Linus Torvalds Jokes About Celebrations for Linux's 30th Anniversary (zdnet.com) 21
Despite Linux reaching its 30th anniversary, "most outside the tech industry will be unaware that Linux has reached such a milestone," writes ZDNet, "even though the project has had a huge impact on everything from smartphones to cloud computing."
They add that Linus Torvalds "poked fun at that lack of recognition in his usual Sunday release note for a new stable version of the Linux kernel." "So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the champagne," Torvalds said. "That ball gown or tailcoat isn't the most comfortable thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet, but you all may just need a breather from them."
Linux 5.14 includes additional features for Intel's Alder Lake mobile-ready CPUs, extra AMD support and better support for the Raspberry Pi 400 PC. "Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are about," notes Torvalds...
Torvalds is upbeat about Linux's future, predicting decades more work for the kernel's several thousand contributors who help shape the Linux kernel and drivers. "Of course, the poor tireless kernel maintainers won't have time for the festivities, because for them, this just means that the merge window will start tomorrow. We have another 30 years to look forward to, after all. But for the rest of you, take a breather, build a kernel, test it out, and then you can go back to the seemingly endless party that I'm sure you just crawled out of," he wrote.
They add that Linus Torvalds "poked fun at that lack of recognition in his usual Sunday release note for a new stable version of the Linux kernel." "So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the champagne," Torvalds said. "That ball gown or tailcoat isn't the most comfortable thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet, but you all may just need a breather from them."
Linux 5.14 includes additional features for Intel's Alder Lake mobile-ready CPUs, extra AMD support and better support for the Raspberry Pi 400 PC. "Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are about," notes Torvalds...
Torvalds is upbeat about Linux's future, predicting decades more work for the kernel's several thousand contributors who help shape the Linux kernel and drivers. "Of course, the poor tireless kernel maintainers won't have time for the festivities, because for them, this just means that the merge window will start tomorrow. We have another 30 years to look forward to, after all. But for the rest of you, take a breather, build a kernel, test it out, and then you can go back to the seemingly endless party that I'm sure you just crawled out of," he wrote.
Who? (Score:1)
Is that Linus Torvalds or Ford Prefect?
Tired of the glitz, fireworks, and champagne? (Score:2)
Forget Linux - how about nice card for Linus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think Linux would be where it is today without Linus? He's spent 30 years working to keep a huge open source project on the straight and narrow, making sure the latest hardware is supported (which I'm sure a lot more has gone in back rooms at Intel, AMD and NVidia that people know), the crazies don't take over and still find time to send angry emails.
He's the one that we should be celebrating 30 years for.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh? What happened to that other famous person everyone says open-source wouldn't exist without? Any celebrations?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh? What happened to that other famous person everyone says open-source wouldn't exist without? Any celebrations?
Is there someone else who deserves credit for the creation of Linux 30 years ago?
Re:Forget Linux - how about nice card for Linus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forget Linux - how about nice card for Linus? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thompson and Ritchie got a Turing award. It's hard to celebrate them more.
Tannenbaum actually contributed nothing to Linux as far as I know, beside educating people about operating systems, which he did very well.
Stallman is well celebrated.
What's wrong with celebrating Linus. He did carry the project for 30 years and did an amazing job at that.
Re:Forget Linux - how about nice card for Linus? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tanenbaum contributed a license that chased off Torvalds and may have helped contribute to his choice of the GPL. So nothing on purpose :D
Re: (Score:3)
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
Re: (Score:2)
They received a Turing award. It's hard to celebrate them more!
Re: (Score:2)
> They received a Turing award. It's hard to celebrate them more!
Perhaps we should let them win Formula 1 race? Consider that those people experience compared to people who actually change the world.
Re: Forget Linux - how about nice card for Linus? (Score:2)
According to the fanboys it should b called gnu Linux even if only a tiny percentage of packages are from the gnu project
Re:I don't get the praise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get the praise (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why Torvalds is praised so highly.
He constantly takes credit for the inventive work of Ken Thompson, Dennis Richie, and the rest at Bell Labs.
That, sir, is a lie.
Sure, he extended UNIX, but so have many, many others.
Yes, and where are they now? In the recycle bin of history. today nobody but a bare handful of hobbyists give a fuck about DomainOS, or SAGE IDRIX, or most of the jillions of other Unixlikes and Unix ports.
Linux only got a foothold because AT&T/Bell Labs dropped the ball.
Linux got a foothold because of its license. If another Unixlike had the same license then it could have been the next Linux. But without a benevolent dictator like Linus, or some other beneficial governance, it would not have been. Any successful project has all of the necessary elements of a successful project. This should be obvious, but apparently bears exposition because many people don't seem to get it.
So let's talk about why the other Unixes didn't succeed where Linux did. System V had pedigree and quality, but was expensive to license. BSD had pedigree, quality, and a permissive license, but it was too permissive to attract investment from people and corporations who/which didn't want to see their work become the basis of some other person or corporation's product and not even get anything out of it. Minix had a license that required that you pay actual money. So even starting from scratch on a kernel had substantial advantages over all of the other competition; Starting over meant lacking both pedigree and functionality to begin with, but it meant being beholden to no one and being able to have a license that attracted developers turned out to be more important than anything else because let's face it: if people can write software once, people can write software again.
Would it have been better in some ways to start with one of the other projects? It would have been better, in fact, in every way except for the choice of license. And yet Linux is now the dominant operating system kernel on the planet.
Linux did have two obvious major benefits that assisted it in being more rapidly developed than any of those other operating systems. One, of course, was that it could borrow from them, and that's what it did. Linux was a completely unabashed clone of Unix, which was important because it gave it the ability to run all that software. The second was the GNU utilities, especially including the compiler toolchain. Without a freely available userland to work in, and toolchain for developers to use to make contributions, Linux would never have been possible. I'm still not going to call it GNU/Linux "ever" but you do have to acknowledge this fact every time you talk about Linux's success.
New kernel version? (Score:2)