7 ms·

Ironically, I was later involved with the team at Oracle that converted Linux from a toy into a functioning kernel. Seriously?

k__ 10y ago
so full of himself...
kazinator 10y ago
In 1994 I did contract work for a serious businesses that ran commercial pay-for-click information website that ran fabulously on Linux, 1.2.x kernels. Since I first started using Linux in 1993 (0.99 patch level 12), it has always been a functioning kernel.
- feld 10y ago
  Anyone can write a functioning kernel. The question is if it provides all the functionality required to run complex modern software -- especially big databases, which was pretty much your defacto benchmark back then. "Linux doesn't provide these syscalls or anything comparable" might mean you go from "runs reasonably well" to "can't run on this hardware at all because the kernel doesn't know how to do these tricks with memory, etc"
  - varjag 10y ago
    I personally know at least a dozen Linux kernel contributors. Some of them are among the most competent, prolific and enthusiastic developers out there who would code until their fingertips bleed. Most work or worked at the usual suspects, yes, including Oracle. It's the first time however I hear anyone claiming as much credit. Oracle didn't even start dabbling with Linux until 21st century, and it was already a decade old project dominating Internet server deployments at that point.
    - MrTonyD 10y ago
      It certainly wasn't my intent to criticize any Linux contributor. I think that there are a lot of people doing the right things for the right reasons. They do that work in a social context, though. And I think that we need to understand how our society really works in order to make the right decisions moving forward.
  - MrTonyD 10y ago
    Exactly. When I started doing the port of Oracle to Linux I had been reading the newsgroups - and they had been claiming POSIX compatibility. But system calls were missing many options, and entire sections of library code were missing. I'd run POSIX compatibility testing, so I knew that something didn't make sense. I kept posting to the news groups - mentioning that I was trying to port some software and hoping that they would notice my Oracle email address and take me seriously. Eventually, after trying several branches, somebody admitted that they had never actually run the POSIX suite, since it was too expensive. As long as you only wanted to do simple programs, Linux was fine. It was nowhere near being able to run Oracle, and it was nowhere near being able to run it well (with any of the then-modern features such as async I/O or direct memory paths or scheduling for long runnning processes or efficient large memory allocations.) It was a toy.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      I'm with you on the facts, but it was anything but a toy. Minix was a toy, linux allowed a whole raft of useful applications to be run on PCs that would have otherwise required a large investment in hardware. Linux would have succeeded with or without Oracle, and I find it sad that you would try to re-write history to the point where it would seem that without Oracle linux would have remained a toy.
      - corysama 10y ago
        > Linux would have succeeded with or without Oracle, and I find it sad that you would try to re-write history to the point where it would seem that without Oracle linux would have remained a toy. Ehhh... I don't see where he claimed anything about that. I see "Linux was a toy. Oracle helped make it not a toy." But, nothing about what would have happened otherwise. Be careful not to get sad over things not said. Principle of Charity and all that...
        kazinator 10y ago
        Some circuit board with 64 kilobytes of RAM sent on a mission to Mars can be a "non toy". Toy: for amusement or education of creator. Non-toy: implements real requirement for some task. For instance, 80 bytes of machine code which pop out a piece of bread when it toasts to a certain darkness level: non-toy.
- bifrost 10y ago
  Thats pretty relative to be honest. I remember using a variety of Linuxes back then and being pretty unhappy with the results. Stability was barely a possibility. Compared to SunOS it was like Windows 3.x
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I had a bunch of Linux servers in the mid 90's that we only rebooted once in 3 years, because of an office move. I'm sure there were ways of making Linux crash back then, but stability was easy as long as you got hardware that was known to work.
MrTonyD 10y ago
It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and Scott and IBM and HP had a couple of floors of kernel engineers at Redwood Shores fixing Linux and submitting the changes until Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. But by that time we had already submitted enough to make Linux into a functioning product.
- tobltobs 10y ago
  > Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. I might have been living under a rock and everybody but me already heard about this story. But I would expect that every HN reader would drop his coffee cup reading this for the first time. Is this true? Why had I never heard about it? Why should Bill do that?
- varjag 10y ago
  Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on your corporate assignments.
  - MrTonyD 10y ago
    I'm just a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley. I soldered and wire wrapped chips I picked up from Haltek/Halted and the sales offices of local chip manufacturers, and taught myself programming using switches to enter binary codes (before I bought a broken teletype and fixed it - paper tape was a huge improvement after using switches to program.)
- nikanj 10y ago
  I'm super curious about this. When was this, mid-90s?
- patates 10y ago
  well, it probably saved some lives by telling people that their printer was on fire

k__ 10y ago

so full of himself...

kazinator 10y ago

In 1994 I did contract work for a serious businesses that ran commercial pay-for-click information website that ran fabulously on Linux, 1.2.x kernels. Since I first started using Linux in 1993 (0.99 patch level 12), it has always been a functioning kernel.

feld 10y ago
Anyone can write a functioning kernel. The question is if it provides all the functionality required to run complex modern software -- especially big databases, which was pretty much your defacto benchmark back then. "Linux doesn't provide these syscalls or anything comparable" might mean you go from "runs reasonably well" to "can't run on this hardware at all because the kernel doesn't know how to do these tricks with memory, etc"
- varjag 10y ago
  I personally know at least a dozen Linux kernel contributors. Some of them are among the most competent, prolific and enthusiastic developers out there who would code until their fingertips bleed. Most work or worked at the usual suspects, yes, including Oracle. It's the first time however I hear anyone claiming as much credit. Oracle didn't even start dabbling with Linux until 21st century, and it was already a decade old project dominating Internet server deployments at that point.
  - MrTonyD 10y ago
    It certainly wasn't my intent to criticize any Linux contributor. I think that there are a lot of people doing the right things for the right reasons. They do that work in a social context, though. And I think that we need to understand how our society really works in order to make the right decisions moving forward.
- MrTonyD 10y ago
  Exactly. When I started doing the port of Oracle to Linux I had been reading the newsgroups - and they had been claiming POSIX compatibility. But system calls were missing many options, and entire sections of library code were missing. I'd run POSIX compatibility testing, so I knew that something didn't make sense. I kept posting to the news groups - mentioning that I was trying to port some software and hoping that they would notice my Oracle email address and take me seriously. Eventually, after trying several branches, somebody admitted that they had never actually run the POSIX suite, since it was too expensive. As long as you only wanted to do simple programs, Linux was fine. It was nowhere near being able to run Oracle, and it was nowhere near being able to run it well (with any of the then-modern features such as async I/O or direct memory paths or scheduling for long runnning processes or efficient large memory allocations.) It was a toy.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    I'm with you on the facts, but it was anything but a toy. Minix was a toy, linux allowed a whole raft of useful applications to be run on PCs that would have otherwise required a large investment in hardware. Linux would have succeeded with or without Oracle, and I find it sad that you would try to re-write history to the point where it would seem that without Oracle linux would have remained a toy.
    - corysama 10y ago
      > Linux would have succeeded with or without Oracle, and I find it sad that you would try to re-write history to the point where it would seem that without Oracle linux would have remained a toy. Ehhh... I don't see where he claimed anything about that. I see "Linux was a toy. Oracle helped make it not a toy." But, nothing about what would have happened otherwise. Be careful not to get sad over things not said. Principle of Charity and all that...
      - kazinator 10y ago
        Some circuit board with 64 kilobytes of RAM sent on a mission to Mars can be a "non toy". Toy: for amusement or education of creator. Non-toy: implements real requirement for some task. For instance, 80 bytes of machine code which pop out a piece of bread when it toasts to a certain darkness level: non-toy.
bifrost 10y ago
Thats pretty relative to be honest. I remember using a variety of Linuxes back then and being pretty unhappy with the results. Stability was barely a possibility. Compared to SunOS it was like Windows 3.x
- vidarh 10y ago
  I had a bunch of Linux servers in the mid 90's that we only rebooted once in 3 years, because of an office move. I'm sure there were ways of making Linux crash back then, but stability was easy as long as you got hardware that was known to work.

MrTonyD 10y ago

It's easy to forget the early days of Linux. If you go back and read the articles of the time they often pointed out that Linux made a good print server. But that was about all it could do - get lpr-style requests and talk to a printer driver. I did a test port of Oracle to Linux and wrote up a white paper for Larry. Larry was trying to figure out how to get Bill to kill important features in SQLServer. So Larry and Scott and IBM and HP had a couple of floors of kernel engineers at Redwood Shores fixing Linux and submitting the changes until Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. But by that time we had already submitted enough to make Linux into a functioning product.

tobltobs 10y ago
> Bill agreed to make SQL Server work more poorly stop competing so aggressively. I might have been living under a rock and everybody but me already heard about this story. But I would expect that every HN reader would drop his coffee cup reading this for the first time. Is this true? Why had I never heard about it? Why should Bill do that?
varjag 10y ago
Curious what other things, aside from GNU and Linux, you fixed in passing on your corporate assignments.
- MrTonyD 10y ago
  I'm just a geek who grew up in Silicon Valley. I soldered and wire wrapped chips I picked up from Haltek/Halted and the sales offices of local chip manufacturers, and taught myself programming using switches to enter binary codes (before I bought a broken teletype and fixed it - paper tape was a huge improvement after using switches to program.)
nikanj 10y ago
I'm super curious about this. When was this, mid-90s?
patates 10y ago
well, it probably saved some lives by telling people that their printer was on fire