Linux Turns 17 Today

Meshach writes "Over at the Linux Journal, Doc Searles is noting that today marks 17 years since Linus posted to Usenet, starting Linux (post). As a Linux user at work and at home I say, thanks Linus!" The anniversary is also featured on the top page of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Age of Consent

One more year and it should be legal.

Re:Age of Consent

I'd totally fsck that!

Re:Age of Consent

Go for it [m0sia.ru]

Re:Age of Consent

Not that it'll ever get any, of course...

Re:Age of Consent

I thought it already was legal. Linux has been fucking me for years.

Re:Age of Consent

Mod parent up. Linux has been fucking us all, but we didn't care, because it was so.. open about it. We were all in this together. In fact, some have come to call us a "community", but I despise the term.

WRONG DATE

The right date is September 17th, not October 5th. But year after year people keep messing it up. Don't believe me, look here [wikipedia.org]

Re:Age of Consent

You sick son of a bitch. How could you take advantage of a young, vulnerable operating system like that? An operating system less than 18 years of age is incapable of informed consent, and should not be "used", as you put it.

I'll be calling the Feds on you, and God help you if they find any screenshots of Linux on your computer.

Re:Age of Consent

Now here in Kentucky...

Re:Age of Consent

That won't be a problem until Linux support sound.

Made for hackers

It is currently meant for hackers

OMG SHUT IT DOWN!!!

Re:Made for hackers

Don't mistake the word "hacker" for what the ill-informed media use it to mean. It is the popular media that have given the term a negative meaning, and then only in recent years. It WAS a positive term, and STILL IS to those who know what it really means.

what

No google logo for this?! I expected a penguin or something like that.

Re:what

Probably because Linux had already been announced in August 1991 [google.com], so that is probably the more important anniversary. But the October post linked in the summary is the first usenet post to refer to it as Linux, and to link to the source.

(Incidentally, at the risk of starting a flamewar, I think the 28th of September [google.com] was also a fairly important anniversary ...)

My Linux has a fake ID

Its called Ubuntu and he is supposed to be 60 years old and lives as a zoo keeper, naming all of his projects after various animals there.

this just in

Time keeps flowing.

I vote next years first ubuntu release

"Barely Legal"

17 years...

Obligatory:

1991 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1992 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1993 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1994 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1995 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1996 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1997 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1998 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 1999 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2000 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2001 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2002 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2003 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2004 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2005 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2006 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2007 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!, 2008 - This is the year of the Linux desktop!

Stupid whitespace filter, yadda yadda

Re:17 years...

I'll never forget the day I was at a large meeting with my clients. They never took me seriously and in fact started leaving the room. Turns out it was because my dick was hanging out of my pants. Never again will I use velcro. From that day forward, it was zipper only!

Re:also:

HURD turned 18 this year (22 if you count the first failed attempt).

There was a *successful* attempt?????

Re:Linus... humble!?

Mod down? No. But there's an important distinction: to get technical excellence, you have to have some way to filter out technical mediocrity. Therefore, in an environment demanding technical excellence, those who are technically mediocre will feel slighted and rejected.

Building excellence is not about "feeling good", a bunch of hairy hippies sitting around in Buddha style kumbaya. It's about building excellence, and it's not always pretty.

Linus is very forward and very direct; a display of the confidence that comes from years of proven experience producing and overseeing real, valuable excellence. He's OK with stating his opinion very openly and succinctly, confident that if his ideas are wrong, they'll be picked apart ruthlessly and publicly.

Linus has done an amazing job of coordinating an insane amount of information in one of the largest, most complex, and most distributed project ever attempted by mankind. And he accepts that his ideas are only valuable if they are RIGHT by the standards of excellence.

I don't care if he is "polite", he is an amazing fellow simply because he's OK with being wrong, and puts his ego in 2nd place after technical excellence!

This is the hallmark of good science and good engineering: when who has the right answer is less important than what's the right answer!

Hugs to Linus!

Re:Linus... humble!?

I'd say he (Linus) is far far more humble than Gates, Ballmer, Ellison et al. In fact, I should add that I rather think RMS is shy and retiring compared to those guys.

Re:Linus... humble!?

Ya frigging Stallman. While he may be a bit off his rocker... he only created the license Linux currently uses, as well as the compiler it was created with. Other than that, a COMPLETE hackjob.

Or did you conveniently forget that it's GNU/Linux? Without Stallman you likely wouldn't have Linux at all.

Re:Linus... humble!?

Or did you conveniently forget that it's GNU/Linux?

Ahem, did *you* conveniently forget that it's [Mozilla|Konqueror]/OpenOffice.org/KDE/QT/[X.org|XFree86]/GNU/Linux?

Re:Linus... humble!?

Or did you conveniently forget that it's GNU/Linux?

Like how people conveniently forget that it wasn't published under the GPL until late 1992. Or that it can currently be compiled with at least one compiler other than GCC. Or that it's possible to run it with a modified *BSD userland and non-glibc C library. But yeah, aside from that, it's all Stallman's doing...