Linus on Linux in 1994 400
Vrallis writes "Ten years ago this month, Linux Journal christened their maiden issue with an interview with Linus Torvalds. It is definitely worth the read, and worth some reflection on just how far Linux has come in the last decade."
Funny quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Funny quote (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Funny quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Funny quote (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still saving my drachmas for (Score:5, Funny)
how far we have come (Score:5, Funny)
Since then Linux has traveled around the sun ten times but its still in the same old place.
Re:how far we have come (Score:2)
Re:how far we have come (Score:5, Funny)
So, no matter how you look at it, progress has been made towards some sort of calamity.
Re:how far we have come (Score:2)
Re:how far we have come (Score:5, Informative)
> times but its still in the same old place.
OT, but Linux (and Linus) has travelled nearly seventy billion kilometers [madsci.org] in the last ten years, courtesy of Sol's orbit around the galaxy.
--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main
Slashdotted already (Score:5, Funny)
The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course Mach is a great idea: WIndows NT/2000, NeXT, Mac OS X, OpenDarwin, etc. but Linux is not dying...
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:3, Informative)
NT kernel might have evolved its stability over the years, but certainly you cannot compare the stability of VMS to that of an NT kernel.
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the discussion of Micro-kernel versus monolithic kernel is academic at this point. Monolithic kernels have been made more flexible through the use of loadable modules. Window has shown that no matter what kernel you start with, you can still produce an unstable, insecure, and all around broken OS. If you try hard enough.
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The famous Linus - Tanenbaum debate (Score:4, Informative)
Wait, that's the same thing...
OSX specifically was based on mach, but it's really a mach microkernel with a bunch of stuff rolled into kernel space to make it faster, thus not a true mach microkernel.
Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)
Rolled in there with greater portability and flexibility, I guess Linux's focus has changed in ten years. I think that's probably the most important thing to note.
Also 10 years ago today... (Score:5, Funny)
-m
10 years later... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Also 10 years ago today... (Score:5, Funny)
Bill who?
Re:Also 10 years ago today... (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary (Score:5, Funny)
"In 1994, Linux was mostly a toy OS. Really not much of anything more than a bootloader. A shell of an operating system."
"Ten years later... well, it's basically the same thing, but it's been ported to every damn computer out there!"
Re:Summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Summary (Score:4, Funny)
Hi Richard!
Heh heh (Score:5, Funny)
Linux *has* come very far (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition, with the recently added hotplug functionality it is no longer necessary to know the exact specs for your hardware in some cases - it is automatically detected and supported.
It still has a ways to go though. Second-generation hardware is still not supported well enough yet - for example, ACPI doesn't work properly on my A7N8X Dlx. The system randomly crashes with it enabled and generates a ton of interrupt errors.
I am really quite impressed with the new functionality of the 2.6 series kernels. I think I'll go off and upgrade to 2.6.2 now...
Re:Linux *has* come very far (Score:2)
Re:Linux *has* come very far (Score:5, Insightful)
The same would go for KDE (I have KDE running on a few students' Sun workstations).
What I think is impressive is that Linux is supported by many big vendors now like HP, IBM, Dell, SUN (wtf?), etc. I'm impressed that there are many nongeek household items that come with Linux powering them like the Tivo, Linksys wireless routers, wall mounted digital picture frames, etc. I think its impressive that the thing that I played with in my dorm room and in the physics labs at school now is my career. I'm impressed with the number of archetectures that it runs on. Currently, its alpha arm arm26 cris h8300 i386 ia64 m68k m68knommu mips parisc ppc ppc64 s390 sh sparc sparc64 um v850 x86_64. I'm impressed that when I went to the SuperComputing 2003 conference that Linux was pretty much _the_ OS to run clusters. I really think that Linux is a Good Thing(tm). It just happened, it works, and its not going anywhere.
Re:Linux *has* come very far (Score:4, Insightful)
swear count? LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
i think its funny that people put profanities in their code, but i think its even funnier that someone codded a program to look for swear words in code!
lol
Re:swear count? LOL! (Score:2)
The curious thing about the swear count is the sudden rise of "s**t" counts corresponding roughly to version 2.6.0, with no increase in the count of other swears.
It's official, then: the development verson's bugs are cr***y, while the stable version's bugs are definitely sh***y.
Re:swear count? LOL! (Score:2)
Re:swear count? LOL! (Score:4, Funny)
It might be more Matsushita drivers.
No, seriously.
Re:swear count? LOL! (Score:2)
Re:swear count? LOL! (Score:2, Funny)
$ cd
$ grep -r " hell " *
It is fun to read some interesting comments
OT: Profanity Filters (Score:2)
Re:I would be even funnier (Score:2, Insightful)
Penguins (Score:4, Funny)
"and worth some reflection on just how far Linux has come in the last decade."
Well for one, penguin awareness across the globe is way up.
A lot in common w/ Linux... (Score:2, Insightful)
* Few really and truly understand it from top to bottom. ...And finally, Penguins and Kernel hackers both stay out of the
* It appears to be a helpless critter and an easy target, yet it happily survives in conditions that would kill most other creatures.
*
Re:Penguins (Score:5, Interesting)
Hrm. (Score:2, Interesting)
Linus wasn't optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)
Linus: I actually have no good idea at all: I haven't really followed either the CD-ROM sales or any ftp statistics, so it's rather hard to say. I guesstimate a user base of about 50,000 active users: that may be way off-base, but it doesn't sound too unlikely. The c.o.l. newsgroup had about 80,000 readers according to the network statistics back before the split (and I haven't looked at the statistics since), and I saw a number like 10,000 CD-ROMs sold somewhere. Not all of those are active users, I'm sue, but that would put some kind of lower limit on the number.
Here is a article [linuxjournal.com] from 1994 from Linux Journal about the DECUS conference.
I also once enjoyed reading an account of the early days of Linux by his near friend. I just can't remember the link or the name of him.
And I'm glad he didn't.... (Score:2)
Even if he could have predicted what Linux would be today, I think he (and everyone else) would have a hard time guessing what Windows (admit it, 2000/XP line is a big step up from 95/98/ME *shudder*) and OS X (Apple? BSD based?!) would be like as well.
For bei
Re:Linus wasn't optimistic (Score:5, Interesting)
slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Linux Journal: Ken Thompson was once asked, if he had the chance to do it all again, what changes would he make in Unix. He said he would add an e to the creat system call.
How about you and Linux?
Linus: Well, Considering how well it has turned out, I really can't say something went wrong: I have done a few design mistakes, and most often those have required re-writing code (sometimes only a bit, sometimes large chunks) to correct for them, but that can't be avoided when you don't really know all the problems
If it's something I have problems with, it's usually the interface between user-level programs and the kernel: kernel-kernel relations I can fix easily in one place, but when I notice that the design of a system call is bad, changing that is rather harder, and mostly involves adding a new system call which has semantics that are the superset of the old and then leaving in a compatibility-hack so that the old calls still work. Ugly, and I avoid it unless it really has to be done.
Right now I'd actually prefer to change the semantics of the and write() system calls subtly, but the gains aren't really worth the trouble.
Linux Journal: The most consistent compliment that Linux receives is its stability on Intel PC computers. This is particularly true compared to ``real Unices'' that have been ported to the Intel platform.
What do you see that was done right in Linux that is causing problems for these other PC Unices?
Linus: There are probably a couple of reasons. One is simply the design, which is rather simple, and naturally suits the PC architecture rather well. That makes many things easier. I'd suspect that the other reason is due to rather stable drivers: PC hardware is truly horrendous in that there are lots of different manufacturers, and not all of them do things the same (or even according to specs).
That results in major problems for anybody who needs to write a driver that works on different systems, but in the case of linux this is at least partially solved by reasonably direct access to a large number of different machines. The development cycle of linux helps find these hardware problems: with many small incremental releases, it's much easier to find out exactly what piece of code breaks/fixes some hardware. Other distributions (commercial or the BSD 386-project which uses a different release schedule) have more problems in finding out why something doesn't work on a few machines even though it seems to work on all the others.
Linux Journal: Have you heard of any problems running Linux on the Pentium chip? Do you expect any?
Linus: I know from a number of reports that it works, and that the boot-up detection routines even identify the chip as a Pentium ("uname -a" will give "i586" with reasonably new kls, as I ignore Intel guidelines about the name). The problems are not likely to occur due to the actual processor itself, as much as with the surrounding hardware: with a Pentium chip, manufacturers are much more likely to use more exotic hardware controllers for better performance, and the drivers for them all won't necessarily exist for linux yet. So I've had a few reports of a Pentium PCI machine working fine, but that the kernel then doesn't recognize the SCSI hard disk, for example.
From a performance viewpoint, the current gcc compiler isn't able to do Pentium-specific optimizations, so sadly linux won't be able to take full advantage of the processor right now. I don't know when gcc will have Pentium-optimization support, but I expect it will come eventually (most of the logic for it should already be there, as gcc can already handle similar optimization problems for other complex processors).
One interesting thing is that the "bogo-mips" loop I use to calibrat
Re:slashdotted (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't. Pretty much every country in the world says the Lin in Linus like the Fin in Finland. It's just the US had Snoopy for a while, and hey, if it's on TV it must be right. Right?
Seriously... (Score:3, Funny)
swear count (Score:3, Funny)
Happy 10th Birthday, Linuxjournal! (Score:5, Funny)
Our work is done here
Ab Fab (Score:2)
You just made me think of that scene from Absolutely Fabulous... when it's Edinas 40th birthday and she blows out the lit candles with a fire extinguisher (and the cake goes with it too).
On a seperate note, I loved question in the article asking Linus if he wanted a free subscription to Linux Journal... oh the irony!
swearing in the source tree (Score:2, Interesting)
i know that when i do coding, i try to make sure that not only the code itself is of high quality, but also that the comments are informative and useful -- not vulgar.
i just think that it's a childish thing to do.
When you write a kernel the world can use... (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus et. al. have created an operating system I have used for over a decade and made over a million dollars using. If they find a little harmless humor or expressive freedom in swearing on occasion in the comments of their code, more power to them.
Saying "this implimentation if f*cked and needs fixed" is (in context) informative even if it is vulgar, and, quite frankly, it is their code, not Disney's (or $CO's).
i know that when i do coding, i try to make sure that not only the code itself is of high quality, but also that the comments are informative and useful -- not vulgar.
i just think that it's a childish thing to do.
It is no more childish than chiding someone who has put countless hours of hard work in for your benefit because their linguistic aesthetic differs from yours.
Re:When you write a kernel the world can use... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:When you write a kernel the world can use... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:swearing in the source tree (Score:5, Insightful)
Another argument is that the rumours (I didn't read the code myself) that flew around when the Windows code got out were that there was rampant profanity in it as well. This isn't to say that it's ok to do because Microsoft does it, just that it's probably nearly universal to swear in comments about broken hardware/software/whatever and the difficulties associated with working around it.
Honestly, I'd be worried about software that didn't have profanity in the comments. Mostly I'd assume the authors either trusted the documentation about everything (in which case it won't work) or just avoided completely doing the hard work (in which case it's a useless academic project) or perhaps just don't have a sense of humour (in which case I feel bad for them).
sco's crap (Score:5, Funny)
End of the road for x86? (Score:5, Interesting)
They asked Linus this question in 1994. And are we all using Amigas and DEC Alphas? Nope. I wonder what assumptions that we're making these days (x86_64 will take over the desktop, Microsoft will keep losing market share to Linux, Slashdot will eventually get redesigned, etc.) will end up being dead wrong, and funny when you look back. Maybe all of the above ...
Re:End of the road for x86? (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'm not putting any money on this.
Re:End of the road for x86? (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, only geeks will be using desktop computers like we know them. Everyone else will be on a dumb terminal to a mainframe, or a computer that in knitted into some other product (like your stereo or your car.) Data plugs are going to be as common as electrical plugs (in some buildings they already are.) Indeed, I see a convergence of the two for small appliances.
A quasi-religious organization will spring up around technology. In that theology geeks are the clergy, who are here to introduce the common man to "the clue."
The US Economy will shift to a socialist system. The socialism will create an entitlement to heath, education, even public transit. The private sector, no longer having to pay for these things, will suddenly realize they can hire a lot more people. People realize they can work for a lot less money. Well, at least following the meltdown of housing prices during the real-estate crash of 2009.
Re:End of the road for x86? (Score:3, Funny)
bow before me, for I am root.
Re:End of the road for x86? (Score:3, Interesting)
1) A plethora of CPU architectures (MIPS, SPARC, PowerPC, and Alpha) would replace x86, and compete against each other.
2) We'd have fully document-oriented interfaces thanks to technologies like SOM and OpenDoc.
3) We'd be running fully object-oriented microkernels built in C++ (Taligent).
Yet, the up-and-coming technologies of today are: a rehash of the 8086 (x86-64), a rehash of UNIX (Linux), and fucking *Java*...
Linux (Score:5, Informative)
It's quite amusing to consider how far Linus' operating system has come, how big it has become - to the point of challenging the multi-billion dollar corporations - when you think that at the start, Linus himself had said Linux wouldn't "be big and professional like gnu". Or to quote the original USENET post [google.com]:
Heh.Re:Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
another gem (Score:5, Funny)
>adam@flammulated.owlnet.rice.edu (Adam Justin Thornton) writes:
>> I'm frustrated because I'm too cheap to buy a decent OS for my 386 and GNU OS
>> isn't out yet and I have to run this silly little loader called MSDOS.
>
>Well, check out comp.os.minix. As the Arch-OS/2 fiend Peter Busser has informed
>me, there's a 386 kernel called linux under development in Finland. You need
>MINIX to bring it up, though.
Happily this isn't true any more (needing minix, that is). Linux
be used without minix, but it's not a tool for a user yet. Hacker-
material (ie I've got gcc, uemacs etc, but no real utils). Wait for
Hurd if you want something real. It's fun hacking it, though (but I'm
biased).
Linus "finger me for more info" Torvalds
(torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
---------
Hehe, I wonder if he is still waiting for Hurd to do something real.
Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Direction (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not a problem with Linux per se. It is a problem with the culture. The Geeks [mithuro.com] spend too much time trying to show non-Geeks how uncool using Windows is, instead of trying to spread gospel, so to speak.
Today, the schism between these two classes is so great one views the other with hostility and mistrust. This is not how a society should evolve.
What should be done in the next ten years?
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember the DVD authoring article of yesterday? One dood got his +5 informative for a longwinded explanation of how to do it, which involved about a dozen complicated command lines to type.
Try to explain to anyone other than a linux zealot how that's superior to the two or three mouse clicks it would take to produce with Ulead MediaStudio, or Adobe Encore (the first of which shipped with my burner anyways).
Security, sure, reliability - arguably - I've had linux crap out pl
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:4, Interesting)
I propose saying how free linux is and that that is what makes the big difference at the end of the day in how it is good as a system and in how it is good as a community.
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think your average user cares about this? Chances are he's running a pirated copy of Windows already, so he could care less whether or not it's free, and certainly won't bother to make the gratis/libre or beer/speech distinction since he simply doesn't care. What matters is the software support, and whether or not he can quickly and easily perform all of the tasks he's used to on Windows. What also matters is the hardware support, and the guarantee that the TV tuner card he just bought for $20 after rebate at Best Buy works properly with his operating system.
Of course, the issue with a lot of Linux evangelists is that they fail to realize how Windows is good enough for most people, that people are extremely stubborn, and will only change when forced to. My aunt Kathy doesn't care that Linux is made by a team of volunteers all around the world, or that Gnome and KDE offer many superior features to Windows. She cares that she can hop onto overpriced and under-featured America Online garbage and check her email. This is true of the majority of computer users, not the minority of dumb ones.
You can preach about free software all you want, but in the end, does it get the job done? And is it enough of an improvement to get people to give up what they've been using for years and learn an entirely new system?
There is absolutely no doubt that the Linux community has come a tremendous distance even in the last year or so. But we need to fucking work and work and work at improving the quality of the software, and drivers, if it's going to gain any mass-market acceptance. We're not done yet.
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:3, Interesting)
No one cares how "free" Linux is aside from people like us. Windows is free to normal people because it comes with the computer. But I do tell people how bad Windows is. Its probably the 2nd worse OS I've used, next to DOS (if you can count that as an OS). And I'm not picking those because they are from the same company, I'm saying i
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:5, Interesting)
The Geeks spend too much time trying to show non-Geeks how uncool using Windows is
[flame]Geeks are annoying. Most people only want to deal with them when something is broken. Most people don't like being preached to.[/flame]
(And yes, you can be both a UNIX guru and a non-geek.)
Understand that Linux is superior to Windows
By any sane/balanced person's standards, Linux is not categorically superior to Windows, sorry.
Linux may be simpler and speedier in many situations, but loses to Windows badly in the terms of: available software for the masses, gaming, video work, 3D design, drafting/CAD, audio work.
Simply put, Linux isn't the right thing for everyone, or perhaps even most people (for other than economical reasons). Recommending Linux to people who are better off using Windows or OS X is going to piss these people off and make them have a very unfavorable view of Linux, justified or not.
Stop saying how bad windows is
Quite some contradictory statements you've made there. You might want to rethink things.
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite some contradictory statements you've made there. You might want to rethink things.
Nothing contradictory there. Even if you argue that Windows is good, you can also argue that Linux is better. In any case, and in my opinion, it's much better to talk <fill in the blank> up than to talk <fill in the blank differently> down. Think of it in terms of talking about your girl friend, or your religion, or your car. Nobody minds if you think you have a hot girl frien
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux would benefit more if people would look at it as simply an OPERATING system, rather than a (religious) BELIEF system.
There's a reason why Linus has consistently distanced himself from the zealots; they don't represent his personal vision/goal of Linux.
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:3, Funny)
In the name of the Kernel, and the Module and the Holy Source, Amen.
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux didn't create those classes. I notice the same classes when it comes to many other things: fixing things around the house, working on cars, making things in a wood shop, etc.
It looks to me like there is a growing class of poeple out there that want everything handed to them on a silver platter sans any sense of understanding.
Today, the schism between these two classes is so great one views the other with hostility and mis
Re:Linux Has Travelled Far... In The Wrong Directi (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I vaguely agree with the sentiment you and the grandparent poster expressed. Yes, there are some vocal zealots in the Linux camp who do more harm to their cause than good. But being a nerd/geek/whatever you should look past the ideology and concentrate on the geeky aspects: it's powerful, it's educational, and it's free.
Don't forget FreeBSD is 10 yrs old now too.... (Score:2, Informative)
Stupid Question That Google Could Probably Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Cool, I have occasionally wondered how old the free BSD's were, because I first learned of Linux when trying to learn Unix to help my chances of getting a particular job back in 1994. (I got it, by the way.) I had a couple of "UNIX emulators" which were really just simulators to learn the commands. Linux was the only free real-life Unix I found. At the time I thought BSD was for pay only. I didn't expect much when I downloaded Linux, but after tr
Re:Stupid Question That Google Could Probably Answ (Score:3, Interesting)
I found it fascinating (Score:5, Funny)
It's nice to know that 10 years later, he probably still hasn't gone through that entire cache of toilet paper.
Re:I found it fascinating (Score:3, Funny)
For those of you who missed the SCO part in the story, here it is again:
Then there are various interesting projects going on that I'd be very interested to see: [...] i386 SysV binary compatibility (already in early stages of testing)"
Swear Counts in XP (Score:4, Funny)
1992 interview with Linus (Score:2, Interesting)
Linus: "I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed as much when things stabilize." 8-)
Interviewed by Bob Young (Score:3, Interesting)
My favorite question in the interview... (Score:3, Funny)
And that end is in sight now, right guys?
Guys?
-Chris
binary compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I for one... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Next ten years (Score:2, Interesting)
(I think I'm kidding, but if Linux is running as much of the world's infrastructure as I think it will be in 2014, then maybe this is a realistic prediction...)
Re:Next ten years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Next ten years (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the most memorable parts of that evening was when my Linux NFS [Network File System] server died, to the point that the console seemed completely dead (the load of all those Doom WAD files obviously got to it). I was about to press reset when Linus stepped in and said he wanted to work out why it had crashed, so he could fix it. I then watched in complete amazement as Linus exploited a remote file truncation bug he knew about in the NFS server I was running which allowed him to peek into the proc filesystem on the apparently dead server and work out enough to find the bug. Up till then I had considered myself to be a pretty good programmer, and quite good at debugging system crashes, but that incident taught me that I would always be an also-ran who just isn't in the same league as people like Linus.
I think that Linus's achievements definitely make him a world treasure. But that's just my opinion, and you are most certainly entitled to your own.
Linus, the manager (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. He has done an outstanding job of managing the dev process for Linux. One of the most valuable things he does is to say "no": he won't let Linux bloat up needlessly and he won't accept badly-written patches. He has a vision for the kernel that has turned out to be excellent; he ignored the prevailing wisdom of the day that microkernel was the way to go, and that worked out (look where HURD is compared to Linux), he pushes at all times for simplicity (consider his interactivity boost, consider his plans to replace numeric IOCTLs with file-like semantics).
He's not perfect. His continuing refusal to accept kernel debugger hooks in the mainline kernel is silly (he has claimed that kernel debuggers are a crutch, for those who don't fully grok the kernel).
But without Linus, the Linux kernel would not be as amazingly great as it is today.
steveha
Re:Next ten years (Score:4, Insightful)
1) What code goes into the official kernel
2) What direction it takes
Stuff that Linus thinks sucks or isn't ready doesn't go in. Yes, Linus deferrs much of this to his "liutennants", and yes, there are other forks of the kernel tree, but most of them try to stay in line with Linus' tree. There are no true splits that have any momentum behind them, like in the BSD's. Every other popular tree is the Linus tree +/- some patches. And Linus, even if only as a figurehead, keeps this together because of the amount of respect the community has for him. He didn't write every line of code, but he defined, and still continues to define, what Linux is.
Re:Jesus Christ, slashdotters. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:10 years (Score:2)
And I disagree that GNU/Linux systems haven't improved. They support a lot more devices, are a lot more stable, and are generally faster and have better desktop software available. I'm writing this using Mozilla Fire
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A new religion (Score:5, Funny)
"A new religion that'll bring Bill to his knees
Black Penguin, if you please..."
Re:M$ contribution to Society (Score:3, Insightful)
Etc. Its amazing what the Windows computing culture has done to people.