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GNU is Not Unix Software Linux

Ten Years Of The Linux Counter 206

Posted by timothy from the counts-for-something dept.
hta writes "In a testament to the fact that Linux has been around for a while, the Linux Counter turned turned ten last month. The site has been counting a few of the users of Linux since September of 1993, and currently lists more than 130.000 names. It's still waiting for Linus Torvalds to claim registration #1, which has been reserved for him for the last ten years. Among the events that have happened in 10 years of running the counter, the Slashdot events are some of the more memorable."
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Ten Years Of The Linux Counter More

Ten Years Of The Linux Counter

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  • Sir Haxalot, help us out (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We need the google cache or the "artical" text ASAP!

  • Uptime? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:03PM (#7192031)
    I wonder if any Linux computers have 10 years of uptime?!?

    • if they did, what kernel would they be running?

    • I wonder if any Linux computers have 10 years of uptime?!?

      The 'linux counter' guys did. Until this evening. I wonder WHO could POSSIBLY be responsible for THAT.

      Insert obligatory sla... oh, nevermind, already did that.

    • Re:Uptime? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:17PM (#7192102) Journal
      I doubt it. There are Linux boxes that probably could run 10 years, but frankly, I wouldn't want anything to do with them for a few reasons.

      First, although it's not nearly as bad as most Microsoft products, there has certainly been more than one kernel-related exploit in the past 10 years. Anyone who's had ten years of uptime is going to have some massive security holes.

      The second problem is hardware. What were you using ten years ago? Frankly, I don't even remember what I used. I'll guess rather blindly and say a 66 MHz 486 was cutting-edge ten years ago. My desktop machine has dual processors, each about 25 times faster. A LOT has happened to hardware over ten years; anything that's run for ten years is probably bordering on obsolete.

      Finally... Even if Linux was truly perfect, I doubt you can get hardware to run for ten years. If you're using IDE, you've probably gone through a few disks if you run 24/7; unless it's a massive server, you probably ended up shutting down even if it ran SCSI. And although hardware doesn't ordinarily break down out of the blue, I've had bizarre things happen before; earlier this month I swapped out a network card that seems to have been possessed for no particular reason. And even if the hardware was perfect, I'd like to see you get power to it for ten years straight. Even on an enormous UPS that can run for weeks, you're eventually going to have to change batteries.

      The highest uptime I've ever seen was about 101 days; oddly all our changes happen right around then, whether it be moving to an entirely new box, building a new kernel, or (most recently) have the network card start acting all weird right after hitting 100 days uptime. People have gone more than a year, but I really have to question their wisdom.

      • Re:Uptime? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <`gro.h7urt' `ta' `rehtes'> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:38PM (#7192163) Homepage
        > The highest uptime I've ever seen was about 101
        > days; oddly all our changes happen right around
        > then,

        Not going to start a pissing contest for the trolls and be specific, but I've seen numerous machines that exceed that number, by a lot. It seems dependent on what they do and what kind of load they're put under.

        Obviously a good UPS helps too.

        In my experience, regular downtime is actually a good thing. In EVERY case where I've dealt with a machine that had a 3 digit uptime, as soon as it reboots and/or stays down for more than a few minutes, hardware dies. Considering such outages are often unplanned (and there's often many machines at once).. it makes a stressful situation much more so.

        Frequently and routinely shutting machines down allows one to deal with these failures much more smoothly.

        • 104 days

          IBM PS/2 486/33 with 32mb ram.

          Had to reboot it because i forgot to build in quotas and well I need them now. Sucks too.

        • Not going to start a pissing contest for the trolls and be specific, but I've seen numerous machines that exceed that number, by a lot.

          10:26PM up 659 days, 19:36, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

          No, I am not making that up.

          Oh, and it's a firewall system...

          FreeBSD [censored] 4.3-RC2 FreeBSD 4.3-RC2 #6: Fri Apr 6 19:17:04 EDT 2001

          Frequently and routinely shutting machines down allows one to deal with these failures much more smoothly.

          I disagree with the "frequently" bit. Nothing w

        • For me, the uptime on my servers tell me how long it has been since the power company shut off the power for non-payment, or the last time some semi took out the main power feeder here in the mountains. My UPS is good for five hours, so minor outages (and four hours IS considered minor in the Sierras) don't cause things to roll back to zero.
        • Crappy UPS.
          Sun Sparcstation 4/110.

          [sid@scarifier] ~$ uptime
          12:19PM up 307 days, 14:34, 1 user, load averages: 0.18, 0.15, 0.10

          This is far from the most impressive uptime I have seen.
        • And as nice as it is to shut down individual services, somethimes it's easier to just reboot than muck around figuring out what to stop/start. Besides, how do you account for complexity? My firewall routinely gets XXX days, but then it doesn't even do much disk IO once it boots. Compare that with something like a heavily used RDBMs that hammers disk.

          I guarded uptime for a while, but then it got in the way of getting stuff done quickly, and some moron electrician always screwed it up anyway.

          Frequently a

      • Ten years ago I was running Linux on a 3 MIPS 80386SX, running at 20 Mhz.

        It had 30 megs of disk set aside (65 meg disk total) for Linux. It had 4 megs of RAM.

        The modem was 2400 baud. I had a serial mouse, hooked up to a 9 pin serial port. The monitor could do 640x480, and my video card was VGA only.

        But it ran Linux, and it was glorious!
      • I've done 100+ days even on crappy hardware - stuff where you get a data loss writing to the HDD so have to keep it mounted read only. Stuff where the CPU fan runs at 60dB, and the whole machine vibrates. I still ran it as a firewall for months on end though, only to have a brownout and have it reboot
      • [root@sunrise root]# w
        19:35:49 up 373 days, 5:08, 1 user, load average: 0.23, 0.23, 0.18
        USER TTY LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
        root pts/1 19:35 0.00s 0.04s 0.02s w

        Well, now you can't say that. :-)

        This is an Oracle server, normally quite busy during the day (it's now the weekend). But I agree with you -- we'll be moving this server and most of the other ones into a new facility, hopefully by the end of the year.

        The highest I've seen was an AIX box that was taken out by a fau
      • i have a ten year old next cube [serverfestival.net] that is ten years old (and coincidentally ready to hit ebay, i am taking private offers [slashdot.org]). it was THE SHIT OF THE SHIT BACK THEN and would have sold retail for $10,000 and up. it has a motorola 25 Mhz PPC chip, 16 MB ram, 2 Gig storage (1.3 and boot on 660 mb), onboard sound, video, dual ethernet, all the goodies. is the basis of gnustep and OS X with tru post script display.

        just a typical Tim Berners Lee machina. i could run debian on it today, or net bsd i suppose. if

      • The highest uptime I've ever seen was about 101 days

        Here is a shell server that is pretty well used by the members of TriLUG [trilug.org] that will show you 101 days is easy.



        [chrish@moya chrish]$ uptime
        12:55am up 113 days, 5:57, 36 users, load average: 0.02, 0.30, 0.32

        I've seen plenty of Linux systems approaching and a few exceeding 1 yr of uptime but by then it's time for a distro upgrade.

        • "I've seen plenty of Linux systems approaching and a few exceeding 1 yr of uptime but by then it's time for a distro upgrade."

          apt-get dist-upgrade doesnt require a reboot.
          • I would think it would if the kernel is upgraded...
            • You don't have to upgrade the kernel if you upgrade the distribution, and even if you did you wouldn't be required to reboot. All the software packages are upgraded in place while the system is running. A kernel upgrade isn't necessarily part of the distribution upgrade process.
              • a kernel upgrade would require a reboot if you want the new kernel to be the one running the machine. Upgrading the kernel and not rebooting is pointless.

                Aside as not upgrading the kernel when upgrading the distribution, I am sure you can. But you know, even the kernel has the occasional bug or security patch...

      • What were you using ten years ago? Frankly, I don't even remember what I used. I'll guess rather blindly and say a 66 MHz 486 was cutting-edge ten years ago.

        For what it is worth, I was running minix in the fall of 1991. I remember Linus posting about his new project. I also remember how some of the Minix adherents were annoyed Linux oriented posting took more and more of the bandwidth of comp.os.minix. comp.os.linux was created in the Spring of '92.

        At that point I was running a 386DX-33 and it was

      • 101 days isn't that much, either. I get that routinely on 2k boxes.

        I think my linux record is 158; again, took down due to a kernel recompilation.
    • One Word: NASA
    • I would be suprised considering there is no real point to having a computer up for 10 years running linux .1. Especially considering the type of people who would be running Linux 10 years ago were probably interested in developing it, not in using it for something that would require 10 years of uptime. Now 10 years from today would somebody have a linux box with 10 years uptime... quite possible.

      On the other hand,at various IBM confrences i've talked to plenty of folks whose IBM big iron mainframes have u

    • Re:Uptime? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anguo ( 675311 )
      The longest running servers [netcraft.com] are not Linux but FreeBSD on Apache...

      Linux was still in its infancy back then (being just a teen now), so a linux server running for ten years on ten years old hardware wouldn't give much benefit...

      • Now, *thats* impressive domination. Every server on that list is running either BSD/OS or FreeBSD, mostly BSD. All but three are running some version of Apache (and those three are application servers, not http servers).

        Next time someone tries to tell you closed source is more stable, point them at that. Sure there are plenty of arguments against it running a server that long, but...

        • Re:Uptime? (Score:2, Informative)

          by John Marter ( 3227 )
          Next time someone tries to tell you closed source is more stable, point them at that. Sure there are plenty of arguments against it running a server that long, but...

          But be prepared to back-pedal when they point out that many systems [netcraft.com] can't make the list because they do not report uptime. Also other systems, (Linux, for example) cannot make it to the top of the list because they roll over their uptime counter at 497 days.

          Nevertheless, there are some competitors left and the BSD's have completely dominat

    • The largest uptime ever recorded at the counter was a little more than a thousand days - this was Linux 2.0 running on an Alpha.

      It has apparently been turned off now.
  • The site's been slashdotted!! :)

    Is that an event or what?
  • "...the Slashdot events are some of the more memorable."

    Hey guys, remember the time the site was Slashdotted with one comment? I suppose they didn't learn from their last slashdot event.

    Is the site slow for anyone else?

    • Re:Slashdotted Already! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by caluml ( 551744 )
      This image shows a well-configured (but underpowered) machine's response to slashdot:

      Valiant shouldering of the load
      Trouble from an unexpected source
      Slow return to normality
      In the first minute after the article went up, people arrived.

      Soon, the 16 available processes were all busy running my too-heavy Perl scripts, and the new clients were sending SYN packets and waiting. And they kept on doing it.

      In fact, so many were doing this that the kernel wondered if there were SYN flood attacks going on. Go fig

  • #1 Imposters. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    " It's still waiting for Linus Torvalds to claim registration #1, which has been reserved for him for the last ten years. "

    Oh damn! Now there's going to be a rush of Linus imposters trying to get it.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by darkpurpleblob ( 180550 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:08PM (#7192061)
    So why hasn't Linus registered? Anyone know?

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:14PM (#7192093)
      Maybe he's using FreeBSD now...

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)

      by spektr ( 466069 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:22PM (#7192118)
      So why hasn't Linus registered? Anyone know?

      Do you want to register:

      ( ) online, now
      ( ) remind me in one week
      ( ) never
      (*) Man, I wrote the damn thing!

      [OK] [Cancel]
      • Thanks. I believe that I have the solution.

        /me clears throat.

        You have up to thirty days to activate Linux. After thirty days, you must activate Linux to continue using it.
        Do you want to register:

        ( ) online, now
        ( ) remind me in one week
        ( ) never
        (*) Man, I wrote the damn thing!

        Thank you very much, MS. I HATE your stupid activation scheme. Please quit treating me like a criminal.

      • Do you want to register:

        ( ) online, now
        ( ) remind me in one week
        ( ) never
        (*) Man, I wrote the damn thing!</I>

        (*) No he didn't! _I_ did! -- Darl

        [OK] [Cancel]
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Well... If he did register, SCO would probably send him an invoice for his copy.
    • he uses windows.

      I joke.
    • Because the site's been slashdotted and we STILL can't get on, you insensitive clods!
    • Maybe because Linux Counter is dumb and useless?

      I mean, think about it. 130,000 registered names. What TINY percentage of ACTUAL LINUX USERS do you suppose that is? 10%? 1%? .1%? I know that I've never registered any of my machines.

      What good is a COUNTER that has no bearing on reality? It'd be like performing a census by asking all the people in one small state to phone in -- and then just going with that number. It'd be more accurate to get download logs from ibiblio.org and kernel.org and redhat.c

    • Its an engineering issue. I drive over bridges because I know almost nothing about hot they are built. All the bridge engineers I know refuse to cross bridges that they design (they either fly, or drive around to a bridge they didn't design). Airplane designers often refuse to fly in their airplane.

      Not that their designes are not safe enough, but as an engineer you know all the compromises, and they keep you up at night. I personally avoid software I've made, and I've been up all night worrying about w

  • The important parts: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by caferace ( 442 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:10PM (#7192077) Homepage
    Part I:

    Lessons learned

    * Slashdotting is good for you.
    The counter is now defensively configured, and is able to do something intelligent even under heavy load.
    * A 32-Mbyte Pentium can't fill a 256-Kbit link using Perl.
    I'm sure management is happy to know that.
    * The adrenaline kick of a slashdotting feels real good!
    But it does eat time...I spent 4 hours Tuesday night getting the box reconfigured and back on its feet, and then just watching it. Late.
    * On Wednesday, 1412 people registered with the counter.

    Part II:

    Lessons learned

    * Slashdotting is still good for you, as an exercise in work under fire.
    The counter's configuration has proved that it stays up and running (as long as there is disk space around).
    * A well-handled Slashdot load lasts longer and has more people in it than the load left after the server's been down for a while.
    * The adrenaline kick of a slashdotting still feels real good!
    * On the 25th and 26th together, 2670 people registered with the counter.

  • It's GNU/Linux Counter damnit!
  • You know he's using it, and you know he's number 1.

  • In SCO's view, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by overbyj ( 696078 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @07:31PM (#7192147)
    the Linux Counter is a who's who list of those that owe $699.
    • And Darl is already planning on suing to have his name put in the number 1 position.

    • We can only hope . . . (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Idou ( 572394 ) *
      I signed the online petition that asked SCO to please sue me . . . no response yet.

      I guess if even the RIAA and MPAA are having trouble using lawsuits to control BLATANT copyright violations, SCO doesn't have much of a chance in hell suing users on completely baseless grounds.

      You know, SCO could have really helped their compaign if they had just released a bit of actually infringing code (not all of it, just a taste so that we all would know they aren't full of BS) . . . the fact that they haven't yet, wh
  • >> currently lists more than 130.000 names.

    I think this whole counter thing really has no point anymore. Linux has reached the point where it is almost a household name and the actual count on this counter is way off. I would imagine there are well more then 130.000 people that use linux. According to this paper [nevod.ru] there are between 600.000 and 2.000.000 Linux users. Numerous other articles are available with similar numbers if you care to check Google [google.com].
    • i think its a fun idea. unfortunately i signed up under an email address that is now defunct and cannot update my info. i tried sending an email to them to get it sorted but no reply, maybe i'll hit them up again and see about it after the slashdotting subsides ;-)
  • 0. SCO
    1. {Reserved}
    2. [Please reply to fill in the blanks]
    .
    .
    .
    139325. waynemcdougall
  • There are approximately 14,000 more users than machines as I looked at the counter several moments ago. So, my question is, are the other 14,000 users running linux on THEMSELVES perhaps? Linux powered humans, now that would be an awesome force to be reconned with! :)

    • Linux is a *multiuser* operating system. One machine could handle tens or even hundreds or users. You're fussing that the number of users registered exceeds the number of machines registered. You should be fussing that the number of users is so low as to almost equal the number of machines. How many of these machines are effectively just single-user machines?
      • Actually, you are quite correct, however for many of us who run Linux the ratio is more machines than users. Personally I have three linux machines at the house and a laptop I use for both work and pleasure as well as an unofficial Linux cluster under a co worker's desk at work that gives us better development server space than the company I work for officially provides! Thank goodness for Linux.

        I write server side J2EE java and the lunux cluster I have outperforms the area I have been officially given

    • I have owned perhaps 10 to 20 Linux machines. Most have gone to friends and family (which I did not bother to register), some just died (my cat crawled into one while it was running . . . stupid cat/owner).

      Only zealots (like myself) take the time to register, that is why the number is so low. It is safe to say that for every zealot, 5 to 10 machines have been installed with Linux. However, few of us are willing to register EACH and EVERY machine we installed on. Maybe if they started giving us karma per ma
    • Linux is a multi-user operating system.
    • There are approximately 14,000 more users than machines as I looked at the counter several moments ago.

      This is my fault. I am running 13,999 virtual linux processes on an IBM S/390.

      I also have an old copy of Slackware running on a 386SX-25, which I'm thinking about upgrading with a math coprocessor.

  • There's nothing like a good slashdotting to mark their 10 year anniversary :-)
  • It's still waiting for Linus Torvalds to claim registration #1, which has been reserved for him for the last ten years.

    So it's a counter that starts at an arbitrary number other than one? I had enough trouble indexing my arrays from 0. This is gonna cause all sorts of different "off by one" errors. Can I start my own counter at 50.000 and claim the first 50.000 are reserved?

  • THe site is barely loading, and I tend to think the readership of /. is much larger than it ever was before.

    I look forward to the review of this particular slashdotting.

    I also cannot believe the site is run on such a cheesy box. I have at least a couple of junked (but workable) old computers that I am actually considering giving away, and they are all better than a pentium-90 with 48 or whatever MB of RAM.

    People in the U.S. (by me atleast) upgrade their pcs so often that they throw out perfectly good pc
  • Speaking of Slashdot events, the site is timing out for me.
  • How do the numbers work? My number is 193708 but there are 130,000 users? I got my number in June of '99.
  • It's still waiting for Linus Torvalds to claim registration #1

    Maybe Linus is a closet Windows user! Could it be?
  • Anyone know of a *BSD counter?
  • Why are there fewer Linux machines than Linux users (at a ratio of .898)? I can imagine there are a small number of Linux families--multiple people to a single computer--but I would guess this is far offset by the number of Linux users with multiple machines (which seems to be the norm among more computer-savvy folks; I know I actively use two Linux machines and an OpenBSD box and own a couple more older Linux machines that I've taken out of service). Could it be that many people consider themselves to be,
  • Main Page: http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:HKiJVA4VELMJ : counter.li.org/+Linux+Counter:+Home+Page&hl=en&ie= UTF-8 Ten Year Counter: http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:usZ1-hcS8fkJ: counter.li.org/news/ten-years-counting.php+Linux+C ounter:+Ten+Years+of+the+Linux+Counter&hl=en&ie=UT F-8 Slashdot events: http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:cdmRuYkqn-EJ:c ounter.li.org/slashdot/+Linux+Counter:+Linux+Count er+Slashdot+Experience&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
  • Looks bad but I am suspecting microSCOft is dos'ing the site as i type this.

    Googles cache from yesterday

    http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:HKiJVA4VELMJ: counter.li.org/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 [216.239.41.104]

  • "currently lists more than 130.000 names. "

    It's not often you see 3 significant figures when counting individuals...

    And anyhow, if only 130 people have registered with the site, I don't think it's quite accurate...

  • the linux counter was "slightly" misconfigured in how many apache servers it allowed to run simultaneously - it went into trashing.
    I've re-tuned it (to MaxClients = 32, and KeepAliveTimeout = 2), and it seems to work slightly better.
    You can still expect it to be SLOW, though.....
    (anyone got a gig of RAM for a Dec Alpha lying around...? stock price for that is more than a new PC....)
  • (Reuters, 1 hour ago)

    The Counter that has served the Linux community so faithfully over the past decade has met with a greusome fatal homicide today. The Counter, which has Counted over 130,000 of the Linux faithful, has been terminated by the very people it had been Counting over the past decade. These "Slashdotters", as they have been called, dealth the fatal blow to the counter shortly after a link was posted describing the counters 10th birthday.

    The "Slashdotter" gang are currently being investigate

  • Allllright! 130 names! ;)
  • It's the Slashdot Counter Outage.

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