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The early days of Linux

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Re: The early days of Linux

#141

Post by rcarmo »

lb1lf wrote: post #109
earthscienceman wrote: post #12

I absolutely love articles like this that humanize the creation of such a megalithic thing. It was just someone who was curious enough to tinker for a while on a project who was hanging out with friends. I love it. I think it would be hard to overstate the impact of Linux and free software. I do climate science research and its pretty obvious that every single paper that contains an important finding was built on FOS…

>> One day, Linus accidentally attempted to use his hard drive to dial the university, resulting in his master boot sector starting with "ATDT" and the university modem-pool phone number. After recovering from this, he implemented file permissions in his kernel. Now this nugget made my day. I love Finnish deadpan humor.

Yes, but the "I recommend this installation method" bit is slightly better :)

Re: The early days of Linux

#142

Post by dekhn »

lb1lf wrote: post #109
earthscienceman wrote: post #12

I absolutely love articles like this that humanize the creation of such a megalithic thing. It was just someone who was curious enough to tinker for a while on a project who was hanging out with friends. I love it. I think it would be hard to overstate the impact of Linux and free software. I do climate science research and its pretty obvious that every single paper that contains an important finding was built on FOS…

>> One day, Linus accidentally attempted to use his hard drive to dial the university, resulting in his master boot sector starting with "ATDT" and the university modem-pool phone number. After recovering from this, he implemented file permissions in his kernel. Now this nugget made my day. I love Finnish deadpan humor.

I've actually seen a rare case where a rebooting machine with messed up DMA tables managed to deliver incoming network packets to the hard drive, corrupting it. It took a bunch of really smart people a long time to figure that out.

Re: The early days of Linux

#143

Post by icedchai »

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…

Before Linux took off, I remember playing around with Coherent on either a 286 or 386SX box. It was enough of a Unix clone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_(operating_system)

It cost around $100, IIRC. It also came with an incredible manual, covering the OS, C programming, system calls, etc.

Re: The early days of Linux

#144

Post by icedchai »

js2 wrote: post #121

Circa 1996 I was getting my CS degree. At the same time, I got a job at a small local company running an ISP on the side. A dozen Hayes modems hooked up to a Livingston Portmaster. T1 uplink. And two PCs (named "hops" and "barley") running Slackware. That was my first experience with Linux. It was a barbaric OS compared to the Unix workstations we had in the CS department running HP/UX and SunOS. But it had promise..…

SunOS was also pretty bare bones, if I remember correctly. CS departments had to install a ton of 3rd party software to give you a usable system.

Re: The early days of Linux

#146

Post by icedchai »

linuxhansl wrote: post #78

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.

I also started with SLS, but got in a little later (late 92, maybe 93?) I think 0.99pl10 was where I started. I remember the 12 or 15 floppy images.

Re: The early days of Linux

#148

Post by emmelaich »

I was doing CS at a similar time. Used Ultrix and HP-UX at work. Until Linux and Minix it was very hard to get a Unix on a PC. Someone had SystemV running, not sure how.

Once Linux appeared, other home Unixes started evaporating, except for *BSDs.

I was at the very first Sydney Linux Users Group meeting (SLUG). Have pics! The only pics of that event. Have tried to get permission from others so I can share, but no response :-(. Might share them anyway.

Later in the 90s we had Linus over for a conference. Had a day out the harbour, good times. Got an excellent shot of Linus's head framed by the Opera House. Then found I had no film in the camera!

Linux came back to Australia more than a few times of course. On one of these he was infamously bitten* by a Fairy Penguin.

* Not sure if you could describe such a tiny animal as having a bite!

Re: The early days of Linux

#149

Post by dimator »

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…

i still remember reading when Carmack said (something like) anyone can learn to be any skill of developer, all they need is a used PC and linux CD.

this was an eye opening quote for me when i read it, for some reason. it meant that the craft of software was the most accessible in all of human crafting. really an amazing time to grow up.

Re: The early days of Linux

#150

Post by oblio »

gordian-mind wrote: post #120
oblio wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first ones put in an infinity units of effort and received maybe N units of recognition for it. Jobs put in 100 units of effort and received N billion units of recognition for it.

Popular recognition is usually balanced out by resentment and envy.

For Jobs? No way, that ratio is 100:1.

The worst part is that he was a horrible human being. Much worse than Wozniak and probably even slightly worse than Gates.

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