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Happy 13th Birthday Linux! 322

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-lucky-on dept.
carlmenezes writes "On August 25, 2001 we celebrated the 10th birthday of Linux. Today, it's year 13. Lucky for Linux, maybe?" Congrats to everyone who managed to get their name in the credits! You must be very proud parents.
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Happy 13th Birthday Linux! More

Happy 13th Birthday Linux!

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  • puberty (Score:4, Funny)

    by nuggetman ( 242645 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:06AM (#10066969) Homepage
    soon its voice will be cracking and hair will be apearing in places it never appeared befeore

  • My Experience with the Linux (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think
    I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community
    at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source
    based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing
    as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying
    technology.

    I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to
    back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult
    for, we wanted to integra

    • Re:My Experience with the Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KrisCowboy ( 776288 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:16AM (#10067088) Journal
      Woooow buddy. Here in India, we consider it a bad practise and disrespectful to insult someone on their birthday :) So you a VB programmer, huh? To quote ESR,
      Visual Basic is especially awful. Like other Basics it's a poorly-designed language that will teach you bad programming habits. No, don't ask me to describe them in detail; that explanation would fill a book. Learn a well-designed language instead.

      So the Linux server crashed, huh? That's a pretty lame excuse. I'm a part-time administator for a server running httpd, file-sharing, DNS and squid. And the uptime is 55 days and still running. Come on buddy, see what we got here :)

      Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc,

      Well well well, what age are you in? What are ext3 and reiferfs? No SMP support? My server is a IBM Xeon Dual processor with hyper-threading. however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
      You got to be kidding me.
      Note to self: Alter the companies for which this anonymous coward does consulting.

    • Re:My Experience with the Linux (Score:5, Informative)

      by rben ( 542324 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:37AM (#10067294) Homepage
      I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology. ... I have evidence to back it up!

      No, you have a story, that's not evidence. Besides, most of what you say here is wrong either because you are uninformed or deliberately spreading misinformation.

      We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop

      Many of my friends now use Linux as their desktop operating system. I also use Linux as my desktop OS when I'm not playing games. Walmart has started selling Linux equipped PCs which are selling fairly well. The fact is that for the average PC user, Linux will work just fine. There will be a learning curve, but that would be true of any new technology.

      After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it.

      Given that so many others have been running Bind and Apache for many years without substantial problems, I'd have to say that you probably misconfigured your system.

      The "weekend volunteers" that you refer to are some of the finest programmers in the world or the code that they have written is comparable with that written by the best. If they weren't, the code they wrote would not get past the peer reviews and into these popular open source projects. The people who write code for Open Source projects are often the same people who write for the large software development companies. The difference is that they write Open Source code out of love for the work and the project, and the respect of their peers.

      While MS might have a "full development team" working on some projects, I doubt they have a full team working on any mature product that isn't undergoing constant new development. What resources they have are devoted to adding marketable features that will bring in additional sales, not necessarily reworking the code in pursuit of engineering excellence.

      Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability.

      Again you have demonstrated that you are badly misinformed about Linux. The 2.6 Kernel does in fact have SMP support. There are at least 3 journeling file systems that I can think of off the top of my head, ext3, jfs, and rieserfs.

      As for being based on "old technology", Linux has caught up and passed MS. Linux now often incorporates new standards and technologies before the large software companies can even get them on the planning schedule. Linux developers have already put in place buffer overflow protection stipulated by new security standards that Microsoft has endorsed but has been unable to implement to-date. Microsoft hasn't even been able to finish and release it's new security patch, SP2 on-time, leaving millions of PC users vulnerable to viruses, trojans, and other malware. It is truely hard to appreciate just what it means to have thousands of people working on a single project and contributing their enthusiasm and expertise.

      There are many places where you can get help on configuring Linux machines. It appears, based on your posting, that you went about it by yourself without much knowledge of Linux. Had you looked for help, I believe you would have had far different results. I suggest you check out The Linux Documentation Project [tldp.org], my own site [raybenjamin.com] which is aimed at new Linux users moving over from Windows, and A How To Get Linux HOWTO [raybenjamin.com] that I have been working on. Perhaps you'll find that your experience changes when you work with the community rather than on your own.

      • The fact is that for the average PC user, Linux will work just fine. There will be a learning curve, but that would be true of any new technology.

        Linux is just fine for a desktop as long as the user doesn't have to set it up or administer it.
    • Dude! That was history. (rest /. 's read as trolling of him)

      Today linux offer all of the sutff you mentioned earlier.

      At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult....were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.

      Just look at the sites like google.com, slahsdot.org; I am sure they supports more than 5000+ user less than second without any panic.In one of my past experience (RH 7.2 box) ProFTPD server daily servers more

    • Re:My Experience with the Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mr_z_beeblebrox ( 591077 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:44AM (#10067369) Journal
      we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool.

      Which version is that? Did you remember to send in your 15$
      I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming.

      Then you should know that 'technically' VB is not kernel level programming. I think the reason that you failed so amazingly in your project is you put no forethought into it. Yes, the Win 2K servers can handle a decent load (albeit insecurely) and they are so simple to run that even an MCSE can set them up (I have an old MCSE cert so that is not a flame, I know the ed level needed for that and abandoned it long ago). However, the Linux servers are enterprise unix boxes and Apache can run circles around IIS. I hope that fortune 5000 company realizes that you were the problem.
      but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.

      Were that the case I would choose to use paper based data processing.

    • Re:My Experience with the Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tigerc ( 628630 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:52AM (#10067442)
      Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it.
      Uh huh. That's why a majority of the world's web servers run Apache. here [netcraft.com] These developers are hardly "weekend hackers", but devoted people. Read this [apache.org]

      As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
      So that's why Google and Amazon, for example, run Linux? [netcraft.com]
    • Granted,
      Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in
      their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full
      fledged development team devoted to it.

      I guess we'd better call Google and let them know. Linux can't hack it. While we're at it lets call Amazon.com and let them know. For a product that is not professional it continues to be far and away the most popular Web server on the net. [netcraft.com] I'm sorry to burst your bubble but Microsoft has lost the web server war. It will conti

  • Closed party (Score:5, Funny)

    by tcdk ( 173945 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:08AM (#10066991) Homepage Journal
    So I click "Read More" and get a

    Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

    ...message. Inviting people to a birthday party and they not letring them in the door...

    That's just rude...

  • it's teenage years (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:08AM (#10066994)
    when the child genius starts getting distracted and all rebelious.

    linus: what are you rebeling against?

    tux: whadda ya got?

  • Little boy is growing up. (Score:4, Funny)

    by The I Shing ( 700142 ) * on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:08AM (#10066995) Journal
    Linux is 13? Pretty soon it's going to start liking girls, [sniff] and then before you know it you're handing over the car keys and telling it to please be careful. (oops, I've assigned the male gender to an operating system... all the girls who read Slashdot will be mad at me... all three of them...)

  • Linux a Teen? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Manip ( 656104 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:08AM (#10066996)
    Oh woot, we've had 10years of calm quiet Linux and now we get 5 of teen Linux.. moody and depressed. :-/

    I for one can't wait until Linux reaches maturity on its 18th.

    PS I bet Linux will get more girls fiddling with it than I did as a teen.. UHH even than I do currently :'(
    • In 8 years Linus is going to make a huge gamble and try to overthrow Microsoft by betting against them in craps.
    • now we get 5 [years] of teen Linux.. moody and depressed.

      Linux will grow out of it. We just need to speak out against Clippy Suicide [maythestarshine.com].

    • Maybe not more but at least as many!

    • Re:Linux a Teen? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      I for one can't wait until Linux reaches maturity on its 18th.

      please, show me one 18 year old that has maturity...

      drinking like everything's a wild party.. no sense of reality..

      call me when it's made it through 4 years of college, 3 of which it had to pay for because mom and adad got pissed and pulled all their funding in the first year because linux was doing nothing but partying all the time at college and getting bad grades.

      more is learned by the kids that get slapped with the reality of having to

  • This is TH and I pronounce Linux as... (Score:3, Funny)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:08AM (#10067001) Homepage Journal
    It was thirteen years ago today
    Col. Torvalds let the source away.
    We've been going in and out of drives
    but we guarantee to raise uptimes.

    So may I introduce to you
    the hack you've known for all these years
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!

    We're Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band,
    we hope you will enjoy the code.
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band,
    just hack and let the evening go!

    Col. Torvalds' Linux
    Col. Torvalds' Linux
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!

    It's wonderful to post here,
    it's certainly no troll.
    You're such a loyal userbase,
    we'd like to merge your code with us,
    we'd love to grep your /home.

    I don't really want to freeze the code,
    but I thought you might like to know
    this release is going to fix the root
    and we want you all to patch for good.

    So let me introduce to you
    the one and only Billy's fear
    Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU Band!

  • And that is why... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gunfighter ( 1944 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:10AM (#10067012)
    ... I got married on the 10th birthday of Linux. That way my anniversary would be easy to remember.

    By the way honey, if you're reading this... Happy Anniversary.

  • Tredecaphobia .. The amount of years before they realized that the light at the end of the tunnel WAS the headlamp of an oncoming express train ..

    Congratulations to all the Kernel Folks !! and to the Creator - Linus


  • I hope it doesn't become a petulant and rebellious teenager - sleeping late, making people wait, grumbling about garbage collection, exploring promiscuous mode, ignoring quotas, etc.

    /"Excuse me, I seem to have the plague" - E. Izzard

  • A happy birthday cake... (Score:3, Funny)

    by derphilipp ( 745164 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:12AM (#10067047) Homepage
    ..leftover from the sysadminday: http://www.pweissmann.de/kuchen.jpg [pweissmann.de]
    (A blackberry cake I made, a really simple recipe).

    Happy Birthday Linux !

  • Only 13?!?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SirStanley ( 95545 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:13AM (#10067054) Homepage
    I feel kinda creepy for having to fsck my linux partition now.

  • First words (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hotspotbloc ( 767418 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:14AM (#10067065) Homepage Journal
    "Hello everybody out there using minux - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professinal like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones." - Linus Torvalds, August 25, 2001

    Does anyone have a link or the text to the complete accouncement email?

    • Re:First words (Score:2, Informative)

      by md81544 ( 619625 )
      Er... that would be 1991...

    • Re:First words (Score:3, Informative)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )
      Google [google.com]?

    • original post (Score:2, Informative)

      by Errtu76 ( 776778 )
      Message-ID: 1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.helsinki.fi
      From: torvalds@klaava.helsinki.fi (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
      To: Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
      Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
      Summary: small poll for my new operating system

      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 mini

    • Re:First words (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mqRakkis ( 521550 ) <rnurminenNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:25AM (#10067192) Homepage
      From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
      Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
      Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
      Summary: small poll for my new operating system
      Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
      Dat e: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
      Organization: University of Helsinki

      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 :-(.
    • Slightly earlier: the conception.

      Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be nice.

      -- Linus Benedict Torvalds, July 3, 1991

      What could this project have been, for which Linus wanted to know detailed information about the POSIX standard?

    • Thanks to pjt33 [slashdot.org] for the answer:

      From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
      Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
      Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
      Summary: small poll for my new operating system
      Message-ID: Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
      Organization: University of Helsinki

      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

    • Pregnant (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hieronymus Howard ( 215725 ) * on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @10:21AM (#10067719)
      So today is not Linux's 13th birthday. It's actually the 13th anniversary of Linus announcing that he was pregnant. The date of the first public release of the code should be the actual birthday.

      As someone mentioned earlier, Linux 0.01 was released on Sept. 17, 1991

  • Who cares about getting their name in the credits. I want my name on the IPO. :-)

  • happy birthday! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sometwo ( 53041 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:19AM (#10067110)
    Here's a special birthday package [debian.org]

  • Google Doodle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by r.jimenezz ( 737542 ) <rjimenezh@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:24AM (#10067175)
    Too bad the Google Doodle is taken up for a couple of weeks with the Olympics, otherwise Google should put up a penguin there to acknowledge this milestone.

  • Come on... (Score:4, Funny)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <[stevehenderson] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:27AM (#10067195)
    Come on, Linux...just tell me you're 18. I'm dying to install you on my computers any play with you all night long

  • Still took ten years (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ToasterTester ( 95180 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:27AM (#10067200)
    I remember ten years ago read an article about developing a OS. It quoted Bill Gates on why there is so little competition. The gist of his answer is first the cost is too high for most companies to want to take on. Second he said to get to market then have the product mature takes about ten years. So Linux beat the cost factor, but not the time factor.
    • Many people think that Apache was the "killer app" for Linux, and Apache 1.0 was released in december 1995. So, in one or two years the Linux market will mature and we will see if it will eventually surpass Windows or if it will be and underdog, with something like 20% or 30% market share on servers.

      For desktops Linux is very distant from maturity. Open Office 1.0 and Mozilla 1.0 were released recently, and without them the Linux desktop was a free OS with proprietary apps, an unstable mixture.

  • crap... (Score:2, Funny)

    by blueforce ( 192332 )
    root$ uptime
    5477 days, 13 hours, 27 minutes

    huh?

    root$ uname
    Solaris 4.03c

    Where do I get this Linux thing?

    • root$ uptime
      102342342323423 days, 26 hours, 87 minutes

      huh?

      root$ uname
      teh Windows xp sp3 l33t alpha-beta 666

      Wow! I can make up numbers too!
      • Wow! I can make up numbers too!

        Thank you captain obvious.

        Ok, ok... so my attempt at humor was pretty weak with that first post - I'll concede that.

        Always a cynic in the crowd.
      • 281,160,281,108.30494505494505494505 years?

        I dont get it?
        The Big bang was only 15,000,000,000 years ago. I suggest that you recalculate, watching your decimal points.

  • Nah ah! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nicholas Evans ( 731773 ) <OwlManAtt@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:28AM (#10067216) Homepage
    According to Linus' book, Linux 0.01 was released on Sept. 17, 1991. (Second to last line, Page 87, Just for Fun). So today isn't the birthday. :(
  • that Linux will go into a rebellious period, wear goth punk hair, chains, and all black?
    Linux rebellious? Oh wait...

  • song (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) * on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:34AM (#10067257) Homepage
    /me sings:

    Happy Birthday to you,
    You live in the zoo,
    You look like a penguin,
    and you smell like one too! :)

    Happy 13th Linux!

    T.
  • Reading the Linux is obsolete [anart.no] story they talk about Rick Rashid being on the free software side. Is is the same Rick Rashid that works at Microsoft [microsoft.com]?

  • That's really cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Slashdolt ( 518657 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:39AM (#10067318) Homepage
    because today is my birthday, seriously (29). I had no idea I shared my birthday with Linux.

  • I thought it was on Sept 17th? Isn't that when the post about it went out?

    That sucks, we were planning on opening our Linux Support business here in Bloomington, IN on Sept 17th. Oh well, we'll still open then, it will just be our opening day.

  • Haiku 3rd Birthday too... (Score:3, Informative)

    by technix4beos ( 471838 ) * <cshaiku@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:53AM (#10067445) Homepage Journal
    Speaking of Birthdays...

    The Haiku project recently turned 3 years old. Several websites [osnews.com] have covered [haikunews.org] the nice letter [haiku-os.org] Michael Phipps wrote to the community.

    Happy birthday Linux, naturally... Without all of the hard work in regular Open Source projects, I doubt there would have been half as much motivation for our small projects, in another timeline. (You know, the evil timeline where Billy G is president of the US of A. :)

    Cheers!

  • Congrats... (Score:3, Funny)

    by fudgefactor7 ( 581449 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2004 @09:58AM (#10067507)
    ...you are now an awkward teen.

    Now, stay the hell out of my pr0n.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • And today would be the 16th anniversary of the day I lost my virginity. w00t!.
  • It's Bar Mitzvah time. You're a man, now, Linux.
  • Aw...Tux and I have the same birthday...granted, it's my 21st, so I think I have a little more to be happy about tonight... I'll raise a toast to you, Tux!

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