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The early days of Linux (2023)

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Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#31

Post by stmw »

ahartmetz wrote: post #17
jmclnx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However there is also Coherent Unix. I was a customer and it was very good, I use to use kermit to dial into a Sun System at work and it would call me back so I would avoid charges. That was to get USENET and general Internet access. Fun times. It is too bad they had to fold, be to be honest by 1995 the writting was on the wall, When they folded, I went to Slackware, which I still use. Back then, Linux was changing…

Yes, people were really accessible when the community was small. I remember calling, by phone, some (also German) guy about a printer problem - my Samsung printer's Epson emulation apparently wasn't good enough for my distro's Epson driver. It must have been in '98 or '99. He was either the printer guy at S.u.S.E. (name at the time) or maintaining a relevant driver. We chatted for about an hour and I remember being i…

This is a really important difference

Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#33

Post by timewizard »

zidoo wrote: post #32

“ We had all the overconfidence of 20-year-old second-year university students.” - and this is how you change the world

That's how you start. It's also important to recognize that much of the UNIX and eventually POSIX framework was laid out. They were filling in a small gap and making it free. Which is really the most amazing part to me.

Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#35

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

qingcharles wrote: post #20
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #18

Such an inspiring read! Thanks for writing and/or sharing. One of my many future hermit projects is to hack on an early version of Linux. ------------ Please ignore just jotting down for future myself --------------- (Actually I want to study Win NT more than Linux as it brought me good memories, but Win NT was designed as a mature product from the beginning, and even the leaked 3.5 source code is way too much for me…

I always drop this book when people talk about writing or hacking their own OS etc: https://www.amazon.com/Developing-32-Bit-Operating-System-Cd... Can probably find it on a shadow library. Getting something to boot on x86 is a little tricky, because IIRC the CPU comes up in real mode, so you have to create your own boot sector and bootloader before you can even execute your kernel. That book + Linux inspired me to w…

Thanks for the introduction to this book. AFAIK Linux 0.11 does have its own bootloader in the form of `bootsect.S` but I'm not an OS guy so definitely could be wrong.

Now that I think more about the project, probably the first obstacle is how do I compile the thing...someone must have tried that, or the book must have a section about that. But I'll study xv6 first, just to give me some practices.

Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#37

Post by xtracto »

qwertox wrote: post #36

It'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.

This is so important to me on this day and age. Most new technology and OS seem to have an agenda. They want to "push" me to do things: buy an iPhone, buy an office subscription , etc. Using Linux is a breath of fresh air in that respect for me. I just want my toaster tu toast bread. I don't want it to tell me what bread should I buy.

Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#38

Post by DoingIsLearning »

qwertox wrote: post #36

It'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.

Every well can be poisoned. Linux relies on people's values and people's skills. Neither of which are immune to degradation over time.

Much like the post world war civil society, economic and diplomatic development was an exception in Human history.

Assuming the reality we have will remain forever without protection or constant maintenance effort is dangerous.

Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#39

Post by xtracto »

linsomniac wrote: post #8

One thing I often think about in the early days of Linux is it's competitors. The article mentions "commercial Unix was so expensive it was easier to write your own". Which is largely true. However there is also Coherent Unix. I remember adverts for it as the full back page of so many magazines of the day, for $99. I always was on the fence about buying it. One of the big drawbacks of Coherent was that it didn't have…

I remember installing FreeBSD in 1994. Ot was soooo cool to me as a 13 year old to startx and have a Unix like environment in my computer. I feel freebsd was superior to Linux,but as with other things, apps availability made the win

Re: The early days of Linux (2023)

#40

Post by linuxhansl »

Fun. I started using Linux at 0.98 (forgot the patch level), in 1992.

Had a modem and connected to a lot of bulletin boards. I felt very much a like "WarGames" hero, calling phone numbers and all :)

I still remember the day when I used ppp to connect to the actual Internet for the first time. After a lot of trial and error, I finally pinged www.linux.org, and it resolved the hostname and returned the ping. I was silent first, and all I could say then was "whoa".

Oh fun times. :)

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