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The early days of Linux

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Re: The early days of Linux

#52

Post by yencabulator »

bdcravens wrote: post #31
yubiox wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then instead of the linnux and lynux pronunciation confusion we'd have freaks and free-ax.

Perhaps it was meant to be pronounced like Free Ox, since an ox looks a bit like a gnu (wildebeest)

Quite unlikely:

> The first releases of Linux used a license that forbade commercial use. Some of the early contributors suggested a change to a free-software license. In the fall of 1991, Richard Stallman visited Finland and I took Linus to a talk given by Stallman. This, the pressure from contributors, and my nagging eventually convinced Linus to choose the GNU GPL license instead, in early 1992.

Re: The early days of Linux

#54

Post by 64bittechie »

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…

Started with Redhat 6.2! It was amazing and I did not turn back to Windows. My family was pissed at the fact that I dual booted the family PC!

Re: The early days of Linux

#57

Post by retrac »

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 "Net" in NetBSD (the first open source BSD community to coalesce after the lawsuits settled) refers to that, it's the network operating system. And not really in the sense of an OS for networks (though it certainly is that) but one from and of the network.

Re: The early days of Linux

#58

Post by capableweb »

This article is a goldmine of old, classic stuff and lots of information I have not yet read. Great read and nice of the author to share the experience, I hope people with these kind of experiences continue to share their subjective views on history.

Unrelated but fun highlight from the mentioned newsletter:

> Linux News #3

> Issue #3, October 18 through 26, 1992

> ** Highlights in this issue

> - ed is here, editor wars are over

Re: The early days of Linux

#59

Post by mrits »

mindcrime wrote: post #27

Aaah, yeah, the "good old days". I got started with Linux around 1995 or so. I don't actually remember which distribution I used first, as I was experimenting a lot back then. I remember using Turbo Linux, Yggdrasil, and Slackware at times. Sometime in 95 or 96 I was a student at UNC Wilmington and I remember a bunch of us were out in the courtyard by the C.S. building when somebody came up talking about this new com…

I installed slackware as a 12 year old in the early 90s. I only have 1 PC in the house (other computer was amiga 500 with no internet). My ISP only supported PPP connection which didn't work very well at the time on Linux.

Since the PC was my only source to online help I literally had to reinstall windows and then slackware every time I made an attempt at getting it working. It took probably 15-20 rounds over a couple of months but when I got it felt like the biggest accomplishment of my life.

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