[HN Gopher] The early days of Linux (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
The early days of Linux (2023)
Author : stmw
Score : 432 points
Date : 2025-03-02 00:18 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| Philpax wrote:
| [2023], but that doesn't matter much. Fantastic article! Great to
| see what development was like at the start - I'd always heard
| anecdotes, like its humble beginnings and the MINIX argument, but
| I'd never had context for them before.
| stmw wrote:
| My bad, dang just pointed this out as well:
| Discussed at the time (of the article): The early
| days of Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35557848 -
| April 2023 (224 comments)
|
| I just came across it and didnt' realize it appeared on Hn
| almost 2 years before.
| forbiddenlake wrote:
| It's fine, dupes are allowed after an amount of time.
| imiric wrote:
| > More importantly for the future success of Linux was that the
| X11 system was ported to it, making 1992 the year of the Linux
| desktop.
|
| I'm glad that's finally settled. :)
|
| Great read!
| LorenDB wrote:
| Also worth a read: _Just for Fun_
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutiona...
| juhanakristian wrote:
| Read this about ten years ago. Pretty short read but highly
| recommended.
| ylee wrote:
| I knew the very basics of the story, but did not know/hadn't put
| it together in my mind that kernel 1.0 appeared in mid-1994, and
| not somewhere in the 1991-1993 timeframe as I had vaguely
| assumed. Certainly, the Red Hat Linux 2.1 (kernel 1.2.13) I
| installed in December 1995 (making my home 100% Microsoft-free
| ever since) felt pretty feature-complete.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| lwn.net - Such a beautiful website, just kind of perfect on
| mobile. Anyone know if it's using a commonly known CMS? builtwith
| doesn't glean much..
| jzb wrote:
| It's a custom CMS built using Quixote.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Joe Brockmeier. Well there's a name I haven't heard in a very
| long time. Sean Reifschneider here, if you remember.
| linsomniac wrote:
| 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 any networking.
|
| Then, Linux came out, and it was shockingly shortly after that
| that Linux surpassed Coherent, and Coherent vanished seemingly
| overnight.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_(operating_system)
| arp242 wrote:
| Reading a review from Dec 1990[1], it doesn't seem that
| brilliant:
|
| _" Coherent remains true to Unix's roots and eschews local
| area networking, graphical user interfaces, menus, mice, and
| many of the other amenities that present-day DOS users and Unix
| users have come to expect of modern software."_
|
| It goes on to describe that "learning Unix from Coherent would
| be a bumpy road" and "nor could you realistically use Coherent
| to automate a small business".
|
| Coherent was closed-source, so you couldn't take an imperfect
| incomplete system like Linux and help improve it. Linux
| attracted contributors early on not because Linux at the time
| was so great, but because people liked to work on this kind of
| thing.
|
| $99 is ~$230 today. I know software used to be a lot more
| expensive in general (e.g. $25 for PKZIP in the late 80s), but
| $230 for a bare-bones OS for playing around is only "cheap"
| relative to _Enterprise Unix_ (tm)(r) pricing.
|
| [1]:
| https://books.google.ie/books?id=JZxkO0PpksUC&pg=PT61&redir_...
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| Did it not have some kind of ncurses functionality? So much
| of what I see about software from the eighties (mostly via
| movies) seems operable with just an unnetworked unix
| terminal.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >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 almost daily.
|
| Coherent had one thing that Linux could not do, but via USENET
| I asked and someone supplied a patch for me within days. It
| would allow me to use 2 monitors with 2 cards on my 386sx, a BW
| and a VGA just like what Coherent was able to do.
|
| People were far more accessible back then until the fortune 500
| companies got involved in the 2000s.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| 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 impressed by how willing to engage he was and by his
| collection of workstation-class computers. But my printer
| problem remained unsolved :D
| stmw wrote:
| This is a really important difference
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| As a burnt out contributor, my first couple chats debugging
| for users were beautiful. But then they just kept coming
| and coming in droves upon droves and I had to set up a wall
| to let me focus on the work, which soured my relationship
| with users, which became an ever-increasing stress...
|
| Bless those contributors who were able to keep it up.
| They're the ones who should have Big Tech salaries, not
| those of us who gave up and sold our souls to Ad tech.
| femto wrote:
| It's interesting to ponder whether we would all be using GNU
| Hurd if Linux didn't exist.
| skissane wrote:
| More likely we'd all be using FreeBSD
| nobleach wrote:
| This is assuming that many of the folks who put their time
| and effort into the Linux kernel would have instead worked on
| Hurd. The thing is, nothing was stopping them from making
| that choice - other than maybe the popularity of Linux. I
| would love to see that timeline though.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yep! I remember that time. I ran Coherent briefly (1991 - 1992
| or so) before getting into early Linux distros like SLS.
| a-dub wrote:
| ahh yes, coherent. where i cut my teeth on unix style systems.
| it supported memory protection on 286 cpus (true segmentation!)
| but had no ip stack (uucp was supported though). no x or
| graphics.
|
| pretty good documentation in a big doorstop they called "the
| lexicon.", a decent c tool chain, a custom port of emacs
| (microemacs they called it).
|
| only other unix i played with before that was some port on the
| atari st, which incidentally was a first class platform for the
| mark williams c compiler (mwc was the company behind coherent).
|
| it fit on two disks. where i had a massive stack of floppies
| for slackware (kernel 0.99pl2). linux was more fun- it was open
| source by and of the internet.
|
| fun times!
| stmw wrote:
| Indeed, this is really interesting question about Linux and
| Linus in the early days - it obviously wasn't just the price of
| the alternatives or the overall concept of ~Unix-on-x86 - there
| was something different about Linus Torvalds' approach even
| early on, and one can see glimpses of it in these early
| stories.
| xtracto wrote:
| 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
| emmelaich wrote:
| Hate to say but Microsoft's Xenix was so fast on a i386. Did a
| lot of scientific programming on it in 1991/2.
| atombender wrote:
| Also, the BSDs were emerging around the same time, in
| particular 386BSD [1]. Linus was famously quoted as saying that
| if it had been available in the early days, he would probably
| never have made Linux [2].
|
| The first release of 386BSD was in 1992, so we are talking
| about a short time window of 1-2 years here. And of course
| FreeBSD and NetBSD forked from it shortly after that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD
|
| [2] https://www.antman.se/abc-klubben/linux/linuxdoc/linus.html
| rjsw wrote:
| I ran 386/ix [1] on a i386 PC from 1987, switched to 386BSD 0.1
| in late 1992, then FreeBSD sometime in 1993.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Systems_Corporatio...
| linwangg wrote:
| It's fascinating that the name 'Linux' was actually chosen by Ari
| Lemmke, not Linus himself. Details like this highlight the role
| of community and serendipity in the history of open-source
| software.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article):
|
| _The early days of Linux_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35557848 - April 2023 (224
| comments)
| qingcharles wrote:
| TIL: Linus is a Swedish speaking Finn; and those are a thing.
|
| This sound has lived rent-free in my head since 1994:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linus-linux.ogg
| rottc0dd wrote:
| Wow! I think he got different in his English diction much later
| in his life?
| stmw wrote:
| Indeed, he is part of the Swedish minority in Finland... I
| thought everyone (on HN) already knew that?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Nope! Slipped me by and I'm a language nerd who literally
| worked for Nokia (only one trip to the mothership though) and
| spent my teens deep in the Finnish demoscene and the rest of
| the 90s knee-deep in Linux.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Many Fins can speak Swedish. Around 10pc? It is an official
| language.
|
| When I met Linus T in 1994/5 I asked why he spoke Swedish and
| not Finnish and he rolled his eyes. Was so sick of the
| question even then.
|
| https://linuxjournal.rubdos.be/ljarchive/LJ/008/2867.html
| pimeys wrote:
| Yeah. Speaking swedish especially in the coastal area of
| Finland is quite common. My father in law mixes both
| languages together in a funny way in his talk. It's kind of
| funny, but also pretty common among the Finnish-Swedes...
| trueismywork wrote:
| Transcoding
| wolfi1 wrote:
| classic, was on the search for it. I can remember, there was a
| file on the ftp sites called linus.au (the original I presume,
| since .ogg hasn't been invented at the time), there was a non-
| english version as well (finnish?). glad it survived somehow.
| thank you for the link
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| 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 checked the version history and 0.11 seems to be a good start.
| _Reasons:_
|
| - There is this book
| (https://download.oldlinux.org/ECLK-5.0-WithCover.pdf) which
| follows the style of Lion's Unix v6 book and uses the 0.12 kernel
| as reference;
|
| - 0.11 doesn't have a virtual memory or a virtual terminal, and
| they are among the software I'd like to implement;
|
| - 0.11 does have the basic stuffs so I assume it is not too
| difficult to set it up with QEMU and QEMU-gdb;
|
| _The list of software to implement in mind:_
|
| - a Debugger (I'll probably use QEMU-gdb, but if I can write a
| simple step-in debugger maybe it makes it a bit easier to
| dogfood? Still too early though as there is no compiler on it)
|
| - a Virtual Memory system (following the MIT xv6 lab, maybe a bit
| more advanced as I will complete the MIT xv6 labs before pursuing
| this venture);
|
| - a Virtual terminal (not sure how much I can implement, maybe
| just a basic one with limited control sequence support);
|
| - a USB driver (not sure if it's possible for 0.11, I have never
| written a driver before);
|
| - a mouse driver (again probably too difficult for me);
|
| - a LOT of CLI programs as warm-up. Basically simpler versions of
| modern ones (less switches);
|
| - a text editor. I never liked the key layout of emacs or vim so
| this is going to be my own thing. I care a lot about moving caret
| around without using a mouse;
|
| - a very basic GUI system. Nothing fancy, just something that can
| show windows and some widgets. Maybe don't even care about
| multiple windows. Showing one window with a menu and some buttons
| probably needs a lot of effort;
|
| - a compiler/linker of a simple language (can't dogfood without
| an editor, a compiler, a linker and a debugger I think)
|
| _Preparations:_
|
| - I need to complete all MIT RISC xv6 labs;
|
| - I need to figure out how to write drivers for USB and mice;
|
| - I want to investigate how X11 and Win32 GUI were implemented
| and figure out the architecture;
|
| - I need to figure out how to write terminals and text editors.
| There are tons of tutorials online so shouldn't be too tough;
|
| - I need to study compiler theory, just continue reading Crafting
| Interpreters should be good enough;
|
| - I need to figure out a comfortable development and debugging
| environment;
| qingcharles wrote:
| 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 write my own OS in 1995. My
| goal was to have an OS that booted directly into a modern GUI
| and fitted (with basic tools) onto a single 1.4Mb floppy, which
| I did manage.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| 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.
| p_ing wrote:
| > I want to study Win NT
|
| Windows NT Design Workbook:
|
| https://computernewb.com/~lily/files/Documents/NTDesignWorkb...
|
| Tale of Two Kernels:
|
| https://youtu.be/HdV9QuvgS_w
|
| And I'm sure you've picked up a copy of _Windows Internals_.
| Right now I 'm waiting for a copy of _Inside Windows NT_ which
| is the first edition of that series as well as _Inside the
| Windows NT File System_ , both by Helen Custer.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Thanks man. I do have a copy of "Inside Windows NT", but I
| decided to study XV6 first because of its pedagogical value.
| It's hard even to compile the leaked NT 3.X source code.
| klysm wrote:
| It's a weird feeling to be young enough to never have experienced
| a world without Linux, but be close enough in time to its
| creation that many of the people involved are still around. My
| entire professional career has mostly revolved around it in some
| capacity. My entire life even since age like 12? It's pretty
| crazy to think about the impact it has had on my life
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Note the classic "Linux is a 10 year old boy" ad
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ozaFbqg00
| weinzierl wrote:
| 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, who died in 2015, still had an office at my
| university when I studied there and I often passed by, saw his
| name plate, and wondered if this was all real.
|
| Luckily Donald Knuth is still around.
| neontomo wrote:
| Alan Turing took his own life on purpose or by accident, he
| wasn't murdered
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| No, words mean things. If they didn't actually pull the
| trigger, it wasn't murder. That isn't to say it was ok to
| treat Turing the way they did, because it wasn't ok. But
| it's important to not pollute the meaning of words by
| misusing them for greater rhetorical impact.
| Philpax wrote:
| And what led him to take his own life?
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| 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.
| kernal wrote:
| I know why you mean. It's hard to imagine a world without the
| iPhone.
| baskint wrote:
| early 90s, i286 story reminded me purchasing my i386 SX (4 MBs
| RAM, perhaps 20 MB HD), running DOS 5, then DOS 6 could not
| afford the DX edition for some reason. i286s were just phasing
| out then. amazing how linux started. thanks for sharing!
| homebrewer wrote:
| See also, by the same author: https://liw.fi/linux20
| zidoo wrote:
| " We had all the overconfidence of 20-year-old second-year
| university students." - and this is how you change the world
| timewizard wrote:
| 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.
| qwertox wrote:
| 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.
| xtracto wrote:
| 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.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Wouldn't want to toast unauthorized bread.
| xattt wrote:
| You wouldn't steal heat from a toaster.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >I just want my toaster
|
| I think I heard the NetBSD toaster is out of support :(
| alt227 wrote:
| But we ALL want our toasters to ask us if we want any toast
| sgarland wrote:
| This is why I dislike Ubuntu - I don't like Snaps, and I
| don't want them to be considered the default.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| 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.
| vednig wrote:
| > Every well can be poisoned. Linux relies on people's values
| and people's skills. Neither of which are immune to
| degradation over time.
|
| It's rather the opposite, combined with moral stance of Linus
| and it's core committee itself that has managed to kept Linux
| on this track so far.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Linus isn't a renewable resource unfortunately.
| znpy wrote:
| > Linus isn't a renewable resource unfortunately.
|
| The main issue i see is that we aren't really
| "cultivating" the next Linuses
| hnlmorg wrote:
| The kernel is only a small part of the overall Linux
| ecosystem.
|
| These days even GNU is a small part.
|
| systemd, Wayland, Xorg, PulseAudio, CUPS, KDE, Gnome, etc
| are all maintained outside of Linus and GNUs governance.
|
| What FOSS operating systems (and not even Linux
| specifically) offers is freedom to choose. But the effort
| of using some alternatives can be significant.
|
| So I wouldn't say Linux is immune to having its "well
| poisoned" because if Linus.
| II2II wrote:
| > What FOSS operating systems (and not even Linux
| specifically) offers is freedom to choose. But the effort
| of using some alternatives can be significant.
|
| True. On the other hand, Linux (the kernel) does provide
| the foundation. You can replace most of components above
| it and you will still have hardware support for a wide
| range of hardware. Even if you were to develop an
| entirely new kernel, the Linux kernel can serve as a
| proxy for documentation for undocumented or poorly
| documented hardware.
|
| I realize that places a disproportionate amount of
| emphasis on the device drivers when the kernel offers so
| much more _and_ an incredible amount of effort goes into
| the ecosystem outside of the kernel, but the reality is
| that most alternative operating systems grow beyond the
| academic toy phase. Part of the reason is the difficulty
| in attracting potential users, including developers, if
| those users have to use said operating system in a
| virtual machine.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| 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 community effort
| behind that.
|
| There's also OpenIndiana. Which itself has some really
| novel ideas.
|
| Then you have smaller projects that have compatibility
| layers, for example Haiku can run some Linux and FreeBSD
| systems. ReactOS and Windows driver support. But even if
| you exclude them in favour of larger, more stable
| projects, there's still plenty of options out there.
|
| I do also think you're placing far too much emphasis on
| the kernel here. For example some platforms don't
| guarantee ABI compatibility between releases, instead
| requiring their standard libraries being used as the
| kernel entry point (eg Darwin instead of XNU, or libc on
| some UNIXes). This is why people often talk about
| GNU/Linux, Darwin or NT as more than just a kernel.
|
| And that's before we address the massive elephant in the
| room that is all the abstractions that sit on top of the
| userland. For example how so many applications these days
| are basically running inside a virtual machine called a
| "web browser". These days a modern browser is almost like
| an OS in its own right.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking anything away from
| Linux nor the Linux kernel. But its main strength is its
| momentum rather than it being unique.
| p_ing wrote:
| Unfortunately Apple doesn't accept pull requests for XNU.
| They're more "source available", to put it under the old
| .NET Framework terms.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| 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.
| pjmlp wrote:
| All of us aren't going to stay forever on the planet, and
| whoever replaces Linus and the core committee has their own
| set of values, and goals for the project, there are zero
| garantees that everything stays the same no matter what.
| stevekemp wrote:
| 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 support my new hardware, be it a used
| Zip-drive, a web-cam, or whatever.
|
| These days I'm the same. I fearlessly buy random motherboards,
| and hardware toys, and just assume they work. So far I've been
| lucky, but it is a real testament to the driver-developers. The
| lone developer who makes one pull-request against the kernel
| solely to add the magic numbers to recognize yet another kind
| of SD-card, or similar. Really benefits us all, even if they
| never do another thing.
| kqr wrote:
| Even in the mid--late '00s I had to make careful purchases of
| things like wifi, or be stuck manually patching and compiling
| half-working drivers.
| stevekemp wrote:
| I spent many years using 10BaseT and then later wired
| ethernet, which meant I avoided WiFi for the longest time.
|
| Now you reminded me that I bought a wifi dongle around
| 2012/2013 and ended up having to return it because I
| couldn't get it to work. But the very next one I bought as
| a replacement worked first time. So perhaps I'm having
| rose-tinted memories!
| noisy_boy wrote:
| ndiswrapper anyone?
| nobleach wrote:
| LinModem for me! I got my US Robotics 33.6 (with X2
| software upgrade-ability) working and was so amazed. Then
| my dad's ISP got rid of a bunch of external serial 56k
| modems and I was in heaven. Those "just worked". Oddly,
| it was probably 6 months later that DSL started making a
| splash and I was trying to figure out ways to use my
| Alcatel USB "stingray" model with Linux. I ended up
| buying an external "gateway" that required me to set the
| MTU to 1492 instead of 1500. It screwed up my Redhat 7.2
| downloads so badly. The checksum would never match so the
| install would always fail.
|
| Somehow I still refer to these as "the good old days".
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Bluetooth was another pain point.
|
| But by and large, thing did still just work.
|
| Around that same era Windows wasn't exactly problem free
| with device drivers either. A fresh install on random
| hardware would often require hunting down Windows drivers
| online. Though of course those drivers did always existed
| because of Windows' market share.
| gjvc wrote:
| _" The lone developer who makes one pull-request against the
| kernel solely to add the magic numbers to recognize yet
| another kind of SD-card, or similar. Really benefits us all,
| even if they never do another thing."_
|
| Very much so -- many drops form a torrent.
| wejick wrote:
| Oh that softmodem that only worked on windows.
| Philpax wrote:
| Just as long as you don't buy NVIDIA for your Linux desktop!
| pimeys wrote:
| The author of nouveau is working for NVIDIA now. And redhat
| is writing their nova driver to the mainstream. I really
| wish this would mean using NVIDIA is going to be a breeze
| in the near future.
|
| Until that I'll buy AMD.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I've had multiple Nvidia cards across multiple installs of
| Linux, never had an issue once. Just install the Nvidia
| driver and it works. IMO the supposed problems of using
| Nvidia on Linux are wildly overblown.
| Philpax wrote:
| I used NVIDIA on sway/hyprland on Wayland on NixOS with a
| variety of driver versions last year and still had awful
| flickering that made it basically unusable. After much
| consternation, I fixed it by buying an AMD card, and it's
| worked smoothly since.
| userbinator wrote:
| Corporate interests have already seeped into Linux.
| abenga wrote:
| Corporate interests are not bad _per se_ , you would have to
| point to something nefarious that it has led to. Most people
| seem to think corporate interest in Linux has made it better
| by raising the level of investment to the extent that we can
| use it on most commodity hardware.
| t43562 wrote:
| On the minus side of the equation, large controversial
| changes, more often outside the kernel but still important
| nevertheless, do get pushed through by people who are
| employed at important companies.
|
| If your fulltime job is Linux it does give you an ability
| to influence what happens that others who are earning their
| daily bread some other way lack. You can use that ability
| to ride over some objections.
|
| For some people the goal of Linux is to become the world's
| OS. I used to think this but I realise now that if it did,
| then it would become static and conformist. This is because
| the experience of using it would have to be stable and
| common so that all the users who don't care about Linux per
| se wouldn't have to keep relearning how to use it or at
| least would only need to relearn 1 way. So there would have
| to be the world linux distro, probably run by some bullying
| company that would keep app developers, hardware vendors in
| line.
|
| We'd be complaining about it like we might about MS or
| Apple. I like Linux for the wrong reason - I like it
| because there's so much choice. Simplicity is about
| eliminating choice.
| NexRebular wrote:
| > For some people the goal of Linux is to become the
| world's OS.
|
| This is extremely worrying. There already is enough linux
| monoculture in critical network infrastructure due every
| manufacturer except Juniper seemingly putting their
| penguin eggs into one basket. I can only hope there will
| be some common sense brewing for the future before linux
| experiences major failure and Pluto's Kiss starts to feel
| a bit too real for comfort.
| II2II wrote:
| Thankfully most of the corporate interests that have already
| seeped into Linux have been a net positive. If corporations
| remember the lessons of the 1990's, it will remain that way.
|
| (In the 1990's businesses either had to develop and maintain
| their own operating system, or license it from someone else.
| Both routes are expensive. There were also collaborative
| efforts for larger operating systems, none of which seemed to
| reach positive conclusions since the businesses who owned the
| rights to the operating systems were ultimately in direct
| competition with each other. For whatever reason, the open
| source collaborative model used by Linux has been successful.
| In all probability it is because nobody "owns" Linux in the
| conventional sense.)
| api wrote:
| It's the right mix of open source but with so many huge well
| resourced users that it's in everyone's interest to improve it.
| It's like in this specific case the tragedy of the commons
| works backward.
|
| We should study the social and economic dynamics and game
| theory of this and try to replicate it. Someone should do a
| whole game theory Ph.D thesis on Linux and how it manifests an
| un-tragedy of the commons.
| exe34 wrote:
| I worry that it's a Linus thing - he still has to step in and
| call for order now and again. I don't know for sure if it will
| remain on the trajectory of always getting better when he
| retires.
| cnt-dracula wrote:
| I think there was a discussion regarding this last year where
| linus was saying that they are already thinking of who will
| call shots after him so I think even though right now it's
| very much a linus thing, I think they are already prepared
| for the next person to lead it in case we ever need it
| samiv wrote:
| And after every update there's something new that is broken. I
| suppose you mean "stable" as in "you can count on something
| always breaking".
| linuxhansl wrote:
| 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. :)
| api wrote:
| My first net connection was using slirp via a shell account.
| Slirp was a CSLIP emulator that ran in user space on the shell
| box on the remote side.
|
| Back in those days multi user shell machines were quite common
| and some of the first ISPs offered Internet access that way.
|
| Mine was an ISP called Internet Access Cincinnati that gave
| each user shell on a Sun Sparc 10 running SunOS (pre-Solaris).
| You also got POP e-mail and a -username home folder accessible
| via web.
| jks wrote:
| Slirp lives on in QEMU and container engines:
| https://github.com/rootless-containers/slirp4netns
| jabl wrote:
| Ha, Running slirp in the ISP shell box was also how I first
| got beyond bbs'ed onto the wild west of the internet.
|
| Also getting online was one of my first motivations for using
| Linux, as the Trumpet winsock networking library for Windows
| 3.1 was terrible and crashed the entire computer all the
| time.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >More importantly for the future success of Linux was that the
| X11 system was ported to it, making 1992 the year of the Linux
| desktop.
|
| Yet some people await for a second coming.
| ggm wrote:
| Was used to using pdp11/vax based systems moving to Suns and
| other workstations, and for a number of reasons the initial
| launch floppies of linux felt "under cooked" compared to the BSD
| systems also being released for larger Intel chips with MMU. But,
| the killer side of this was the linux code ran on smaller Intel
| boxes, probably a little better than Minix did.
|
| when 386BSD got it's act together, it became less apparent but
| very quickly impetus got behind the distro "scene" and Linux took
| off like a rocket.
|
| Those first early days, no real network stack, minimal desktop
| support, it was line-and-ball. Mainly, I think the BSD
| lawsuit/licence issues was the negative energy source in BSD
| occupying the ground.
|
| I had an IBM PC/RT at the time running the 4.3bsd port which was
| just lovely. But such clunky hardware. PCs were coming into their
| own and IBM didn't want to keep playing in multiple OS and had
| AIX coming through and the ROMP chip was getting old. Once
| graphics display cards on PCI emerged along with decent cheap
| ethernet cards, and then ethernet on the motherboard I think it
| was game over. (although for obvious reasons most people's
| experience of network was modem on serial)
| openplatypus wrote:
| Slackware 3.6/4.0 back in 1998-99 Never forget.
|
| The joy of startx command working (sometimes)
|
| Fun times.
| keyle wrote:
| I remember when I had to choose whether I was a slackware guy
| or a debian guy!
|
| I chose slackware like many french speaking fellas around. Oh,
| the times.
|
| PS: debian all the way since.
| anta40 wrote:
| Slackware 11 was all I had in PC as univ student circa
| 2006-2008 (yep, just said goodbye to Win XP). All the tools I
| need to do assignments were provided in 3 CDs. At that time,
| fast internet connection was considered a bit expensive.
|
| Now I'm happy with Debian.
| udev4096 wrote:
| There's this amazing documentary on linux, from 2003. It's called
| Revolution OS. Highly recommended!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0RYQVkQmWU
| rixed wrote:
| I second that. The best documentary I've ever seen about Linux
| and GNU.
| infp_arborist wrote:
| For the biggest part of my life it seemed that all these
| technical accomplishments were the work of untouchable geniuses,
| but reading this story is also very telling about the value of
| long-term friendship and financial/societal stability to support
| each other's explorations.
| pjmlp wrote:
| > The term "open source" was coined and IBM invested a ton of
| money in Linux development.
|
| A relevant key point regarding why Linux actually took off,
| versus other UNIX clones.
|
| And how that eventually came around with Red-Hat's acquision and
| its influence on GCC, GNOME, Wayland, RPM,... contributions.
| susam wrote:
| > The first Linux distribution was also started in 1992:
| Softlanding Linux System or SLS. The next year, SLS morphed into
| Slackware, which inspired Ian Murdock to start Debian in 1993, in
| order to explore a more community-based development structure. A
| few other distributions would follow in the years to come.
|
| And follow they did! The Great Linux Distribution Timeline at
| <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Di...>
| presents an impressive graph of the countless distributions that
| descended from Slackware, Debian, etc. This graph is still
| actively maintained by the community here:
| <https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline>.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| I 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 squashed those concerns
| within a short time and made things much easier on all fronts.
| Their documentation was also excellent.
|
| By the late 1990s, Red Hat was as common as Solaris, AIX, and
| IRIX at the university, but most still considered it inferior to
| Solaris. And now, RHEL is the main *nix system used there (a few
| use Debian).
| ttyprintk wrote:
| 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.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| 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.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| I had a Jensen (DECpc AXP 150) and an Alpha Multia; there
| were the first targets for Windows NT 3.51 on Alpha, but I
| had early Alpha Linux running on them. These might still be
| buried in the basement of my parents' house. Not as cool as
| the OSF/1-based DECserver 2100 "Sable" at work. I loved
| that machine.
| ajross wrote:
| > 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.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Tried installing Solaris in a VM recently, and the installer
| immediately and starkly brought back memories of the one from a
| Red Hat derivative I didn't realize I even remembered. I'm not
| old enough to have been involved with commercial Unices at the
| time, but even looking back it appears that Red Hat knew very
| clearly who they were aiming at.
| sgarland wrote:
| Great read. My first Linux distro was, I think, Slackware, around
| kernel version 2.2 - 2.4. I played with a _lot_ of distros; I
| think Sorcerer was the most esoteric. I settled on Gentoo, as one
| does, and spent more time compiling / breaking / fixing than I
| did using anything. I eventually valued stability over bleeding-
| edge, and have happily been using Debian ever since.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| They confusing Linux and GNU/Linux in that article.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They're not bothering to draw a distinction that almost nobody
| cares about, yes.
| segmondy wrote:
| It'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.
| 9front wrote:
| We will always have Linux, the kernel, but the desktop experience
| is being sabotaged by Microsoft with WSL.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I have been using Ubuntu as my main drive for a couple of weeks
| and I have to admit it's still clearly not ready for the
| masses.
| linguae wrote:
| I disagree with the notion that Microsoft is sabotaging the
| Linux desktop via WSL. In my opinion, I believe it's the
| Sisyphean development churn of the FOSS desktop ecosystem that
| held the Linux desktop back. However, the industry-wide move
| away from native apps toward Web apps, combined with growing
| dissatisfaction with Windows in some circles and with the high
| cost of switching to a Mac (especially for those who need more
| RAM than what Apple sells by default), has provided a large
| lifeline for the Linux desktop.
|
| The Linux desktop has had a rough history. The original problem
| was the original KDE using a non-FOSS Qt, which led to the
| development of GNOME, splintering the FOSS desktop ecosystem
| into two competing desktops, spreading already-thin resources.
| Granted, things were good in the mid-2000s, when GNOME 2 and
| KDE 3 were current, and when it appeared that the Linux desktop
| would be poised to make significant inroads against Windows XP,
| just like how Firefox in 2005 formed a formidable challenge to
| Internet Explorer. Even OpenOffice appeared to seriously
| challenge Microsoft Office at the time.
|
| In my opinion, there have been many setbacks since the late
| 2000s. GNOME 3's very controversial changes led to the
| splintering of the GNOME/Gtk community (Cinnamon and MATE). KDE
| 4 was not well received, though KDE 5 is widely praised. GNOME
| and other projects (though not KDE) was heavily influenced by
| mobile computing paradigms led by a misguided belief that
| desktops will become obsolete. The transition from X11 to
| Wayland has been quite rocky, to say the least.
|
| Interestingly enough, what has improved the competitiveness of
| the Linux desktop these days has been the shift away from
| native apps and toward both the Web and Electron apps. While as
| a long-time former Mac user I lament the decline of native apps
| and the loss of consistency, apps built on Web technologies are
| cross-platform or even platform-agnostic. If one doesn't need
| native Windows and macOS apps, then the barrier to switching to
| a Linux desktop is much lower. Even the gaming situation has
| dramatically improved on Linux.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Don't forget Valve.
|
| Without Steam's built in Proton compatibility layer no gamer
| would realistically use Linux.
|
| Outside of work I'm probably 70% Linux and 30% Windows. Music
| production is much better on Windows, but software
| development is miles easier on Linux. Messing around with
| Ubuntu during my teenage years was a key part of my later
| career!
| tonnydourado wrote:
| > My name is Lars Wirzenius, and I was there when Linux started.
|
| "I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago" XD
| chem83 wrote:
| From the linked Wikipedia article on Tannenbaum x Torvalds
| debate: > but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU
| on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5
|
| I find it interesting how academic circles back then were really
| not betting on the longevity of x86.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was not believed UNIX workstations were to be disrupted as
| they were with Google plans of cheap PC hardware running
| GNU/Linux on x86.
|
| Maybe had BSD not be fighting AT&T, or Microsoft bothered with
| providing a proper POSIX experience in Windows NT insteaf of
| making the minimum for goverment contracts, and Linux history
| would have been much different, including its impact on cheap
| UNIX servers.
| samiv wrote:
| Oh, I thought it's still the early days considering that just the
| other day the whole system went into a death spiral where
| everything graphical slowly ground to a halt and then froze
| completely and I had to pull the power cord. Or considering that
| building my project in debug (yes, bog standard CMake debug build
| with GCC) causes a complete kernel hang about half the time and I
| have to pull the power cord again.
|
| Linux (as in the kernel + whatever user space you choose) is
| about 90% done. Now it just needs the _other_ 90% to be taken
| care of to move beyond alpha....
|
| "The year of the Linux desktop is _always_ 10 years from _now_ "
| ;-)
| initramfs wrote:
| bookmarked.
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