4 ms·

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, ...Linus Torvalds

37 points by sc90 11y ago

fotcorn 11y ago
Also very interesting is the discussion between Torvalds and Tanenbaum (the creator of Minix) with the funny title "LINUX is obsolete" in 1992: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI[1-25] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16...
- lexicalscope 11y ago
  My favorite gem from that link is this quote (Linus signs a post where he apologizes for flaming Tanenbaum) 'Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds' Oh how hopeful we are when young ;)
  - kylnew 11y ago
    Haha I thought the same thing. This read is gold just for insight in to his sense of diplomacy during the early days.
- Eiriksmal 11y ago
  Neat thread. ast to Linus's response to ast's initial post: > Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5. It's interesting how computer science intellectuals of this era "knew" that "superior" chipsets would draw everyone to things like Sun's Sparcstation instead of plain ol' IBM x86 machines. Most interesting is being able to read their assertions, verbatim, from old Usenet posts hosted on a (presumably Linux) server farm "in the cloud" from a laptop running Linux x86-64 machine not physically connected to a network in any fashion--forget the "WD ethernet card!"
BeefySwain 11y ago
Are there any good write-ups out there on how linux grew in popularity in the very beginning?
r3bl 11y ago
My colleague on Opensource.com wrote an excellent summary of Linux's history: http://opensource.com/life/15/8/happy-24th-birthday-linux-kernel http://opensource.com/life/15/8/happy-24th-birthday-linux-ke...
swagv 11y ago
There really ought to be a nostalgia section. Some of us don't want to continually relive the 80s and 90s.
ClayFerguson 11y ago
I've seen this a few times before. Just goes to show you, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". It's better to be the 'first' with a product than to be the 'best' and release a little later. Of course nowadays if he posted something like that on any social media site, he would be slammed with 99% negative comments, insulted by too many trolls to count, and in general, simply ignored. Yes, I'm cynical. Go ahead and attack me for that. You know you want to.

37 points by sc90 11y ago

Also very interesting is the discussion between Torvalds and Tanenbaum (the creator of Minix) with the funny title "LINUX is obsolete" in 1992: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI[1-25] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16...

lexicalscope 11y ago
My favorite gem from that link is this quote (Linus signs a post where he apologizes for flaming Tanenbaum) 'Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds' Oh how hopeful we are when young ;)
- kylnew 11y ago
  Haha I thought the same thing. This read is gold just for insight in to his sense of diplomacy during the early days.
Eiriksmal 11y ago
Neat thread. ast to Linus's response to ast's initial post: > Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5. It's interesting how computer science intellectuals of this era "knew" that "superior" chipsets would draw everyone to things like Sun's Sparcstation instead of plain ol' IBM x86 machines. Most interesting is being able to read their assertions, verbatim, from old Usenet posts hosted on a (presumably Linux) server farm "in the cloud" from a laptop running Linux x86-64 machine not physically connected to a network in any fashion--forget the "WD ethernet card!"

BeefySwain 11y ago

Are there any good write-ups out there on how linux grew in popularity in the very beginning?

r3bl 11y ago

My colleague on Opensource.com wrote an excellent summary of Linux's history: http://opensource.com/life/15/8/happy-24th-birthday-linux-kernel http://opensource.com/life/15/8/happy-24th-birthday-linux-ke...

swagv 11y ago

There really ought to be a nostalgia section. Some of us don't want to continually relive the 80s and 90s.

ClayFerguson 11y ago

I've seen this a few times before. Just goes to show you, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". It's better to be the 'first' with a product than to be the 'best' and release a little later. Of course nowadays if he posted something like that on any social media site, he would be slammed with 99% negative comments, insulted by too many trolls to count, and in general, simply ignored. Yes, I'm cynical. Go ahead and attack me for that. You know you want to.