4 ms·

If it weren't for linux I don't think git would have gotten much traction. Much of the inertia git overcame was because it was pulled alongside linux.

• nwah1 5y ago
  It was legitimately better than anything else at the time it was created. Linus did have the advantage that people listen to him, and not everything that is better succeeds. But it isn't just a case of his popularity. Technical excellence was involved.
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    Mercurial is often preferred to git on purely technical grounds, so there's plenty of room to disagree about git being the best at what it does.
    • dasil003 5y ago
      I always thought of Mercurial as being better on UI grounds, never heard someone suggest it’s better technically.
• chunkyks 5y ago
  If it weren't for Linux, git wouldn't have existed; git was Torvalds scratching the itch that was needing a better way to manage the Linux source. He's an outspoken detractor of subversion [1], and after bitkeeper went pear-shaped [2], two projects sprang into being around the same time, solving the problem: Git, and Mercurial [3]. Whichever you think is better, when Torvalds converged on git as the choice for the kernel, the rest of the world could but follow. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/130746/ https://lwn.net/Articles/130746/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercurial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercurial
  • pseudalopex 5y ago
    The world followed GitHub. Not Linux.