Old School Linux Remembered, Parts 0.02 & 0.03 163
eldavojohn writes "Following our last history lesson of Linux 0.01, the Kernel Trap is talking about the following announcements that would lead to one of the greatest operating systems today. A great Linus quote on release 0.02 (just 19 days after 0.01): 'I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix. This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjoyed [sic] doing it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have.'"
Re:15 years later... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great quote by Linus (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Linux alternate history game... (Score:3, Insightful)
Stability and security are the big wins. With the Linux kernel both these things are less of a problem than with other systems because it is expected that everything you run is open for inspection and improvement (and if you run stuff that isn't, well, you're on your own). But now we have this other option. If you don't trust a driver, you should be able to run it in user space. If it crashes, well, restart it, no harm done (hopefully).. and you don't have to trust it with kernel access.
That said, you're still giving this unknown code a lot of control over your system.. so don't get a false sense of security.
Re:"Greatest operating systems today"? (Score:1, Insightful)
(And now for the real story: We don't have a ton of Linux servers, but for the 5 we do... we turned them on, set them up, and they've run ever since...)
Re:Great quote by Linus (Score:4, Insightful)
I think of the great advantages the OSS model has over closed source is that when these branches die out their work and whatever grain of usefulness/truth don't die with them. It's precisely the ability to fork and create another branch that allows OSS to really evolve and try out all the million possibilities. With closed source and an overly strict copyright scheme the overhead of trying those possibilities are too expensive. (regurgitating Yochai Benkler's "Wealth of the Network" here)
Re:"Greatest operating systems today"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Likewise, I wouldn't use Java performance as a good indicator of anything, because I mean.... let's be honest here... it's java. There are one or two good java applications out there, but for the most part, it just plain sucks.
Gets me thiking about the media (Score:2, Insightful)
But now heres proof, right and it should be really noted. Linux was created by the developer for the developer. Its not developed to take out microsoft windows. Linux does not want commerical programs and Linux does not care for market share. There are no shareholders for Linux, no one is crushed if you dont use Linux or if you dont like it. So stop writing reviews that say "Linux will defeat microsoft if it had X and Y" because as a developer or Linux i dont care what you think, as long as it stays good enough to be my desktop OS.
Re:Had it not been Minix.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:15 years later... (Score:4, Insightful)
What more do you need?
Perhaps the dumbest question I've asked here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Can anyone tell me why there is a "[sic]" in that above quote? There don't seem to be any spelling/grammatical mistakes in the sentence.