Linux 3.17-rc2 Release Marks 23 Years of the Linux Kernel 106
An anonymous reader writes Linus Torvalds released Linux 3.17-rc2 today in commemoration of the 23rd anniversary of the original kernel announcement. It was on 25 August 1991 that he announced his new OS project to the Minix users list.
So, 23 years ago he was trolling (Score:1, Insightful)
Posting in an incorrect listserv about his new OS. Good work, Linux, on 23 years of hardcore trolling.
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Furthermore, in the very first reply, somebody is already trying to port linux (to an amiga)
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Re:So, 23 years ago he was trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
"Wow, time flies! Soon it will be the 20th anniversary of Linux on the Desktop Year."
You think you're funny but I first had Linux as my desktop in 1995 and shortly after I was one of the founding members of our university Linux User Group.
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Ever stop to think that maybe it was just a simple statement of fact and not meant to take all credit for being the first goddam person to get a Linux desktop install working? Chill out.
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in the timezone about 1995-1996 linux had better drivers and more drivers than windows 95. I ran linux on desktop back then because it was better in almost every possible way!
isdn worked pretty much "out of the box"(out of the stack of cd's bought from local pc shop).
graphics cards worked just fine. when 3dfx voodoo came out, it worked on linux just fine. soundcards worked just fine. you could run bigger virtual desktops than on windows with ease. friggin realmedia released software at the same time for lin
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in the timezone about 1995-1996 linux had better drivers and more drivers than windows 95..
So a 3 year old OS had more drivers than a 3 month old OS, big surprise there. Newsflash, at that stage, DOS had more drivers than Win95.
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Ok, but then let's consider the fact that in 2002 you could install the powerpc port of linux on a powerbook and have everything, gigabit ethernet, 3d, wireless, sound, firewire, working with open source drivers (the modem required a blob). While now you have trouble with firmware, drivers, boot process, even finding the keys to boot into bios/uefi mode. No I am not talking about the crypto keys, the KEYBOARD keys are not so well documented for new laptops.
In other words, if hardware makers hadn't all these
"just a hobby, won't be big and professional like (Score:4, Insightful)
A Fat and Bloated 23! (Score:1)
Like many of us it needs work at trimming down its size. So take it easy on the birthday cake etc.
(Before moderators get all wound up, Linus has been saying it himsellf for years.)
Hail Eris (Score:4, Funny)
Hail Discordia.
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The Law of Fives is a hoax. Hail Eris!
Well we can tell it's legal to drink (Score:1)
In the US anyway.
I started in on Linux a year later after buying my first 386-40(?) system and wondering what I'd install on it. Wound up with Linux after trying OS/2 and kinda avoiding the *BSDs because that just looked like a cluster----. Got a small stack of floppies and my career from there was set.
I've done a lot in that time - three books, two computer-based training CDs, lots of work on the LDP, was at Red Hat going for my RHCE the day they had their IPO, worked for VA Linux, designed and ran rathe
Oh Lord (Score:3)
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*looks around*
Are you sure it didn't?
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Kinda amazing (Score:2)
"won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones."
"It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks"
Yet it runs on about 80% of all cell phones, runs on routers, servers, even on my orange iMac (G3)
Give that man many thanks...
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Red Hat used to hand out a poster with the complete Linux 0.01 source code, at trade fairs etc. It's pretty neat.
Synclair QL (Score:2)
at that point of time, Linus Torvalds was already used to constantly have to fix things himself and write the software he needed for the buggy and ill-supported Spectrum QL of his youth. Linux was far from his first project and he had a good experience in writing code at that time.
23 Years of LINUX (Score:2)
Year of the Linux desktop!?
Sorry, just had to post that.
Thank God for open source LINUX.
Seriously.
I would be running a chain of Indian Restaurants long ago if the only thing I was doing was product management of Wind0ze machines.
LINUS thanks for the greatest occupation anyone could want: LINUX Admin/LINUX Programmer.
PS: I need to buy LINUS something, but what do you do for a man that has all the source code? MMMmmmm....
Poll idea (Score:1)
How many years have you been using Linux:
1-5 Years
6-10 years
11-15 years
15-20 years
I am Linus!
FWIW: I started back in 1993! 21 years, back in the pre-1.0 versions!
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I started in 1999 with Red Hat 6.
Looking at the replies, I'd say that during the change of millennium Linux had one of it's biggest breakthroughs.
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I started in 1999 with Red Hat 6.
Me too :D And now for the obligatory shameless plug [iki.fi].
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I had some pre-1.0 versions, but no internet connection. The first version I really used was 1.0.8 -nli one via the university 128kBit link. Luckily that got better soon afterwards.
And later I was really excited about KDE 1.0. I think it had many good ideas and was quite nice to use, if a bit RAM hungry. Unfortunately many of those nice ideas got removed in KDE 2.0 :-(
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0.99p30, IIRC
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Ah, that would be 0.99p13, I know there was a gap there somewhere.
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22 years give or take, started with SLS, can't remember which version probably older than this one ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/hist... [ibiblio.org] as I can vaguely remember kernel 0.97 but SLS 1.03 has kernel 0.98pl.
FWIW this is the first Linux distro (there are earlier versions but I didn't bother to search) ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/hist... [ibiblio.org]
And the place to get your kernel was ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/linux/ [funet.fi]
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I'm relatively new to linux...only 12 years. It was a Red Hat 6 variant.
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Is this what slashdot is reduced to .. (Score:1)
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Only a wintroll could see criticism of Microsoft in an article marking the release of Linux rev 3.17-rc2
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Re:23 years of being a rounding error (Score:5, Insightful)
After 23 years of consistently having your ass handed to you by Microsoft, you think Linus would have a little more humility. You know your software is complete shit when people willingly shell out hundreds of dollars for a superior product rather than use your product for free.
Ya, windows is winning. Except for the server room. And the tablet and smartphone spaces. And the embedded world. In fact, Linux is kicking windows to the curb pretty much everywhere except the desktop.
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That's because you can buy a 400$ PC at Walmart. (the laptop's gonna break in 2 years, but people don't really care about that since they'll be able to buy a new one)
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Step 1) Learn to speak english
Step 2) Shut the fuck up because what you have to say is stupid regardless of your ability to speak the language.
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Shell out is funny :>
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It has little to do with "indoctrination" of people, but familiarity is something of a factor, of course.
More critically, I think, Microsoft established a very large software ecosystem that Linux was never able to match as a relative late-comer, and catching up was nearly impossible without a critical mass that Windows enjoys. The simple reason people use Windows is because of the massive ecosystem of products available for the platform. Linux has some fine software, but there are many, many times the num
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If it were just about being good software, Lotus, Wordperfect and others would still be around. Make no mistake, if Linux were a regular closed software vendor, it would have become a vague memory long ago.
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If it were just about being good software, Lotus, Wordperfect and others would still be around. Make no mistake, if Linux were a regular closed software vendor, it would have become a vague memory long ago.
You know, I was around during the transition from WordPerfect to Word, and from Lotus 123 to Excel. Both of those products were held back by their legacy DOS codebases, and were extremely slow to transition to Windows, which is where everyone started moving, of course. When they finally did release Windows products, they were horrible. So, no, WordPerfect and 123 just lost out to competitors because they couldn't keep up with advances in technology - simple as that.
I'm not sure what what had to do with L
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Microsoft would have had a way to kill it.
Re: 23 years of being a rounding error (Score:1)
you forgot your sarcasm quotes. because windows is none of that
The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you're just trying to disturb shit with your comment, but you do indirectly bring up a good point: systemd and how it's contrary to everything that UNIX stands for.
Like almost everyone else, I'd heard about it. I heard the complaints, but I didn't take them seriously. Then, almost three weeks ago, I had to install and use Fedora for the first time in a number of years.
Everything negative that people have said about systemd is true. The problems they point out are as real as can be. Binary log files?
Re: The Linux community needs to discuss systemd. (Score:1)
You ignore the benefits like vendor lockin. They kill bsd compatibility with xorg and make it hard to adopt way land. They forgot Linux is a clone.
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Actually, being good at Exchange requires being good at PowerShell these days.
You're not making much sense (Score:2)
Sendmail is historiy just as bind is history. Sendmail uses m4 for it's configuration files (you shouldn't edit the "compiled" stuff), so it's not sendmail that is culprit here. Bind is history because there's powerDNS now. Exim and samba aren't a mess, but they do use "text files" for configuration.
Anyway, they all use a standard, since it's human readable ascii. It may be obscure since there isn't much if anything that uses their format apart from themselves, but it's a standard. You could argue that all
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FUD about systemd is grossly exagerrated. I, myself, migrated to systemd about two weeks ago because I was required to do so (before I learned afterward I could have stick with the openrc scripts stuff) in a migration to Gnome 3, outch! I mean I had a hard time with all these migrations, including GRUB 2.
I really hate the Linux world that very day I manage to migrate. I wasn't able to find what I was accustomed to and do my things the old comfortable way I was used to. However, I must say after two weeks, t
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Binary log files?
Im still not sure I understand the issue here. All data is binary, some of it is simply encoded ASCII in a way that many utilities can parse.
But if you have a better encoding that is widely known and supported, who cares if its not ASCII? mySQL isnt ASCII, but you dont here people blowing their lids that you cant fix a borked mySQL instance with cat and vim.
Point being-- I get that its nice for "cat" to "just work" when your system is hosed, but if theres another utility that all distros have that "just w