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The early days of Linux (2023)
101–110 of 143 posts
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#102There's this amazing documentary on linux, from 2003. It's called Revolution OS. Highly recommended! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0RYQVkQmWU
I second that. The best documentary I've ever seen about Linux and GNU.
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel similar for Computer Science as a whole field. It's weird to think that many of its founding fathers were still during a significant portion of my life. Claude Shannon 2001 Edsger Dijkstra 2012 John McCarthy 2011 Niklaus Wirth 2024 Konrad Zuse 1995 Alonzo Church 1995 Jim Gray 2007/2012 Grace Hopper 1992 Even Alan Turing could still have been alive during my lifetime hadn't he been murdered. Friedrich L. Baur,…
Alan Turing took his own life on purpose or by accident, he wasn't murdered
If you read up on how the UK government treated him after the war, it was essentially murder even if they didn't outright execute him.
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#104I remember the early days of Linux well. There was quite a bit of interest for it at the University of Waterloo in the mid 90s, but there was also a lot of talk of issues getting it to install, or getting it to run stably on certain systems (albeit not uncommon for any OS at the time). Those were the days of having to know how to compile your own kernel and fight with XFree86. Linux distributions like Red Hat really…
> Those were the days of having to know how to compile your own kernel and fight with XFree86.
It was the XF86Config modeline HOWTO that taught me how a CRT controller works.
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#105It's amazing how good and stable it got really fast. I was able to install it and use it with X and for everything in 1994 while still in high school. It's been my only OS ever since and set the path for my career and life.
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#106I remember the early days of Linux well. There was quite a bit of interest for it at the University of Waterloo in the mid 90s, but there was also a lot of talk of issues getting it to install, or getting it to run stably on certain systems (albeit not uncommon for any OS at the time). Those were the days of having to know how to compile your own kernel and fight with XFree86. Linux distributions like Red Hat really…
I think this is consistent with big universities at the time. I remember when Alpha was becoming discontinued, reinstalling RedHat on those did give Linux a boost as a daily driver for researchers.
Linux definitely breathed life into that great platform. I still have an Alpha Personal Workstation 600au in my basement running Red Hat from that time period.
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux isn’t a unicorn here. Sure FreeBSD has pretty good driver support. In fact back in the 00s I had fewer problems with FreeBSD WiFi drivers than Linux. I don’t know what the driver story is like for all of the other main BSDs but DragonflyBSD is a really interesting platform with some real innovations in the kernel. Technically XNU, the macOS kernel, is open source too. Though there doesn’t seem to be much commun…
Unfortunately Apple doesn't accept pull requests for XNU. They're more "source available", to put it under the old .NET Framework terms.
Unless I’m mistaken, XNU’s license (APSL) doesn’t forbid it being forked and reused in other projects (FOSS license compatibilities aside).
For example like how OpenIndina was forked from OpenSolaris (CDDL) when Oracle dropped OpenSolaris development and support.
APSL has been approved by the FSF which other “Source Available” type licenses aren’t.
Personally though, I’d still rather people supported (for example) FreeBSD rather than Darwin/XNU.
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#108It's odd how Linux has become the only stable thing in this world. You turn it on and you know that over time it will only become better without any bad intentions.
I do remember there was some point in the mid/late 90s where I had to do a lot of research before buying [desktop] computers and hardware - would this specific network card be supported? Would this graphics card work with X11? etc. Maybe it was trauma and paranoia from the WinModems of the day, that were never going to work. But by the early 2000s we seemed to switch to a world where I just assumed Linux would suppor…
Just as long as you don't buy NVIDIA for your Linux desktop!
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel similar for Computer Science as a whole field. It's weird to think that many of its founding fathers were still during a significant portion of my life. Claude Shannon 2001 Edsger Dijkstra 2012 John McCarthy 2011 Niklaus Wirth 2024 Konrad Zuse 1995 Alonzo Church 1995 Jim Gray 2007/2012 Grace Hopper 1992 Even Alan Turing could still have been alive during my lifetime hadn't he been murdered. Friedrich L. Baur,…
Alan Turing took his own life on purpose or by accident, he wasn't murdered
And what led him to take his own life?
Re: The early days of Linux (2023)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel similar for Computer Science as a whole field. It's weird to think that many of its founding fathers were still during a significant portion of my life. Claude Shannon 2001 Edsger Dijkstra 2012 John McCarthy 2011 Niklaus Wirth 2024 Konrad Zuse 1995 Alonzo Church 1995 Jim Gray 2007/2012 Grace Hopper 1992 Even Alan Turing could still have been alive during my lifetime hadn't he been murdered. Friedrich L. Baur,…
Alan Turing took his own life on purpose or by accident, he wasn't murdered
Many believe his “chemical castration” (forced hormone therapy) caused depression first, suicide later.
Some also believe he was poisoned.
I assume that is where the “murder” comes from.