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The early days of Linux

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Re: The early days of Linux

#211

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

64bittechie wrote: post #54
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!

RH 6.2 with Ximian Desktop and Crossover for Office support was peak Linux desktop. Then Microsoft released a new version of Office that purposely screwed with Crossover, and Nat and Miguel joined hands with the Great Satan, and desktop Linux spent a decade wandering in the wilderness.

Re: The early days of Linux

#212

Post by agentultra »

What a great article!

I remember installing Linux on my friend’s PC. I think it was either 1997 or 1998 and he’d bought a retail copy of Mandrake. We took it back to his place and got it installed and running on his 200mhz Intel PC.

I installed it on my machine too.

What a game changer it turned out to be.

Re: The early days of Linux

#213

Post by zajio1am »

snvzz wrote: post #190
9front wrote: post #34

The Linux kernel took off after Linus receive the MINIX book, a.k.a Operating System Design and Implementation by Tanenbaum, which include the source code of MINIX. Until the arrival of the book Linus was playing "Prince Of Persia" on his new 386AT desktop.

If only if Linus actually listened to Tanenbaum. We could have a nice microkernel, multiserver design, instead of what we have. And we wouldn't have to deprecate Linux (soon now) to replace it with something better architected.

There were several microkernel-based research/hobby/free kernels in early 1990s, like L4, VSTa, or even HURD. Perhaps the reason why Linux succeeded as a general purpose OS (and not one of these) is because of its conservative design.

Re: The early days of Linux

#214

Post by pastage »

martyvis wrote: post #200

To those that wondered what it was like to get Linux running in those early days, here is a post I made in April 1993 (30 years ago this month!) to the "comp.os.linux" Usenet group trying to dual boot Linux and DOD on my new 486 PC with I think no more than a 80MB harddrive. (BTW a2,a3,a3 refer to the first 3 floppy disks you need after the boot and I think root disk to start installing) Help installing Linux. 5/4/93…

I went full Linux directly! My problems where more along the lines of having enough space to recompile the kernel and work on my own projects.

Re: The early days of Linux

#215

Post by [deleted] »

microtherion wrote: post #179
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Woz, the actual brains behind Apple. Jobs was just a charismatic designer and salesman.

The brains behind the hardware and software of the Apple II - a remarkable accomplishment, to be sure, but even there, the marketing and packaging that Jobs contributed was not nothing. And Woz contributed nothing whatsoever to the Mac, let alone the iPod, the iPhone, or the products that came later. Woz left pretty much no traces on contemporary Apple. Jobs is all over the place (and, if anything, it's Tim Cook who…

[deleted]

Re: The early days of Linux

#216

Post by rawoke083600 »

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…

I just love the success Linus had with managing this gigantic project while not using means of SCRUM or any of the other fancy words and systems! Sure he might not always be the friendliest but I just can not imagine Linux being successful today if it followed any of today's modern software-dev-methodologies like scrum.

I just love my linux-workhorse-daily-driver :) Thanks Linus and everyone else who had a hand in my awesome Linux desktop.

Re: The early days of Linux

#217

Post by brimstedt »

brabel wrote: post #196
riceart wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woz had nothing to do with saving Apple in the 90s - and nothing for nearly 40 years - the only reason we talk about Apple today at all is because of Jobs and the small group he supported himself with in the late 90s. He was clearly smart enough to figure out how to save Apple. That’s more than “just” being a designer. 3 predecessors couldn’t figure it out and Gil Amelio wasn’t an idiot (Spindler wasn’t an idiot eith…

> Steve Jobs was smarter than the majority of the commenters here IMHO. Nah, you really think so?! Just because he was probably the most successful business leader in his generation you think he was smarter than us, HN commenters, despite our incredible feats like foreseeing the DropBox fiasco, predicting the LISP AI revival and so many others? What leads you to such outrageous conclusion? \s

Kind of odd generalizing 'smart'. People have different skill sets and it's pointless comparing eg dev skills with marketing skills.

Imo, Jobs was good at making hype, that was his skill set and he was undoubtedly good at it. Woz, Torvalds, have very different skill sets from his but it's apples to oranges.

Re: The early days of Linux

#218

Post by brimstedt »

dwattttt wrote: post #176
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…

While I agree with everything said and celebrate the availability of open source tooling for just about anything, there's an indictment in here that the possibility of researchers paying for tools they need to work is relegated to the realms of imagination.

I think I get your sentiment, but what I think is the funny part is that when you PAY for apple HW/SW you are not allowed to use it as tools, instead it's locked down.

I gave up on iOS devices a few years ago when they forbid things like 'wifi scanner' on iOS. A tool I used regularly to install and measure the quality of WiFi network/coverage.

Re: The early days of Linux

#219

Post by x7ci »

martyvis wrote: post #200

To those that wondered what it was like to get Linux running in those early days, here is a post I made in April 1993 (30 years ago this month!) to the "comp.os.linux" Usenet group trying to dual boot Linux and DOD on my new 486 PC with I think no more than a 80MB harddrive. (BTW a2,a3,a3 refer to the first 3 floppy disks you need after the boot and I think root disk to start installing) Help installing Linux. 5/4/93…

Interesting. It's actually not very different from posts you'll see today on, for example, the newbie section of Arch Linux forums.

Re: The early days of Linux

#220

Post by amadvance »

davidw wrote: post #6

> After finishing the game, Linus started learning Intel assembly language. One day he showed me a program that did multitasking. One task or thread would write a stream of the letter "A" on the screen, the other "B"; the context switches were visually obvious when the stream of As became Bs. This was the first version of what would later become known as the Linux kernel. Reminds me of: "Gall’s Law states that all co…

Same here. Started with Slackware 3.0 in 1995, the first one distributed in CDROM. Still on Slackware.
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