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Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

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Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#61

Post by kyberias »

lolive wrote: post #35

One question: Being noob at OS stuff, I feel quite impressed that bash and GCC could work on the Linux that Linus built on his own. But everybody says that Linux really was something interesting as soon as a proper memory management was added to it. And that was done, but not by Linus. So, which achievement sounds to you the most impressive? Building the first Linux? Or adding that (afaiu, critical) memory management…

What do you think that "proper memory management" was?

Linus himself implemented virtual memory support with paging to disc in Linux version 0.12 (Jan 1992). This made people to switch from Minix to Linux.

Maybe you mix it up with some other important feature? X was ported to Linux by Orest Zborowski in 92. Or networking? That was not a one-man show.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#62

Post by LeoNatan25 »

outside1234 wrote: post #58
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #56

Such a humble announcement. I miss these kinds of projects. Most new projects today (by individuals or otherwise) are usually "best of", "world changing", "ground shaking", emoji filled nonsense, usually biting more than the developer(s) can handle, causing a buggy mess.

To be clear, Linux was definitely a buggy mess at the beginning and definitely more than Linus could handle, but they got through that by building community around fixing all of that.

That's fine, bugs are acceptable and expected as long as expectations are set accordingly. It seems clear from the start that the project didn't promise the world and its sister.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#63

Post by keketi »

dr_teh wrote: post #50
gjmacd wrote: post #40

people give Jobs and Gates a lot of credit because they focused on commercial products that were marketed to the public -- Linus, for me, is probably the single most important person to technology (software) in the last 35 years. With Linux and Git alone, it as impactful and game changing in this industry that I can think of. I cannot think of any person that's been this important to my career and my income.

Somewhere in a cavern full of sandals, a Stallmanu is quietly weeping.

It's still GNU/Linux to me dammit!

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#64

Post by icebraining »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #56

Such a humble announcement. I miss these kinds of projects. Most new projects today (by individuals or otherwise) are usually "best of", "world changing", "ground shaking", emoji filled nonsense, usually biting more than the developer(s) can handle, causing a buggy mess.

I don't agree; most new projects I see are like this[1] - just the code, a reasonable description and some documentation.

The flashy projects are probably more likely to appear on HN/Reddit, but I don't think they're at all more common.

[1] https://github.com/vervallsweg/cast-web-api

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#65

Post by jimbokun »

segmondy wrote: post #20
myth_buster wrote: post #3

> I'm doing a (free) operating system (__just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu__) for 386(486) AT clones. [...] and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. __just a hobby, won't be big and professional like X__ probably is how most of the startups get started.

Not anymore. :-( Sell before you build a product! Don't build what you want, build what other's want! Build what other's are going to pay money for, hell, sell it, get a contract before you write a line of code! If you don't have a market size of multiple billions is not worth doing! Are you going to make billions upon billions? No? don't do it! Hobby? It's not even worth of a side project.

Those are mostly advice for building a business, not necessarily an open source project.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#68

Post by ohithereyou »

andyana wrote: post #45
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear this, My instinct is to roll my eyes. So much hyperbole in startups, it’s one of the large reasons I don’t see myself working for a startup.

Exactly. It makes me cringe. A majority of the firms looking to hire in the "Who's Hiring" thread have inflated self-worth.

As a developer the company can have whatever view of itself it cares to have as long as my paycheck clears.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#70

Post by nimonian »

adventured wrote: post #43
segmondy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore. :-( Sell before you build a product! Don't build what you want, build what other's want! Build what other's are going to pay money for, hell, sell it, get a contract before you write a line of code! If you don't have a market size of multiple billions is not worth doing! Are you going to make billions upon billions? No? don't do it! Hobby? It's not even worth of a side project.

I'm currently doing the opposite of every 'rule' and loving it. Building what I want, because I want it to exist. Showing it to nobody else to test or get feedback on; no focus groups, no beta testing, no external input. Solo founder effort. Not taking VC; not under any circumstances or terms. Not selling or promoting anything before it launches. It's commercially minimalist by design and ethos, ideally it takes in t…

This was probably your intention, but I really want to know what it is.
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