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Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

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Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#121

Post by hyperpallium »

drinchev wrote: post #23

Although I’ve read this probably a dozen times. What I think about this today, as I’m about to reviel my next project is that it’s so crazy how things evolved for open source. Nowadays people compete with companies and having an announcment like this usually includes : - website explaining as a pitch what is better about your software - ready to use examples and templates to support your claim - branding with a logo…

> Writing something “cool” nowadays is not enough to be taken from the folks seriously.

You don't have to be taken seriously by serious folks. You just need some folks to like it - or be intrigued.

The other thing is that the gap in the market can be more important than the product itself. So, the first version can be absolutely terrible...

e.g. People want free unix.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#122

Post by [deleted] »

mikekchar wrote: post #119
dr_teh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I really dislike this snarky comment, but rather than down vote it, I thought I'd give an alternate view. I was around at the time that Linux was born. I remember the HURD. I had done some work on Mach while I was in university and I was hugely interested in working on the HURD. I sent email to MIB and essentially received a reply "We don't need you kid". But this is the way it was at the time. People working on GNU…

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#124

Post by mayankkaizen »

mikekchar wrote: post #119
dr_teh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I really dislike this snarky comment, but rather than down vote it, I thought I'd give an alternate view. I was around at the time that Linux was born. I remember the HURD. I had done some work on Mach while I was in university and I was hugely interested in working on the HURD. I sent email to MIB and essentially received a reply "We don't need you kid". But this is the way it was at the time. People working on GNU…

That was quite a story. Younger people like me just don't know/appreciate how history actually developed and why things are the way they are.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#125

Post by slededit »

rwmj wrote: post #42
dragonwriter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean “IBM PC clone”. “Wintel” wasn't really a thing until Microsoft’s dominant consumer and business OSs were Windows, starting with Windows 95, by which point Linux had already done a lot of spreading.

It's because MS-DOS and to a lesser extent Windows 3 was so bad at isolating you from the hardware that all the hardware had to be identical. If MS-DOS had been more like, say, CP/M then we would have had loads of weird machines from different manufacturers isolated from the software by proprietary BIOS[1] blobs. This would have made it harder to provide a useful Linux that worked across multiple machines. [1] I mean…

Q-DOS from which MS-DOS is derived is basically a clone of CP/M. I've written a CP/M bios for fun to bootstrap my IMSAI. It's not really that high level. You got even more from IBM's BIOS but of course that was too slow for what people wanted to do with those machines - so everyone talked to the hardware directly.

In those days it didn't matter what you were doing - the hardware was too slow. It's not like today where you can trade off performance for reliability or cleanliness. People praise Wozniak for his genius of trading hardware for software, but the tight coupling made it really hard to make future iterations. People didn't value upwards compatibility yet.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#126

Post by asdojasdosadsa »

"Fun fact": I just noticed that he is using an old email address, after that I believe it was changed to @cs.helsinki.fi and after @helsinki.fi

" At the moment, the City of Helsinki uses the address Hel.fi, while the address Helsinki.fi belongs to the University of Helsinki."[1]

[1] https://www.hel.fi/helsinki/en/administration/information/in...

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#127

Post by copperx »

asknthrow wrote: post #34
slededit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a little simplistic, the main thing that got Linux going was sustained and continued effort. If this first message had been a flop Linus would likely have continued working and pushing it through. It was almost a decade before Linux could be considered a "real" operating system ready for production.

I can hear RMS right now... "It's GNU/Linux."

Reimplementing the humongous GNU toolchain would be totally worth it just to stop reading that line over and over again.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#128

Post by copperx »

fouc wrote: post #116
bluedino wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were still in copyright battle with AT&T until 1994 and by that time it was too late, Linux was on its way.

I guess that means the small dial-up ISPs started appearing before 1994 and ended up choosing Linux.

I remember that back then FreeBSD was seen as the serious OS and Linux was just an unstable toy. Reputable hosts used FreeBSD.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#129

Post by davidgould »

znaji wrote: post #106
bluedino wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not detracting from Linus at all but it’s just a kernel - I think one of the BSD’s would have filled the void

I agree with this. It is likely that something else would've filled the void. Maybe something much better. Maybe we're missing on a lot because Linux popped up :)

Nah, you’d be running Windows NT 9.3 platinum edition and liking it.

Re: Linus Torvalds announces Linux (1991)

#130

Post by e12e »

tyingq wrote: post #98
e12e wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minix had a proprietary license that forbade distributing altered copies (but not patches, but managing patches "out of tree" was unwieldy). Minix 3 is (I believe) gpl. So free of any Minix code, means, it's free software, primarily. Not really a slight against Minix, per se.

There was still a bit of a rivalry there. Like this for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum–Torvalds_debate Minix 3 is BSD licensed.

Indeed. And so is minix 1, apparently - since 2000:

https://minix1.woodhull.com/faq/mxlicense.html

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