](http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-
linux/distributions/monkey-6.0)).

SuSE invented LiveCD, AFAIR, years before Knoppix claims to be the first
LiveCD Linux in the late 90s.

~~~
danieldk
_SuSE invented LiveCD, AFAIR, years before Knoppix claims to be the first
LiveCD Linux in the late 90s._

Yggdrasil Linux was earlier:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X)

~~~
fit2rule
Yggdrasil was amazing. It single-handedly helped me sell Linux to many a
grizzled greybeard, who couldn't believe that this toy kernel would amount to
anything .. all I had to do was boot the CD and show them a working X-terminal
a few minutes later, and that was all it took: I spent days copying those CD's
for the entire team.

------
jhallenworld
We used Linux in a product before it had a network stack. We did need
networking, and used KA9Q to do it. We also used rz / sz (zmodem protocol) for
file transfer over phone lines. I recently integrated zmodem into an embedded
system for firmware updates over a serial port- it's still very useful.

The performance of the floppy drive was terrible at first- a friend of mine
and I added buffering, so that it could read a track at a time instead of
block at time (which caused it to read only one block per disk rotation).

For the same project my friend created the generic SCSI driver that still
exists today. It allowed us to connect a medical film scanner to Linux.

------
errnoh
A lot of quality photos of old maps in one of the links:
[http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/geo/carto/maakirjakartat/](http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/geo/carto/maakirjakartat/)

For example a book of old maps dated to 1643.

------
bArray
I thought of a fun exercise: Take the original Linux kernel, study it and
slowly build upon it without looking at the current Linux kernel.

My thinking is that it could be quite interesting to see how different people
evolve the kernel - maybe some interesting ideas result.

~~~
hakmad
Where would one find the original kernel?

~~~
gruntz
[http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/kernel/Historic/linux-0.01.tar...](http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Linux/kernel/Historic/linux-0.01.tar.gz)

------
pandemic_region
I have fond memories of funit.fi, and it wasn't because of the Linux kernels
being released there ;-)

~~~
cpach
What was it then? :)

~~~
bregma
ASCII graphics of girls who would probably be pretty chilly dressed like that
in the Finnish winter.

------
tmountain
Ah, the memories of ordering distro bundles from cheapbytes and gleefully
experimenting in my “test lab” (aka bedroom). It’s hard to quantify how
liberating the early Linux days felt after a slow and painful indoctrination
to computing in the Windows world.

~~~
danieldk
When I was 15-16, me and a friend ordered CD-ROMs from CheapBytes and sold
them in The Netherlands (with a label applied to cover the CheapBytes
branding). Most people didn't have credit cards in the 90s, so this scheme
worked well enough to earn us some additional 'pocket money'. The website is
forever preserved by Tripod (at some point we stopped, but never removed the
website):

[http://linuxlop.tripod.com](http://linuxlop.tripod.com)

We did get some complaints from people who were convinced that selling Linux
distributions was illegal ;).

~~~
mindcrime
_We did get some complaints from people who were convinced that selling Linux
distributions was illegal_

I was a C.S. student at UNC-Wilmington when RedHat first launched, and I
remember a lot of people were freaked out about that. They were just _howling_
"they're SELLING Linux?!???!" Heh.

------
app4soft
One of the most interesting folder on Funet archive is mirror of Simtel[0]
FTP-serever[1]: there are a lot of very interesting software for various old
platforms.

Especially interesting — there are some very cool CAD, GIS and graphics apps
or MS-DOS, Windows (from 3.1 to XP).[2]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel)

[1] ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/Archived/simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/

[2]
[https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1240002398577397772](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1240002398577397772)

~~~
teddyh
HTTP link to that Simtel mirror:

[https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/Simtel/pub/simtelnet/](https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/Simtel/pub/simtelnet/)

~~~
app4soft
NO! You linked wrong directory!

Here are correct HTTPS link to Simtelnet mirror.[0]

Also just discovered that Simtelnet mirror on Sunet is more complete.[1]

[0]
[https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/Archived/simtel.net/pub...](https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/Archived/simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/)

[1]
[https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simteln...](https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/)

------
mindcrime
Ah yeah, the good old days. Yggdrasil Linux, Turbo Linux, Slackware, etc. I
think I installed my first Linux system in 1996 (maybe 1997) and never looked
back. I didn't drop all use of OS/2 and Windows immediately, but by 2001 I had
adopted Linux as my fulltime desktop OS and to this day it's all I use,
outside of situations ($DAYJOB mostly) where I'm required to use something
else.

I wonder if Linus had any idea of the impact his "toy project" would have on
the world?

------
willtim
I remember buying "Linux - unleashing the workstation in your PC" circa '94
which had the tag line "friends don't let friends use DOS !". I was quite
stunned at how much better it was than DOS/Windows at the time. I've been a
Linux user ever since!

~~~
mmcgaha
The disk distributed with that book was linux universe. For me, it was the
first easy to use linux distribution.

------
alexellisuk
These specs, and runs over HTTP.. and is likely written in VIM, in unformatted
HTML.

> It runs on a Linux server with dual 20 core processors, 786GB of memory and
> 80+TB of NetApp NFS storage. > It has a 2 x 25Gbit/s connection to the Funet
> backbone.

------
space_ghost
Got my first copy of Linux (Debian Potato!) in early 2002. I'd known about it
for years thanks to second-hand computer magazines and the excellent (in
retrospect) ZDTV, and it definitely lived up to the hype.

~~~
war1025
ZDTV was amazing. First I learned about Linux was from "The ScreenSavers".
Loved that show.

I think my first functioning Linux install was Debian Sarge in maybe 2005. I
remember the first time I got it to boot and it was just the command line that
I had working, but it felt like freaking magic.

Those were the days too of Compiz and all that fun. It was mind blowing to
realize that there was an alternative to Windows that not only looked fancier
but had free access to things like compilers and interpreters. Definitely
started me down the path to my current programming career.

------
cdnuzzo
This is cool. I remember my first distro was Mint like most. My story if
curious: [https://craignuzzo.tech/my-linux-life-
journey/](https://craignuzzo.tech/my-linux-life-journey/)

------
gregoriol
I'm wondering why they need "dual 20 core processors, 786GB of memory" to
serve FTP?

~~~
ville
FTP is not the only service provided, see
[http://ftp.funet.fi/README](http://ftp.funet.fi/README)

~~~
Fnoord
Also see [1]

Very old (inter)network, also ran an IRC server back in the days. IRCnet IIRC

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUNET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUNET)

------
riffic
what does 17.9.1991 mean? Can I suggest people stop coming up with their novel
date formatting schemes and use a standard that universally makes sense? ISO
8601 is worth looking at:

[https://xkcd.com/1179/](https://xkcd.com/1179/)

~~~
Symbiote
It's hardly novel. This ordering goes back centuries, and is used by the
majority of the world.

The ISO standard is great for data exchange, but it's unlikely to change how
dates are normally spoken and casually written.

~~~
matvore
You're technically correct. However, to a large number of people it not only
appears novel, it is ambiguous for ~40% of dates of the year with their native
format (MM/DD/YYYY). Even if it's convenient for the majority, it may cause so
much friction for the minority that it's not worth using anymore.

My native format is mdy but I dislike it almost as much as dmy.

~~~
matvore
edit is not working. I meant my native format is mdy.

