The early days of Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: The early days of Linux

#41

Post by braindead_in » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

I wonder if some day someone will write a similar story about early days of LLMs.

Re: The early days of Linux

#42

Post by gspencley » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

Scubabear68 wrote: post #26

This is a great read of a humble start of history. The A..B concurrency printing, helping Linus out implementing Sprintf, learning assembly. Building it all towards a coherent system. What was truly profound is how Linux and other open source systems and libraries completely cracked open systems software for the masses. Back in the early 90s, everything around Unix, operating systems, compilers, tools, everything was…

> By the late 90s any old anybody could get a CD ROM with Red Hat or whatever.

That's exactly how I got into Linux. I bought a book about RedHat 5.2 with a CD ROM install disc in the sleeve :) Have been using Linux on all of my personal devices (and every work device that I'm allowed to) ever since.

Oddly enough, I also had a Sparc Station 5 on my desk at one time. I remember the filesystem seemed very slow but it was cool as hell to be able to use "real Unix." I remember it even came with Internet Explorer of all things!

Re: The early days of Linux

#43

Post by Votearome » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

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Re: The early days of Linux

#44

Post by Votearome » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

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Re: The early days of Linux

#45

Post by snvsn » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

Linus describes this and more in his book - Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary. Great read

Re: The early days of Linux

#46

Post by cwillu » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

kyaghmour wrote: post #21

Some friends told me they ran into Andrew Tannenbaum at Embedded World a few years ago and asked him if he still believed that Minix was better than Linux. Apparently he said yes. DISCLAIMER: 2nd hand story.

If I routinely had strangers coming up to me picking arguments about something argument I made decades before (always the same thing), I'd pretty quickly come up with the minimum necessary reply to end the interaction as well.

Re: The early days of Linux

#47

Post by philistine » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:29 PM UTC

vmlinuz wrote: post #3

This article is a masterpiece of deadpan Nordic understatement! Also a good read...

That joke about his preferred Linux installation method is chef's kiss.

Re: The early days of Linux

#48

Post by Votearome » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

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Re: The early days of Linux

#49

Post by mhh__ » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

This git tutorial from 2005ish is interesting

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/927a503cd07718ea0f...

Re: The early days of Linux

#50

Post by toyg » Fri, Apr 14, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

kyaghmour wrote: post #30

I can't find the article anymore (and I've looked for it several times in the past) but someone was making the point that open source was essentially an economic phenomenon. Insofar as distribution costs went to zero with the advent of mass-access to the internet then it was inevitable that people would start sharing software. Obviously this takes nothing away from all those early contributors, but it is food for tho…

The problem with BSDs was not much the lawsuits but the fact that they didn't figure out a governance model that could scale. Linux had open mailing lists and low barriers to entry, BSDs had "core" cliques. Linux begat git, a distributed VCS, when BSDs were happy with the likes of CVS, where control is rigidly centralized. Etc etc.