To me, one of the most remarkable aspects of this story and reading others' comments is how relatively quickly people seem to have picked up Linux despite the lack of modern high-speed internet and one-click away forums and networks we all enjoy today. I guess that's an inevitable outcome if the market is ripe for some change no matter the opposing forces, like missing features, strong alternatives or no commercial support, etc.
The early days of Linux
201–210 of 302 posts
Re: The early days of Linux
#202Very Finnish humour: "I recommend this method of installing Linux: napping, while Linus does the hard work." Kippis, folks!
I wonder if Linus can install Arch without using the Arch Wiki.
That's funny! I'll still go ahead and attempt a somewhat serious answer. xD Arguably it's an addition to his original code that possibly modularizes his kernel in ways that he isn't familiar with, and that also might add completely new and unknown features to it. Thus it would probably behove him to read the Wiki either way. On the other hand, perhaps he's so 1337 that all he needs to do is to read the source code. My most major caveat here is that I don't myself know if there are any actual differences between his original kernel, and the code committed to the Arch Project. I thus think others are more qualified to say something intelligent about that, but these are my assumptions anyway. Hope you're having a great weekend! Skål!
Re: The early days of Linux
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a quote somewhere that says Linus names his programs after himself. Freax for freak, and then later git too. Git means an unpleasant person.
people often use 'git' for people they think are unpleasant, but that is in order to insult them — 'git' means 'stupid person', not 'unpleasant person'
> 'git' means 'stupid person', not 'unpleasant person'
Native English speaker (UK) and I've never heard 'git' used to mean 'stupid person'. I've only ever heard it used to mean 'unpleasant person', generally in the form of "complete git" or "utter git".
(Of course, language use can be different in different countries.)
Re: The early days of Linux
#204Hah. 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.
For me the first one that sticks in my head is the MCC distrib on ~10 floppies, with (I think) a bunch more for X. Definitely used 0.9[89] before that (late '93) but no solid memory of details.
Kernel version 1.0.8 is burned into my brain though.
Re: The early days of Linux
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
MCC interim was the first Linux distribution. Its creator had to implement what we would consider pretty fundamental tools, including fdisk. Yggdrasil was released half a year or so later, and included most of these tools. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCC_Interim_Linux
Yes, I stand corrected. In fact my friend who studied in UMIST (now part of University of Manchester) introduced me to Linux. The fact that Manchester Computing Centre (MCC) is based inside UoM probably make it accessible to him because at the time Linux was installed from floppies.
I miss my shell account on jumper.mcc.ac.uk
Re: The early days of Linux
#206Hah. 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.
Yep I did the same (I worked at BHP the Aussie industrial multinational, and funnily ended up at DEC in '97 and still work there via HPE). Initially I was doing the regular downloads to a SGI workstation and writing the floppy images out on I think on a DOS PC. Eventually I was able to repurpose an unused 386 at work to become my Linux server at work.
Re: The early days of Linux
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only guy I knew who used commercial unixes at home back then, lived in Seattle and loved to play games. Even got his girlfriend interested in them, which was unusual at the time. Come to think of it, I remember one day some government goons took him away, right around that big nuclear scare. And no one has heard from him ever since. Hmm.
and your point is ... what?
Are you David?
Re: The early days of Linux
#208If you want to take a closer look at the early days of the Linux kernel, I can recommend "A Heavily Commemted Linux Kernel Source Code", a listing of Linux kernel 0.12 with comments in the style of John Lions‘ commentary on 6th edition Unix (available in Chinese and English): http://www.oldlinux.org/
Re: The early days of Linux
#209I 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 literally laughed aloud about 1992 being the year of Linux on the desktop.
Re: The early days of Linux
#210"That year (1995) was also when Linux was first ported to a new architecture by Linus. He'd been given a DEC Alpha machine."
This is not fully correct: The first port ever was on Motorola M68k in 1993 for the Amiga platform.