Linux is 20 years old today

The Enquirer ^ | Thu Aug 25 2011, 00:09 | Egan Orion

[allmost]

ONE MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT, a student at the University of Helsinki posted a query to the newsgroup comp.os.minix asking, "What would you like to see most in minix?" The student's name was Linus Torvalds, and that Usenet post was the beginning of the Linux operating system (OS). The date was 25 August 1991, exactly 20 years ago today.

Pictured-used-and-licensed-under-the-GNU-Free-Distribution-License-by-linuxmag-com-Martin-StreicherIn 1991 Unix had existed for about 20 years since the early 1970s, Apple had come out with its Mac OS in 1984, and Microsoft had been flogging Windows since 1985. Torvalds' ambitions for his "new (free) operating system" were modest. It was to be "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"

[pyx]

In fact, I vaguely recall running an early version of X at the end of 1992 but that 20 years ago and my memory is not that good. I think v0.95 was around for some time near the summer of 1992. New kernel releases were available from funet.fi almost daily back then. LOL

[allmost]

It works, quite well. From my experience. :)

[re_nortex]

It may have been a patch, but I was using Linux much much earlier than v 0.99. Like I said, I was actually using Linux in 1992. v 0.99 was not around until more than one year or possibly two years later in very late 1993 or early 1994.

You're right. I just checked the README for 0.99p12. It's from 15 AUG 1993. So when I got started, it was on an earlier kernel. As I think back, that kernel was the one that caused me to think that Linux would be more than a toy.

0.12 was from January 1992 and then Linus jumped to 0.95. It's fun to explore the "Historic" directory at kernel.org and recall the years when the whole kernel tarball was < 1 MB.

[MaxMax]

Don’t trust anyone under 30.

Make that under 39. That number is creeping up in my experience..

[pyx]

0.12 was from January 1992 and then Linus jumped to 0.95.

Linus didn't start saving "historical" versions of Linux until someone (maddog I think) suggested he might save them for posterity sake. LOL ! I also seem to recall that Linus released some "custom" compiled releases that included the MFM hard disk drivers after 0.12 and before the kernel version jump in to the mid-0.90's. There were a few of us users with 386's and MFM drives on Usenet in those days. I may be mistaken, memory can be faulty and it was after all, 20 years ago. LOL !

[RightOnline]

I’m in the high performance computing (HPC; read “supercomputing”) field and have been for some years now. In this world, Linux is king.....period. No other pretenders to the throne, despite MS’s lame attempts.

[fnord]

japh

there’s a blast from the past

is Perl even in use still?

[re_nortex]

is Perl even in use still?

Very much so.

Take a look at the URL here on FR when you select "ping".

[dfwgator]

PERL is the COBOL of the web.

[fnord]

code here hasn’t changed in quite a while.

which is one of the beauties of perl. I have code on my site that I wrote 15 years ago and haven’t touched since. if my server host ever drops perl I will be totally lost.

got curious so went here:
http://faq.perl.org/perlfaq1.html
and find Perl 5 came out in 1994 (that I remember) and Perl 6 is still under development (since 2002), lol.
I thought I might be way behind the Perl curve, but it seems time has stood still ...

[andyk]

How long do you think GNU's Richard Stallman would last here on FR before he was zotted? :-)

LOL! There is no doubt that Stallman is unique. :)

But then again if you read Linus' posts regarding Gnome3 and many other releases, he has a certain way about him as well.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Digging further back....my first encounter...with the Unix variants:

IBM AIX

***********************EXCERPT*****************************

History

AIX Version 1, introduced in 1986 for the IBM 6150 RT workstation, was based on UNIX System V Releases 1 and 2. In developing AIX, IBM and INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation (whom IBM contracted) also incorporated source code from 4.2 and 4.3 BSD UNIX.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Unix, Linux, and variant history

[allmost]

Bump to post #33. Guessing where we will be in 20 more years is foolish. If we keep electing obama types then 1800’s tech will be in demand. The advancement is rapid and very real. I'm a youngin, I want my Commodore. :)