Posted on 08/26/2021 4:25:34 AM PDT by ShadowAce
It’s August 25th were I sit and I’m celebrating Linux’s 30th birthday with a good champagne and a delicious cake, so please join me to celebrate 30 freaking awesome years of Linux and many more to come!
That’s right, it’s been 30 years since 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds made his now-famous announcement on the day of August 25th, 1991, on the comp.os.minix news group, saying that he is working on a free operating system for 386(486) AT clones as a “hobby.”
Hello everybody out there using minix –
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them 🙂
Linus
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.
Well, that “hobby” turned into something massive in only 30 years (how time flies), and Linux now powers almost every smart device around you, including your Android smartphone, Amazon Alexa and Google Home smart assistants, big screen TV, smart fridge, smart lights, and especially your Wi-Fi router.
But Linux is everywhere around us, even if we don’t use it. Linux powers 100% of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, it powers the Wall Street, it powers satellites and the ISS (International Space Station), it powers airplanes, and it even powers the whole Internet. (yes, 99.9% of the websites you are visiting daily are sitting on a Linux-powered server, including 9to5Linux).
Every year, people say “this is the year of the Linux desktop,” but we who use Linux every single day know that it was always the year of the Linux desktop, no matter what the numbers say. And today marks 30 freaking awesome years of Linux and personally I’m overjoyed to have Linux in my life for more than 20 of them.
With that in mind, if it’s August 25th where you live, let’s raise the glass and wish Linux a happy 30th birthday, even if you’re one of those people who like to celebrate Linux’s birthday on September 17th, when the first public release was published by Linus Torvalds, who believes that both of these dates are valid.
None of my high end stuff works on Linux so it is little more than a novelty I keep on an old laptop. I’m getting mighty sick of windows 10 and MS. So very sick of them. Took me a full day to repair when their forced update completely bricked my computer.
Shameful what google and others are doing with a free OS, stealing people's data, tracking them, spying on them
Started using Slackware in ‘97. Made the switch to Ubuntu just a few years ago. No regrets.
Here’s my little Linux celebration story...
I was searching for something out in the shop and stumbled uppon two huge boxes of 3 1/4” floppy disks. I thought I had jettisoned those years ago!
I intended to toss them out with the trash but needed to check them first for stray bits of personal data. But how would I access them - none of my computers sports a floppy drive!
Then I remembered a Samsung USB external drive that I used to use when I was working. I plugged it in and it made the familiar chunka-chunka sounds but Windows threw an error about drivers. I tried to do a driver update but Win 10 wanted to update all my software (and I wasn’t interested in that). So I searched the web for drivers and came up empty handed.
Then I remembered the Linux Mint laptop I had been testing. I booted it and plugged in the drive. I sorted itself in very short order and presented me with an icon showing the correct model. I was able to sort through the hundreds of disks and even discovered a couple of disks that had personal stuff on them. Most of the disks were packaged software from Microsoft (when I worked there in the 90’s)
Anybody need a copy of Windows NT Server 3.51? Still in shrink-wrap!
Yeah—I started with Red Hat in 93-94. Went full time around 2000. Haven’t looked back.
I’ve been happy with Linux Mint for many years now.
I have a dual boot system Linux Mint / Win10 just so I can run some video editing software that only runs on Windows or Mac but I hardly ever boot into Windows. I find I can do most editing with Shotcut, a free opensource editing program.
The computer runs much faster on Linux and rarely needs a reboot. Usually only after a kernel update. Long live Linux!
From total power-off to login prompt on my linux laptop takes about 18 seconds. I've timed it.
—” I’ve timed it.”
No need for the stopwatch!
systemd-analyze
Spits it right out for you.
And for fun systemd-analyze blame
I’m not deep into it, just a user since the IT guy at work gave me an Ubuntu disk and said to keep the workstation but erase the drive.
Then my wife’s win10 choked on an update...OK do a RESET...
NOW MS wants the PASSWORD for the linked email account!!!
Yes, a local account is a workaround; BUT ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP!!!
Thank you Linus Torvalds!!!
Yes, scanner drivers might drive you inSANE, a small price.
I've added some things to the system since my experiments, and I'm up to 25 secs now.
Startup finished in 6.946s (firmware) + 247ms (loader) + 8.688s (kernel) + 9.667s (userspace) = 25.549s
graphical.target reached after 8.573s in userspace
Still not too bad.
Right on, Thank you Linus Benedict Torvalds!
Lol, fantastic! Linux is good about that. It doesn’t need permission from Microsoft to go find and use drivers for older equipment.
Back in 1993, I worked on Santa Cruz Operations Unix and Xenix. I used to install them on servers and connect them up to Computone multi-port serial boards with Wyse 50/60 dumb terminals, so that doctor offices would use centralized medical charts/records and electronic (over 9600 dial-in modem) billing for Medicare, Medicaid, and Blue Cross/Blue Sheild.
Hadn’t heard of Linux for another 5 years after that, IIRC.
I actually still have one of those Wyse terminals around here. Why? I don’t know...
// From total power-off to login prompt on my linux laptop takes about 18 seconds. I’ve timed it.
Startup time is something I don’t worry or think about. I reboot every few months. (Normally when I go ahead and accept a kernel upgrade). It could take 5 minutes for all I care. I’d just go get a cup of coffee.
I think Linux is now far superior in almost every way to MS-Windows these days. The only bleak spot is that the evil bastards at adobe no longer provide a way to edit PDF forms. I have some really weird forms that I have to use at work, and it’s a pain that I can’t upgrade the VM I use to do most of my work because I haven’t been able to get anything that will work with these forms on more recent versions. Producing my own PDFs is obviously no problem, but those specific forms suck.
I’ve been using Linux for so long I can’t even imagine having to live in a primarily MS-Windoze world. It seems so incredibly primitive IMO.
I have tried every major and many minor Linux distros, and have Mint installed on one desktop here, which is a very capable machine (4.2Ghz AMD 4350 CPU and 16 Gb RAM) and sees daily use but just for the Internet (Firefox) and Kubuntu on an old machine. I would like to try Linux on the main rig (4.0GHZ Ryzen 3200G CPU; 32 Gb RAM) which runs Windows 10 Pro (actually just cost $29 on retail channel via an upgrade years ago, thank God) running multiple browsers with hundreds of tabs, etc. Windows does seem to use most of the memory no matter how much I put in it, but I thank God for its instrumentality. As for Linux, as said before, I have found that simply does not provide the breadth of easy customization the is safely available for Windows. I would have to learn a lot about coding to equal such.
"Like over 200 tweaks available in in Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4 for Windows 10 From the Windows club.
Add to this Winaero features of the Winaero Tweaker
Then there is Right-Click Extender (add items to many right click menus) , and T-Clock Redux and Classic Shell, now called Open Shell (https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/archive/master.zip) "
And very important for me with my stiff arthritic fingers is the ability to remap CapsLock to ctrl+c (copy) - not just to ctrl - which I easily do with an AutoHotKey script, along with the Esc key to ctrl+v, (paste) and NumLock to Esc (I do not play games), and the middle mouse key to ctrl+x (cut). Some distros have sections for to changing what CapsLock does under System Settings, but no options to change it to ctrl+c though you can change it to ctrl. I have tried many "this should work" or "try this" proffered solution including as discussed and attempts tried here on FR before but no final solution that I can find.
Then there is the issued of illegal (in the US) certain multimedia codecs.
// Yes, scanner drivers might drive you inSANE, a small price.
Scanner drivers? I have a Brother scanner/laser printer/copier. I reloaded my desktop earlier this week, and just from the base Kubuntu load, was able to print without configuring anything, and scan using xsane, without any configuration at all. I was pleased.
You can download it and put it on a USB drive and start it from there to try out.
I have Linux Cinnamon in a Oracle VirtualPC window in my Windows 7 desktop.
Free OS and free virtualpc program.
https://linuxmint.com/screenshots.php
Linux is very familiar and does not need much learning to get up to speed. Linux needs to stop being nerdy.
The high point of my -- and my "network mouse's" -- Linux experience with an early Ubuntu release.
it's gotten a lot better since then
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