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Happy Birthday, Linux

posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 25 2017, @05:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the 1A-candles dept.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Twenty-six years ago today, someone from Finland posted the following message to comp.os.minix:

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

                Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

Here's wishing him and his creation another twenty-six happy years of world domination.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Saturday August 26 2017, @12:10AM (2 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday August 26 2017, @12:10AM (#559173)

    I was a consultant through most of the 90s. In 94 I was hired by a company making a commercial product based on linux. It was what, 2-3 years old at the time, yet worked very well?

    Something went very very right with Linux, I suspect it was a combination of a very smart programmer (Linus), and right time right place.

    I still remember the thrill I got when I sent Alan Cox a bugfix and got a thank you email back. (our product consisted of 30-40 networked Linux boxes that every few minutes sent video files to and fro, with a hard deadline on how long it could take. In 95/96 network switches came out, solved all our problems).

    --
    When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Geezer on Saturday August 26 2017, @12:40AM

    by Geezer (511) on Saturday August 26 2017, @12:40AM (#559193)

    Right time, right place, and legions of rebellious, beer-sodden cats herded by Linus.

    Sometimes it takes an asshole to herd cats, and Linus mastered the art.

    Somewhere in a long-lost Prodigy email archive are the burned-to-the-crisp replies I got to some very small driver-related code commits.

    But he was right.

  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @09:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @09:20AM (#559356)

    and then systemd came along..