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The early days of Linux

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Re: The early days of Linux

#71

Post by Dalewyn »

earthscienceman wrote: post #23
asciii wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was just someone who was curious enough to tinker for a while on a project who was hanging out with friends. The modern world is underpinned by such discoveries--very accidental or curious types that go on to change the world and impact a lot of people. To quote a Steve Job's line: "I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well-being" [0] [0]: https://putsom…

Absolutely. But also, as a species, we're such a fan of these narratives that lionize people like Steve jobs. A brief article written by a friend about a project from their college years is much more humanizing than anything I've read about Steve Jobs. Sure, there's the "garage beginnings" part of the story but even that is very much lionized as "grind and hustle". I think the way the myth of Steve Jobs and his impac…

Steve Jobs was one of the greatest marketers in recent history, and from that perspective he really was "totally dependent on them for [his] life and well-being".

Others did the work going from zero to one, he did the work of going from one to a hundred.

Re: The early days of Linux

#73

Post by cesarb »

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…

> Mind you while Linux was taking off the BSDs were apparently busy in lawsuits. So, while the zeroing of distribution costs should've benefited them, it seems Linux was at the right place at the right time, minus the baggage.

There were other reasons. Reusing an older comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32372063):

My favorite theory for why Linux got a head start is in this (long) comment I found some time ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21420338

Some excerpts:

"With Linux, I just booted from a Linux boot floppy with my Linux install CD in the CD-ROM drive, and ran the installation. With BSD...it could not find the drive because I had an IDE CD-ROM and it only supported SCSI."

"It insisted on being given a disk upon which it could completely repartition. [...] Linux, on the other hand, was happy to come second after my existing DOS/Windows."

"By the time the BSD people realized they really should be supporting IDE CD-ROM and get along with prior DOS/Windows on the same disk, Linux was way ahead."

Re: The early days of Linux

#74

Post by mindcrime »

GoofballJones wrote: post #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 Wind…

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.

Heh. I remember trying one time to get as many different OS's multi-booting on one physical box as I could. I think I had about 5 at one point, something like Windows 95, OS/2, Red Hat 6.2, FreeBSD (or maybe OpenBSD), Caldera Linux, and maybe something else. And then I tried to add one more (I think it was Solaris x86) and totally hosed everything and had to start over.

Definitely the "good ole days". :-)

Re: The early days of Linux

#75

Post by bcantrill »

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…

I don't know that you were necessarily thinking of this, but I did write a piece on exactly this in 2004.[0][1] I couldn't really find anything else at the time that was talking about this, so if you did/do find something else, I would love to read it!

[0] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-soft...

[1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/12/16/the-economics-of-soft...

Re: The early days of Linux

#76

Post by rightbyte »

jrussino wrote: post #61
gattilorenz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

His name is pronounced "Lee-nus" in Finnish so I guess it makes sense.

Re: The early days of Linux

#77

Post by incanus77 »

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…

Exactly. I was in university '95-99 and had access to amazing Solaris, IRIX, AIX, and other machines, grew to love UNIX, and wanted to run it on Intel hardware at home. RH Linux did just the trick.

Re: The early days of Linux

#78

Post by linuxhansl »

Hah. Used SLS (and then Slackware) back then. I think the first version of the kernel I used was 0.98pl13.

I worked at DEC back then and did not have Internet at home, so I would schedule jobs at night to download the 1.3" floppy images and then copy them to actual floppies to bring home.

Can't believe that is 30 years ago now.

Re: The early days of Linux

#80

Post by mananaysiempre »

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…

> The A..B concurrency printing

Are those some sort of standard teaching exercise? Because before this article I only saw them in the description of the “concurrency geek” archetype on OSDev Wiki: https://wiki.osdev.org/Eleanore_Semaphore.

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