A Historical Look At The First Linux Kernel 173
LinuxFan writes "KernelTrap has a fascinating article about the first Linux kernel, version 0.01, complete with source code and photos of Linus Torvalds as a young man attending the University of Helsinki. Torvalds originally planned to call the kernel "Freax," and in his first announcement noted, "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones." He also stressed that the kernel was very much tied to the i386 processor, "simply, I'd say that porting is impossible." Humble beginnings."
Re:That's it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Humble beginnings" (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not interested in learning the history of everything -- I'm just interested in learning the history of events that can teach me significant lessons, e.g. by inspiring me (starting humble can work out really well if there is significant demand and an empowering license like the GPL is used) or by warning of dangers.
Therefore, articles like this are important to me. I wouldn't know to look for this particular bit of history if it weren't for people pointing out that this is a worthwhile bit of history to read up on.
(In this particular instance, I knew already, but only because I came across an article on the same topic some time ago. Nevertheless I'm appreciating the reminder.)
Re:That's it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Note the mention of GNU (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Humble beginnings" (Score:1, Insightful)
Hell, even Dennis Miller somehow became a cranky old right wing blowhard when I wasn't looking. The world has moved on.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Note the mention of GNU (Score:5, Insightful)
The mention of GNU should merely point out how important the GNU is in GNU/Linux. As Linus said in the post: Sadly, a kernel by itself gets you nowhere. To get a working system you need a shell, compilers, a library etc. These are separate parts and may be under a stricter (or even looser) copyright. Most of the tools used with linux are GNU software and are under the GNU copyleft.
Re:Note the mention of GNU (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, keep in mind that originally, Linux was aimed at being more on-par with Minix than Hurd. Linus would have written it even if the Gnu folks didn't exist, though it would have been written with pcc instead of gcc. Early on, he didn't have or even target creating a "whole OS", just a terminal server.
Re:Note the mention of GNU (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying Stallman insisting on calling it GNU is hubris is funny, when you consider that its not Stallman who named it after his first name.
Its reasonable to request distributions that are heavily based on Linux and GNU to mention GNU in their name.
I would also think it is reasonable for a huge codebase such as KDE to request that, too. For example, "Kubuntu" for short, and "A KDE frontend to a GNU/Linux system" for long.
Calling it "Kubuntu Linux" (or "Redhat Linux") despite that simple request is not "illegal" or even not legitimate, but it is not very considerate of the many people who contributed to GNU in the hopes of raising awareness to the GNU project and software Freedom.
Re:5 most important OSS figures (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a strange list. You left out the most important kernel programmer ever - Ken Thompson, you also left out Dennis Ritchie (first C compiler, designer of the first Unix file system), and for promoting excellent modern programming practices and teaching us all how to program the right way - Brian Kernighan and PJ Plauger.
And what about Larry Wall for Perl? John McCarthy for Lisp (say what you want about Lisp, but it's the only language that has survived with programming mindshare for over half a century)? The lead engineer of the group at IBM who wrote the first high level language compiler for Fortran, proving that assembly language wasn't the end-all for efficient programming? Donald Knuth for his programming books and TeX?
Re:Note the mention of GNU (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that politics is interested in you even if you're not interested in it. The pragmatic approach involves taking politics into account even if you're personally bored to tears by the subject.
IBM, Intel, and MS say "you're welcome" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Note the mention of GNU (Score:3, Insightful)
No. People name things, not to ascribe merit, but in order to provide them with a label. Linux was named Linux. Why it was named Linux is irrelevant, that's it's name.
Re:More like Phoenix and AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
What made the business case for the IBM PC was Lotus 1-2-3, which was written specifically for the PC. What helped the clone market was that the IBM PC design was pretty generic, allowing for relatively easy cloning.
As for AMD's market share in 386 systems, it doesn't take much to force a change in Intel's pricing. FWIW, 486 motherboards were cheaper to build than 386 motherboards - the 486 had onchip cache and didn't need a numeric co-processor.