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The early days of Linux

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Re: The early days of Linux

#61
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This audio is burned in my memory since I was configuring my SoundBlaster in Red Hat 5.2: https://youtu.be/c39QPDTDdXU

This just made me realize that even though I pronounce Linux as "Lee-nux" (the same way he does), I always read his name as "Lie-nus" (like the Charlie brown character).

Re: The early days of Linux

#62
post #50

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.

[deleted]

Re: The early days of Linux

#63
post #7

If you're interested in Linux history, check out Just For Fun by Linus Torvalds himself. It's written in 1999 if I recall, which is so much closer to Linux's inception than it is to today, so it's so interesting to hear thoughts and predictions about Linux at the time. Super cheap book. I think I got my copy for $4 on ebay.

+1 - Finished reading it this year, very fun read and much in the same vein as this article.

Re: The early days of Linux

#64

> The system was initially called Freax Maybe it's common knowledge, but first time I've heard that. I wonder how that would have impacted adoption if it had stuck?

Hard to say. "Unix" is pronounced like "eunuchs" and yet saw pretty wide adoption. Definitely in a different time and under other circumstances than Linux though.

Yoo-nicks rather than yoo-nucks surely?

Re: The early days of Linux

#65

I'm pretty sure Linus used Doom to stress-test the memory-management, not Quake. I have had a quote in my stash for ages: I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few months. I just love debugging ;-) -- Linus Torvalds

";-)"

It looks so strange with the nose nowadays. But that was how people did it if I remember correctly.

Re: The early days of Linux

#66
Thanks to Lars Wirzenius for sharing his first Linux (and Linus) memories.

BTW, nowadays Lars teaches Rust using his own consultancy.

I well remember (the younger me, a school kid) having to install 50 3.5" floppy disks FTP'd from the University of Karlsruhe's servers, only to discover that some where faulty & having to do it all over again. And then the reward of having the X11 logo and xeyes on your own desktop - 1992 was a fantastic year!

Re: The early days of Linux

#67
Lovely article. My first install was Slackare 2.3, kernel version 1.2.13 on a 386sx. Thirteen floppies. I don't even remember why I installed it or where I'd heard of it. I don't think I even knew what Unix was, but I vividly remember the "darkstar $" prompt when it was all done and then my social life suffered for a few months...

Re: The early days of Linux

#68
post #59

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 coupl…

More or less the same (12 years in 1994), however we didn't have internet until some years later. I learned pretty much everything from a Dutch Linux book (which was on the market very early) and all the HOWTOs and guides from the Linux Documentation project.

Re: The early days of Linux

#69
I began tinkering with Linux about 6 months after it's inception. I think....think...it was what became Slackware in what I gathered up the things to make it run on my Micron Pentium.

This was in the day I was trying everything on that machine. I had DOS running on it at one point, then OS/2 Warp, then Windows 3.1, then Linux, then back to OS/2 etc etc. It was at a time where everything was up in the air, before Windows 95 took a major foothold.

Re: The early days of Linux

#70

I'm pretty sure Linus used Doom to stress-test the memory-management, not Quake. I have had a quote in my stash for ages: I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few months. I just love debugging ;-) -- Linus Torvalds

";-)" It looks so strange with the nose nowadays. But that was how people did it if I remember correctly.

I always used the nose even when my friends used noseless emoticons as the latter look like squished faces to me :-P
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