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Operating Systems Linux Technology

Happy Birthday, Linux: From a Bedroom Project To Billions of Devices in 30 Years (theregister.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the HBD dept.
On August 25, 1991, Linus Torvalds, then a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, sent a message to the comp.os.minix newsgroup soliciting feature suggestions for a free Unix-like operating system he was developing as a hobby. Thirty years later, that software, now known as Linux, is everywhere. From a report: It dominates the supercomputer world, with 100 per cent market share. According to Google, the Linux kernel is at the heart of more than three billion active devices running Android, the most-used operating system in the world. Linux also powers the vast majority of web-facing servers Netcraft surveyed. It is even used more than Microsoft Windows on Microsoft's own Azure cloud. And then there are the embedded electronics and Internet-of-Things spaces, and other areas.

Linux has failed to gain traction among mainstream desktop users, where it has a market share of about 2.38 per cent, or 3.59 per cent if you include ChromeOS, compared to Windows (73.04 per cent) and macOS (15.43 per cent). But the importance of Linux has more to do with the triumph of an idea: of free, open-source software. "It cannot be overstated how critical Linux is to today's internet ecosystem," Kees Cook, security and Linux kernel engineer at Google, told The Register via email. "Linux currently runs on everything from the smartphone we rely on everyday to the International Space Station. To rely on the internet is to rely on Linux." The next 30 years of Linux, Cook contends, will require the tech industry to work together on security and to provide more resources for maintenance and testing.
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Happy Birthday, Linux: From a Bedroom Project To Billions of Devices in 30 Years More

Happy Birthday, Linux: From a Bedroom Project To Billions of Devices in 30 Years

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  • Linus is the man... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:10PM (#61729301)

    Bill Gates seems to get all the credit in the history of computing but I would suggest that Torvalds has had a far greater impact on computing.

    Android - which runs of the vast majority of mobile devices - is based on Linux.
    The vast majority of the largest websites - Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. - run Linux servers.
    Nearly all IOT devices run Linux.

    Yes, Windows had a big impact in the beginning on getting computers in the hands of home users. But if you look at the landscape today it is clear that the internet runs on Linux.

    • Re:Linus is the man... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:13PM (#61729317)

      Also, Bill Gates is an actual asshole but Linus Torvalds only seems like one sometimes.

      • Not only is Gates an asshole but he is a convicted monopolist. Quite possibly the least trustworthy perspm you could ever meet.

        The worst you could say about Linus is that he is a grumpy curmudgeon. He is demanding but I don't think he is unfair. As the saying goes, if you want to make an omelette you have to crack a few eggs :-)

        • There's no such thing as a "convicted monopolist". Having a monopoly on anything or even multiple things isn't a crime.

          • But... but... monopolies are anathema to capitalist ideals, sure you jest that this isn't considered a crime in our world!

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Reeses ( 5069 )

            There's no such thing as a "convicted monopolist". Having a monopoly on anything or even multiple things isn't a crime.

            I think US Anti-trust laws disagree with you. And some monopolies are illegal. Hence, the validity of the label.

      • Linux only is an asshole if you bother him with nonsensical bullshit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z80a ( 971949 )

        The biggest benefit to computing that Bill Gates did was being an complete asshole to IBM and selling MS-DOS to anyone that paid for it, thus allowing the clone makers to succeed.
        It had nothing to do with bill gates being a good individual in any way, shape or form.

    • Re:Linus is the man... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:20PM (#61729359) Journal

      I'll give Bill Gates his due; he was partly responsible for MS-BASIC, which was until the 1990s the most widely implemented BASIC interpreter out there. If you extend that to QuickBASIC, and the various iterations of VisualBASIC, that's a pretty big impact on empowering a lot of hobbyists to start coding. The first program I ever wrote was on a Commodore 64, running Commodore's version of MS-BASIC, and my early programming was all on Radio Shack Color Computers, again, another MS-BASIC dialect. The first program I ever sold was coded in QuickBASIC 4.5.

      But yes, Linus has had an enormous impact. Linux was, at the time, one of only a very small handful of freely available open source operating systems, and I installed my first copy (Slackware) in 1993; downloading the whole thing at 33.6k modem and copying over to something like 20 1.2mb floppies to install on 486 PC. For a guy that cut his teeth on a Xenix workstation in the early 1990s, Linux was exactly what the doctor ordered. In my house today alone there six devices running some variant of the Linux kernel.

      • Re:Linus is the man... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Xylantiel ( 177496 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @06:30PM (#61730337)
        Yeah, but Gates' success is largely due to his ability to make dirty business deals, not his technical acumen.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          Open-source BASIC was already available. Dialect compatibility and brand naming is mostly what got Gates the business.

      • he was partly responsible for MS-BASIC, which was until the 1990s the most widely implemented BASIC interpreter out there.

        This is NOT something to be proud of, though. Quite the opposite. It means that significantly better implementations didn't get their chance.

        • This is NOT something to be proud of, though. Quite the opposite. It means that significantly better implementations didn't get their chance.

          They did get their chance, there were lots of BASIC implementations out there.

        • Basic probably would have followed Logo into the realms of obscurity hadn't Gates ported it to the Altair 8800. The whole reason everyone learned basic in the 1980s was because Altair had set the template for what a home computer is.

          Ironically the most influential basic of all, Commodore basic, was an example of a business deal where microsoft actually *didnt* get the upper hand, after Jack Tramell armtwisted him out of royalties in exchange for a measley $25K (C64 sold between 12-17 million units , Hundred

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As badly as Windows sucks, it still sucks less than Linux, and that's why Linux only has 2% market share on the desktop, where people need to get actual work done.

      Linux is OK. But its widespread use is not due to any technical superiority. The areas where Linux is widely used is due entirely to Linux being significantly cheaper than Windows

      • On servers, for performance, I'll still go to Linux every time. Powershell is a bloated monster compared to the speed of just about *nix shell you can mention, and you can install a pretty mean and lean Linux server.

      • I'm a developer. Running a Linux setup for (actual) work is virtually mandatory. OK that just makes me part of the 2%.

        That Linux is technically superior is not something I can say, I have no idea, I haven't used an MS OS since XP. It was superior then. I hear MS got better when WSL was introduced.

        • I'd say Windows has improved greatly, probably due to competition engendered by Linux, but I still prefer to work in Linux and to develop cross-platform solutions whenever possible. Much of the time I'm using Windows to access Linux servers and VMs via TeamViewer or RDP. I still develop WPF front ends for Windows systems, but only because frankly I've had trouble keeping up with the plethora of Web frameworks-du-jour. If I knew how to do so productively, I'd be building software using cross-platform, Web

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nyet ( 19118 )

        I get 0% work done on windows machines. 100% of the real work is on linux machines. Literally. Even that desktop crowd relies on Linux to run everything else.

    • Re:Linus is the man... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @03:32PM (#61729713)

      Bill Gates deserves the credit. But as does Linus, for different reasons.

      Bill Gates made computing generally accessible to everyone back when Linux very much required dedicating learning. Why do you think neckbeards are neckbeards, no time to shave digging through the man pages.
      Linus however made fundamental OSes available to anyone.

      Off the back of Linus's work the world has been changed. Off the back of Bill Gate's work the world has been changed. Both of them have a place in history for different reasons.

      • Re:Linus is the man... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @03:47PM (#61729785) Homepage
        I'd give the credit to Intel and Mot for making the hardware cheap enough. Some other company/person would have created an O/S. The hard part at that moment in time was the silicon. I recall helping plotcheck a chip in the early 80's. Before LVS was a thing. Chip design was really hard back then, even for trivial chips like an 8080 in today's world. Didn't IBM have some O/S back then as just one example.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          I'd give the credit to Intel and Mot for making the hardware cheap enough. Some other company/person would have created an O/S. The hard part at that moment in time was the silicon. I recall helping plotcheck a chip in the early 80's. Before LVS was a thing. Chip design was really hard back then, even for trivial chips like an 8080 in today's world. Didn't IBM have some O/S back then as just one example.

          No, Intel and Motorola chips were expensive. What kicked the home PC revolution off was the MOS 6502. Bac

          • Was unaware of the IBM thing. Mot had a 6800 and intel's 8080 were both pretty cheap. The 68000 was expensive, but was a giant leap over the 6800. 68000 was going into workstations, not cheap home pc's. And yes, forgot about mostek. But I'd still argue it was more about the hardware than software. up until a uP, any computer was unaffordable for the home. I don't know how much a PDP was, but they were not inexpensive. And I think DEC's PDP line was probably one of the less expensive mini's.

            • IIRC (it's been a while), the 68000 was a joy to work with because it had a pure 32-bit memory model, no near/far pointers, etc. It failed to dominate only because it was more expensive. We ended up stuck with the x86/64 model ever since and I think it's held things back a lot.

              I ended up working in managed/higher-level languages by the mid-1990s, so it ended up not mattering to me nearly as much as it otherwise might have.

        • Some other company/person would have created an O/S.

          Some other company did. Microsoft didn't create DOS they bought it.

      • Gary Kildall developed CP/M for the 8 bit computer world. He should get a lot of credit, the closest thing to a Linus before Linus. Unfortunately he died young. He upgraded CP/M for the IBM PC when that came out, but IBM chose Bill Gates' DOS instead. And Bill Gates purchased that OS from somebody else because he had heard that IBM was looking around for an OS. There's many stories about that deal, and it's hard to separate truth from fiction.

        I was around back then, and somewhat involved in computers.

        • Maybe it was all just random good luck.

          I don't think it was good or random luck. I honestly think Linux by anyone other than Linus would have struggled. He was part genius and part asshole. Pure Genius doesn't work, pure asshole doesn't work. Being the right mix of both is often how great happens. With Apple, it was Woz (genius) and Jobs (asshole) working together. Amazing things happens when an asshole / genius combo can stick together long enough.

          Just my $.02 worth. Actual value less.

        • my brother homebrewed an 8086 computer,

          Correction, my brother homebrewed an 8080 computer, not an 8086 .
          -Sorry about that

        • > Gary Kildall developed CP/M for the 8 bit computer world. He should get a lot of credit,

          He does. His retarded 8.3 filename schema hold the PC industry back 14 YEARS until Microsoft added long filename support in Windows 95.

          He was fucking clueless about filenames and how people NAME things. My Apple 2 supported 30 character filenames WITH spaces.

          It is the reason we can't have colons in our filenames because MS drank the same stupid Kool-Aid. Filenames are for PEOPLE not machines.

          Linus has changed the

          • And you could say that Linus and Stallman fucked up in a similar way, by retaining Unix's goddamn filesystem hierarchy. It's just not very human-readable. NeXT/Apple was wise to keep that cruft hidden under the hood and let people see something that actually makes sense: applications go in /Applications, user stuff goes in /Users, and so on.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by nagora ( 177841 )

              And you could say that Linus and Stallman fucked up in a similar way, by retaining Unix's goddamn filesystem hierarchy. It's just not very human-readable.

              You're mad.

              NeXT/Apple was wise to keep that cruft hidden under the hood and let people see something that actually makes sense: applications go in /Applications, user stuff goes in /Users, and so on.

              That's not very different from a standard Unix /usr/bin and /home/username split, is it?

              • It's very different, because nothing is named in a descriptive manner. I swear, it's easier to make wrong assumptions than right assumptions.

                How so? You look at usr and think: user, that's where my files go. Or bin: like a trash bin, it must be for deleting stuff. Or opt: options, it must be where programs' preferences are saved. Or media: it's where you can put music and videos. Or dev: it's where you find development tools.

                I understand the rationale of maintaining compatibility with Unix, or that there wa

        • Gary Kildall developed CP/M for the 8 bit computer world.

          A great example of something that almost no one used. He certainly has a place in the history books, but came no where close to impacting the world. But bill gates lucking (if one story is to be believed) his way onto the IBM is not the reason he changed the world. That came long after DOS, during that time computers were still very much some weird techie niche thing. It was the GUI that we all love to hate which actually changed the world.

          I don't think Linus is our savior from Microsoft. Linux very much ru

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shoor ( 33382 )

            I can remember reading an article years back, in which the writer described a scene where someone (maybe the writer himself, don't remember the details) was talking to a group of managers of various companies, and he asked them to raise their hands if they were officially using Linux in the 'back room' as servers for their systems. No one raised a hand. Then if he asked how many thought they had system admins using Linux unofficially in the back room, and quite a few raised their hands.

            The suits were sold

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dargaud ( 518470 )
          CP/M had a LOT of built-in limitations, up to the point that MS-DOS seemed like a godsend after using it for a while.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shoor ( 33382 )

            CP/M was written to run on Intel 8080 based machines, which had an 8 bit data bus and 16 bit address space. MS-DOS was written to run on Intel 8088/86 based machines, which made a big difference. Those 'built-in limitations' were built in to the hardware, and not something CP/M could do much about. Gary Kildall did write a version of CP/M called CP/M 86 to take advantage of the extra power of the 8088/86; that's what would've gone in to the IBM PC. I suppose it did see the light of day, but I don't know

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Bill Gates made computing generally accessible to everyone

        How so? The C-64 probably did that more than MS. MS either copied or purchased the best features from everyone else. I suppose you could argue Office products were fairly integrated for easier sharing of info between them, but it was clunky, and still is. Bundling for a "deal" was MS's main selling point, not innovation.

        • Bill Gates made computing generally accessible to everyone

          How so? The C-64 probably did that more than MS.

          Ahhh yes, that infamous C-64 used throughout corporate America to do everything from design buildings to balancing checkbooks. That C-64 used by receptionists the world over, sending emails to kids in classrooms, and playing an endless array of games. That C-64 which mum and dad use to video chat with with their kids on the other side of the world. /sarcasm

          I'm sorry but were you really comparing the impact of the C-64 to general acceptance and widespread use of computers to Windows? A device that in over 12

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        Bill Gates made computing generally accessible to everyone

        Gates is why the GPL had to be invented. He very definitely did not want "computing" to be accessible to everyone and lobbied for the law to be changed to protect companies' abilities to hold computing back. Which he did.

        Gates is to computing what Christianity was to science.

    • I was using Basic in 1975 at school, it certainly wasn't Microsoft, as far as I recall the version I used it was produced by a company in Reading (UK) who had a Royal Warrant from Prince Phil. at the time. Bad memory.

      Basic pre-dates, by over a decade, Bill Gates.

    • And that's not all... Linus also created git.

  • How about (Score:3)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:14PM (#61729321) Homepage

    I would love some real competition in operating system kernels. We lost some good feedback loops when we would work with the BSD kernel developers in the past

    Above from the article. How about stop writing Linux specific items, Wayland and systemd comes directly to mind on things that are locking-out the BSDs

    • We live in a different world now. I have never heard a modern developer utter the word "portability". I don't think they even know what it means.

      • Usually everything is so easy to integrate that you don't need portability anymore. Application A only runs on platform X, but you need it to work with application B that only runs on platform Y? Easy fix, just build a REST API.

      • Compiling software become so convoluted they had to invent containers.

      • Huh. That is actually a top consideration for me as a software developer at all times.

        Perfect world: I'd like to build a native-like experience that will Just Run anywhere there is a modern browser.

        World I actually live in: we have to support both old and new version of both Windows and Linux.

        How to get at least closer to perfection: Web technologies that will run on all of the above, and provide a near-native experience.

        I don't see a better way.

    • At this time, Wayland is pretty much a Gnome 3 gimmick -- and, it has [freshports.org] been ported to BSD.

      No systemd, on the other hand, is a big upside for BSDs.

    • Wayland and systemd comes directly to mind on things that are locking-out the BSDs

      Neither wayland nor systemd have anything to do with Linux. They are both optional userland apps and have nothing to do with the OS kernels, or the overwhelming majority of Linux devices which run neither wayland nor systemd.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rgmoore ( 133276 )

      Portability can be a trap. Yes, being gratuitously non-portable is a bad idea, but portability also requires you limit yourself to the lowest common denominator of features of the systems you're trying to be portable to. If you really need a feature that's only available on one system, it doesn't make sense to try to be portable to other systems that don't have it. If something like Wayland or systemd is so important that not having it is a serious impediment to the BSDs, maybe they should try to port it

  • Now counter Windows 11 (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:16PM (#61729331)
    There is a big marketing opportunity to say can’t upgrade to Windows 11? Upgrade to Linux instead. With Proton/Wine emulating more than ever before this is the biggest chance since Vista to get new Linux users. Also the open source community needs to fork gtk so we finally have a usable file picker by default.

    • When I buy my next laptop I expect to have to upgrade it from MS Windows 11 that it comes with to Linux Mint (or similar).

    • Not going to happen until companies start releasing Linux builds. Even on a Mac the only cad program available is AutoCad. People would dump Windows tomorrow if they could run SolidWorks on Linux.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Autodesk does seem to care about Mac more than it's competition. Fusion 360 is available on Mac also.

      • I imagine historical. In my world (chip design) it is quite the opposite. Chip design started on big iron like DEC, IBM etc. You needed as much grunt as you could get. Then Sun and Silicon Graphics, HP etc came out with workstations running various flavors of Unix. I recall cursing HPUX a few times for some of their twists to the way their Unix ran during porting and debug. Sun was the name though in the mid to late 90's. Then Linux came out and when the X86-64 AMD came out, the flood gates opened for Linux

      • Not going to happen until companies start releasing Linux builds.

        The question is why would they bother doing that? You go to work, turn on your computer, open the programs you need to do your work in and don't actually give a shit about what the operating system is. Just like when you use an ATM, get on a Train, check-in at the airport, etc you don't care (or in the overwhelming majority of cases even know) what the OS is.

        If desktop Linux offerred those people something so profound, an innovation so good that they would eschew the tools they use to actually get work done

        • Because Windows is terrible for no reason. If you start your computer every day then the antimalware service is going to run and thrash your drive. Automatic updates will do the same and make your SSD feel like a platter drive. Automatic updates will replace working drivers with ones that work poorly or not at all. In the time it takes to do a larger update I can literally boot a flash drive and perform a Ubuntu install from scratch faster. Why does it take so long to replace a handful of files?

          • If this were actually happening and significantly affecting peoples' work then people would switch.
    • It seems MS has started to do that already with their ridiculous requirements.

      • There's nothing ridiculous about the requirements. It's actually refreshing to see MS put both security requirements (and as a result a high minimum hardware spec) on an OS release. You may not remember the Vista upgrade, or Windows 8 upgrade, both of which resulted in windows versions run on hardware that was incredibly unsuited to run the damn OS.

        I like the idea of a computer needing to be modern to run the latest OS.

        That said MS did shoot itself in the foot with the UEFI requirement since that will prohi

        • There's nothing ridiculous about the requirements.

          MS: "Windows 11 will run on a 1GHz chip"
          Also MS: "Windows 11 will not run on a chip older than 4 years old even though the chip can run at 4Ghz.

          It's actually refreshing to see MS put both security requirements (and as a result a high minimum hardware spec) on an OS release.

          Except that is not true. If you run Windows 11 on a VM, it ignores the fact that the "minimum hardware spec" does not have the security requirements. Basically the security requirements are bogus.

          You may not remember the Vista upgrade, or Windows 8 upgrade, both of which resulted in windows versions run on hardware that was incredibly unsuited to run the damn OS.

          The difference is that those cases Windows ran terribly because the minimum was too low and performance was terrible. In this case, the "minimum" is not set due to the chi

          • Basically the security requirements are bogus.

            No they aren't. If you're running windows in a VM it stands to reason that you can't have a hardware security feature. Also several windows security related functions are degraded. There's nothing bogus about making an exception for something by trading off a loss of functionality.

            In this case, the "minimum" is not set due to the chip's actual performance.

            There's more to performance than GHz numbers. There's few if any processors made in the past 4 years not performant enough to be suitable for the OS. There are however a metric fuckton of 1GHz chips out there which are laughably i

            • No they aren't. If you're running windows in a VM it stands to reason that you can't have a hardware security feature. Also several windows security related functions are degraded. There's nothing bogus about making an exception for something by trading off a loss of functionality.

              User installing Windows 11 in a VM on a Core 2 Duo T7300 (2007) [youtube.com]. It runs fine. They are other users doing the same thing with other "incompatible" processors. You were saying?

              There's more to performance than GHz numbers. There's few if any processors made in the past 4 years not performant enough to be suitable for the OS. There are however a metric fuckton of 1GHz chips out there which are laughably inadequate.

              I am not talking single core budget CPUs. Intel 7900X and Ryzen 1950X are not compatible. These were flagship CPUs in 2017.

              From 2017 you say? Well Windows 10 will continue to be supported for the next 5 years. 7 years is an acceptable run for a PC. Incidentally I just upgraded a Ryzen 1 for performance reasons so there's that.

              I am

    • I think the biggest issue with open source is that it doesn't have a lot of 'polish'. More often than not open source projects make open source functional, but when compared to commercial software open source is lacking in usability. Sometimes it's small things like being able to navigate quickly, or sometimes UI functionality isn't there or the UI lacks consistency.

      Part of the reason is resources and part is a lack of customer interaction (customers of open source projects should just modify the code thems

      • Agreed, part of that issue is also that it's so disjointed. There are too many projects run by too few developers because everyone wants to fork and put their own spin on something. Why do we need a dozen window managers, multiple x servers, a dozen filesystems, 20 web browsers, 30 PDF readers, etc.? Someone will answer that it's because X program didn't have Y feature, but it leads to a plethora of mediocre programs, developed using different toolkits, and most of them are incomplete, incoherent, and poorl

    • I went a different route, forking out for a M1 Mac. Not Linux, but the *nix heritage is right there. No bullshit with WSL or virtualization. My home server is Linux, and the servers I still administer at work are Linux. Frankly, now that we're dropping Outlook/Exchange, there's little reason to stay on the MS bandwagon at all. LibreOffice isn't perfect, but it's close enough for most documents and spreadsheets, and for web apps, well, Firefox and Chromium run pretty well even on cheap hardware like a Raspbe

  • Who could have imagined (Score:3)

    by peterww ( 6558522 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @02:22PM (#61729367)

    That professional software that you don't have to pay for would be popular?

  • It seemed from the outset, that if we take Bill Gates as an example, it was always about the money.
    For Steve Wozniak, it wasn't - he was probably more akin to Linus.

    The vision was never about money and as far as I have read, it still isn't.
    Torvalds could be ridiculously wealthy right now, right in the top billionaires club, along with Gates, Musk and that other dick who started an online book shop.

    Hats off to the guy, massively so - he has remained true and steadfast. Sure, he can fly off the handle big tim

    • Correct. If your goal is to make more money, all you will have at the end of the day, ... is more money.
      If there are no people with higher goals, there won't be anything to buy with that money, except money.
      Money does not drive humanity forward. It is merely a temporary exchange of energy. A force carrier, in quantum physics speak.
      It is a great temporary exchange. But it's only an intermediate tool. Making it itself the goal, is as nonsensical as making many photons flying around the goal, without actually

  • Whoo Hoo. Best thing to ever come out of a bedroom, aside from Linus Torvalds himself.

  • From Little OS toy to Big OS...toy? One was a toy OS back in the 1990's, now its a big toy for companies to play with.

    I still remember a person I knew, who loved Microsoft, and thought it was cool he setup his own web server, then said "nobody is using Linux." And complained the file system wasn't as "automated" which after much explanation was file associations to click and open the app. I just warned him not to put the web server publicly online.

    I was running Yggdrasil later Slackware Linux using an Aztec

  • XKCD (Score:3)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @03:47PM (#61729787)
    The obligatory XKCD post: https://xkcd.com/456/ [xkcd.com]

  • Succeeded is not being turned into another dumbed-down consumer OS that misses the point of having a computer by turning it into an appliance with optional modules.
    Though Ubuntu came close. Before, thankfully, it came out, and stopped being Linux. Of course we accept it and support it... whatever it wants to be. ;)

    Linux is "industrial Lego", as a certain popular machinist YouTuber calls these things.
    It is not the 3NM IKEA electric screwdriver. It is the 800NM Hilti impact gun that, if you ask it to, *will*

  • I was a consultant at the time, a new job exposed me both to the WWW and Linux. I actually found a problem in the networking stack, asked a question, Alan Cox replied with a patch.

    At the time we were using Yggdrasil. We tried all the other distros, Yggdrasil was best for us. About a year later Red Hat came out with their RPM, which we switched to.

    Cool story. Around '04 I'm flying to New Orleans with a brand new laptop for a trade show. I configured my kernel and hit make. Guy in the seat behind
  • I remember the 10 years of Linux, here on /. I thought I was late to the game after thinking about it for years but decided to finally try and install it. 2 months later I was running it on my laptop, my desktop, the RAID server at work and thinking of ways not to renew our SGI contract in order to get a Linux beast instead. Never looked back. Happy Birthday Linux !!!
  • Thanks for an OS that shuts down when I tell it to, kills a process when I instruct it to, only updates when I ask it to, and gives me full control over my entire system.

  • That annual prediction it'll be the year of Linux on the desktop got old at least a decade ago....

    Not only is this story correct that Linux played a huge role because of all the IoT devices using it, but it's also about the ease of firing up a server with it (and dodging expensive software licensing required to do it with Windows Server instead).

    Linux, if anything, competes much more with the Windows Server product than it does Windows 7/8/10/11/whatever on the workstation side.

    I haven't had a job in corpor

  • This market could have belonged to UNIX and AT&T/Bell Labs. It was right in front of them.
    We might have had UNIX everywhere instead of Windows by now.
    Too bad the corpse of ATT had a succession of MBA idiots take over and destroy it five times over.
    Now their reduced to a cell phone company that knows only larceny.
    One Bell System. It worked.

  • Time to re-read the Halloween documents. ;-)

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