11 ms·
What would you like to see most in minix? (1991)
- hyperbovine 13y agoWhat?
- gamegoblin 13y agoThis is a copy of the original post about Linux by Linus Torvalds, back when it was his toy pet project.
- hyperbovine 13y agoI gather. Is 22 years 16 hours 48 minutes 25 seconds significant in some way?
- Killswitch 13y agoYears, hours, minutes, and seconds since that post.
- nkuttler 13y agoSuch a time interval is commonly referred to as 'birthday'.
- acchow 13y agoDid you have a question?
- CodeCube 13y agoSay what again
- talles 13y agoI dare you I double-dare you, motherfucker
- sampk 13y agoOT: That movie has so much violence I couldn't watch it all and it made me cry. Then you Americans wonder why there's so much crime in your country.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sampk 13y agoHuh? It was just some constructive criticism, I wasn't being racist like you made it look like. Am South Asian and my country has so much shit going on that I won't even bother to criticise it. I just think that this violence crap should be censored instead of breasts or nudity. If you show that being a criminal is so cool and bad ass then don't expect anyone to not commit crimes. Many people would try to replicate what they see on TV.
- xj9 13y agoI don't know if it has anything to do with how violent our media is (I'm not convinced that watching violence makes one violent) but the fact that we've basically been at war for the last 30 years or so has really desensitized us to it, I feel.
- felixr 13y agoI think we need somebody to update the title every second or so...
- TeMPOraL 13y agoMaybe that will keep moderators busy enough so that they won't have time to break^H^H^H^H^Hedit titles of other submissions. </sarcasm>
- jacquesm 13y ago'improve' is the word you are looking for.
- wging 13y agoSometimes titles are improved by moderator intervention--other times it's the opposite. Sometimes titles lose bias, but sometimes they become inaccurate or generic-to-the-point-of-madness.
- Thrymr 13y agoI would argue that this title could be improved, quite a bit. edit: The original title was "22 years 16 hours 48 minutes 25 seconds ago". It has now been improved (IMO).
- redacted 13y agoExactly, """ 'improve' """ (with sarcasm quotes intact) is exactly the word many would use to describe moderation on HN.
- raldi 13y agoOr to express it visually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Elías_García_Martínez) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Elías_García_Martíne...
- lcasela 13y agoNice find.
- JonSkeptic 13y agoI have a hard time believing the authenticity of this, I didn't even see one insult or curse word.
- sidcool 13y agoLinus was good tempered back in those days. He still is, but he used to too.
- danielweber 13y agoI was expecting (incorrectly, I see now) that GP was referring to the other people in the thread -- why weren't they asking him why he was wasting his time on such a fucking stupid thing that no one ever needs?
- michaelgrafl 13y agoFor those unlucky souls who have yet to encounter the ingenious humor of Mitch Hedberg: this is a reference to the Mitch Hedberg quote that goes like this: "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too." Other notables (pulled from his Wikipedia entry): "I bought a $7 pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring." "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." "I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."
- BlackDeath3 13y ago"The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall."
- gus_massa 13y agoMost of the curses are because someone decided to break the userspace. No one had beaked back compatibility at that point.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mrt0mat0 13y agofascinating to look at the beginning of something that has become so huge. millions of phones run on a linux kernel, as well as all those tablets, pcs, and other random devices. i wonder if that email will ever go into a historic museum one day.
- dualogy 13y agoNot forgetting a vast amount of web servers..
- oz 13y agoWhat? I never knew that Linux & I were both born on August 26! (I'm older by a few years, though :)
- minikomi 13y agoHey, it's my birthday too. Happy birthday!
- oz 13y agoSame to you, my friend. Although hpaavola above is stealing some of our joy :)
- hpaavola 13y agoThe date header of that message says it was sent 25th of August: Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Which happens to be my birthday, except I'm 8 years older. :)
- oz 13y agoArgggggh! Damn You! Happy Birthday :)
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoYou know you're young when you download a tarball and can find files with a timestamp older than you.
- deathanatos 13y agoYeah, especially that timestamp "31 Dec 1969" — seems to be all over the place.
- grecy 13y agoI get people at work asking me about that on a weekly basis. I have the Picard facepalm printed in my cube.
- genericbrandx 13y agoQOTD - "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"
- jlas 13y agoI am guessing he was referring to the GNU OS, hurd. In retrospect this is quite funny considering hurd has yet to see a (production) release to this day. http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
- nkuttler 13y agoWell, he was probably referring to the Hurd, a kernel which was/is supposed to be the official kernel for GNU (not GNU OS btw). As Linux came with a GNU userland from the start and the discussion is specifically about the kernel it's hard to imagine he meant something else.
- johnyzee 13y agoReminds me of this guy writing a small web crawler in Java a couple of years ago: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO05LIU/ushhUIQQ-ogJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO0...
- epsylon 13y agoI must admit: I had to Google "Lawrence Page". Didn't strike me that Larry is the diminutive for Lawrence :-) edit: proof that he was successful, indeed, is that "to google" is a verb that comes more naturally to me when speaking English than common name diminutives.
- samstave 13y ago"To google": English, meaning "to co-read with your personal security agent shadow. To add to your digital dossier."
- dylangs1030 13y ago>'"To google": English, meaning "to co-read with your personal security agent shadow. To add to your digital dossier."' Can't we have one thread that doesn't get into this?
- techdragon 13y agoWhat other way to keep people thinking about it do we have?
- thenmar 13y agoYour entire post history is defending the NSA, snarky comments that add nothing such as '[citation needed]', and general negativity/patronizing 'well actually...' or 'I can't believe anyone...' type statements.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
- mrsmartypants 13y agohttps://plus.google.com/+Linux/posts/f96weYxzEu1 https://plus.google.com/+Linux/posts/f96weYxzEu1
- niuzeta 13y agoThis is like what Caesar's bellum gallicum was to historians...
- jason_tko 13y agoOne of the most enjoyable things about reading this that even in the first 3 usenet messages, Linus states engineering tradeoffs cleanly, simply and un-apologetically. All qualities that Linus was to become famous (and infamous) for, before Linux was even fully formed.
- FrankenPC 13y agoRack this up in the weird coincidence category. Saturday night me and an old buddy of mine were talking about EXACTLY this. The incarnation of LINUX.
- tootie 13y ago"Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies" The beginning of his verbal abuse seemed so innocent.
- platzhirsch 13y agoThe title is a great reminder that you don't have to wait for something to happen, just get out there are start cranking out stuff.
- zura 13y agoWhat would [not] happen if Minix was free...
- raverbashing 13y agoWell, let's see Won't support non AT-Disks Not portable, and needs an MMU Lame :)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mst 13y agoAnd that's why CmdrTaco would rather have a Nomad
- patmcguire 13y agoAll the 386-specific stuff seems like an argument in favor of "do things that don't scale."
- breckinloggins 13y agoVery much so. So many of my side projects get derailed due to thinking about scaling. I tend not to do web projects so "scaling" in my context is usually along the lines of "hmm, if I put this language feature in my compiler (that nobody knows about or uses and doesn't even work) I'm going to have to support it for years." Lame. The "do things that don't scale" article helped knock me out of this rut a bit. I suspect I'll knock myself out the rest of the way the more I remind myself that pre-mature worries like this are actually an advanced form of procrastination.
- asveikau 13y agoMy memory of 1990s Linux development is hazy (I was a young kid at the time), but my recollection is ~5 years after this post they paid a huge cost in effort to get it to work on Alpha, and after that the required effort to port to other stuff went down. So maybe it's more like "simple initial implementation, massive rewrite later". Edit: Also worth noting that the 386 was the first "modern" Intel CPU in terms of instruction set and interfaces provided to kernel developers, so requiring 32-bit CPU with an MMU excludes a lot of machines in 1991 but not so many machines in the years that followed. What he's saying is he won't port to 286 which is a very obvious decision but maybe not so much if your frame of reference was Minix. (Later on I do seem to remember there used to be a port of Linux to MMU-less varieties of 68K in the late 90s, like some of the other replies are asking for. Not sure how well it ever worked.)
- cwzwarich 13y agoA variant of Linux for CPUs without MMUs lives on as http://www.uclinux.org/ http://www.uclinux.org/.
- kristoffer 13y agoActually since about 2.6 uCLinux has been merged into the mainline kernel. Several MMU less targets are supported.
- sirsar 13y ago> just a recompilation of the kernel "just" Inconceivable now, with out-of-the-box systems e.g. Ubuntu, but this was fairly common relatively recently.
- deathanatos 13y agoRecompiling the Linux kernel is "inconceivable now"? If anything, I wonder if it didn't take longer to recompile back then. I'm lucky to have 8 very bored cores to throw at the job. He didn't.
- acheron 13y agoI compiled many FreeBSD kernels on a Pentium (no bloody Pro, II, III, or 4). That took long enough, but was several times faster than a 386.
- sirsar 13y agoGo ask someone running Ubuntu to recompile their kernel. 5 bucks says they don't know how. Hence, it would be inconceivable to them that everyone did it back in the day.
- qb45 13y agoActually, IMVHO, people still should run custom kernels because otherwise they turn into sissies who waste hours switching distributions every time they hit a driver bug.
- jlgreco 13y agoI think a strong case for "regular" Linux users being able to build there own kernels is that while most users don't need or want a "bleeding edge" userland, they often want a bleeding edge kernel. For example, I use Debian Stable because I hate having inconsequential stuff change out from under me every 6 months, but I need up-to-date kernels for my hardware to work. That is a niche (a large one I think) that is unfilled by the popular distros as far as I can tell.
- mikeevans 13y agoLinus made a post for the occasion on his G+ page: https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/Hy9pzJokRjc https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/Hy9pzJok...
- thought_alarm 13y agoI wonder if that post (or this post) will be around in 22 years (2035).
- daigoba66 13y agoImagine if Linux was built today the same way many contemporary startups are (particularly from a marketing perspective).
- lclarkmichalek 13y agolinux.io? Could work I guess.
- droopyEyelids 13y agoLinux.io is a social operating system with a beautiful minimalist interface that allows you and those closest to you to interact with the computers that matter
- asveikau 13y agolinuxly, the social network/unlicensed taxi service for your 386 processor.
- drivebyacct2 13y agoUgh, I just groaned out loud thinking about that. Freemium, closed source, just get enough users in a proprietary social graph and then ???? and then profit!
- pmelendez 13y agoThat's a very humble first post...
- deathanatos 13y agoEspecially given, > It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks I've always wondered about the humbleness in that post. Whenever I talk about something I've created, I try to be humble about it. That said, inside, I'm of course wishing that it becomes the biggest bestest piece of software that (insert favorite large tech company you want to see collapse here) never saw coming and eventually rules the world. I can't help but wonder if Linus was thinking that at the time.
- jasomill 13y agoReminds me of Alan Kay's attitude[1] in naming "Smalltalk": The name was also a reaction against the "IndoEuropean god theory" where systems were named Zeus, Odin, and Thor, and hardly did anything. I figured that "Smalltalk" was so innocuous a label that if it ever did anything nice people would be pleasantly surprised. [1] http://www.smalltalk.org/smalltalk/TheEarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk_III.html#OriginOfSmalltalksName http://www.smalltalk.org/smalltalk/TheEarlyHistoryOfSmalltal...
- rozzer 13y agoHere is a timeline of big events in the past http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html
- dpe82 13y agoSadly all of the links appear broken. Does anyone have an updated list anywhere?
- forrestpitz 13y agoThis is really fascinating. I would love to read these through. If anyone has an updated list, or a way to translate that would be amazing.
- ck2 13y agoThere is something disturbing about people being able to comment on a historical thread like that years later. Like someone scribbling on a precious museum artifact. Eh maybe I am being silly.
- ww2 13y agoagree. Those who replied "thanks" in the thread do not have any sense.
- geovizer 13y agoI'm not sure about that. Maybe Linus appreciated the encouragement. Depends on the person, but knowing that people like what you are doing can help motivate a hobby project.
- jcrites 13y agoThey're talking about people who replied years later (i.e., today, apparently as a result of this post on HN or other sites).
- gcb0 13y agoin 50 years, someone link to that thread and point out "the inventor of cold fusion replied 'thanks linus' on the linux creation thread"
- comex 13y agoNot to be confused with Jeremy Allaire, who did not. :)
- rodly 13y agoI believe that's why some forums have an archiving past a certain time of the last post. Although, I believe that if there was something interesting going on in the newer comments you might not feel so disturbed about it.
- Achshar 13y ago
- jasonlotito 13y agoFor those that like reading about these sorts of things, I highly recommend Just For Fun. It's a short book, but one I enjoy going back to every now and then to read. http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620724 http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionar...
- notfunk 13y agonice! just ordered a used copy =)
- bmmayer1 13y agoExcuse my ignorance, but how does a Google Group thread predate Google?
- cstuder 13y agoBy acquiring Deja News, which was a Usenet web client. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Deja_News http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups#Deja_News)
- dredmorbius 13y agoAnd more importantly: archive.
- pimeys 13y agoThe discussions are from USENET.
- _mayo 13y agoGoogle acquired Deja News in 2001 which was an archive of USENET groups. It eventually became Google Groups.
- mathattack 13y ago"just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu" Is there a bigger understatement in tech history? It certainly rivals Thomas Watson's alleged quote of the world market being "Approximately 5 computers".
- mongol 13y agoWhen he said that, did he mean "for all eternity" or "in the next fiscal year"?
- twic 13y agoOh, i don't know. He turned out 50% right.
- ErikAugust 13y agoIf we think of PCs as terminals and clusters of servers as "one computer" it's not way far off.
- reinhardt 13y agoI read the GP as referring to Linux being 50% right in the "big and professional" prediction.
- eksith 13y agoIf we take "Cloud" to mean "Computer" or rather "Disparate systems functioning as one", then he's almost right. How many people use AWS or Google Apps now? If it's true that more and more services are moving to the cloud and this trend won't change, there may well be "Approximately 5 computers" some time in the future.
- mseebach 13y agoIf we radically change the meaning of "right" then he's almost right. If right keeps its commonly accepted meaning then he's wrong. Even if we accept that AWS and Google is each one computer, there's still the ~3 devices of an average techie (smartphone, tablet, one or more laptops or desktop computers), all of which are definitely computers and works fully independently, we're going to end up many orders of magnitude north of "5".
- pearjuice 13y agoWhat you guys are referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
- saganus 13y agoRMS, is that you? :)
- recursive 13y agoHow do I use the GNU pieces on my Motorola Photon?
- pearjuice 13y agoPlease read https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.htm...
- recursive 13y agoThat link makes sense to me. "Android contains Linux, but not GNU." This quote from the article implies that it is not an error to refer to Linux without "GNU", since they are independent. In fact, it suggests that unconditional use of "GNU/Linux" are mistaken, since not all Linux implementations rely on GNU software.
- lcasela 13y agoThis is never gonna take off. Come back and post when you have a cutesy domain.
- nraynaud 13y agoI modern Linus-speak, I guess it would be: "Hi minix fucktards, I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be retarded like gnu) for stupid 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like you to take your stupid 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), print it on A4 paper, roll it and shove it up your ass. I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something as practical as having to re-compile the kernel to use a new printer within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want so that I can insult a larger audience in less posts. Any suggestions are welcome, as I like to teach Finish swearing. "
- jlgreco 13y agoFunny, though it is abundantly clear that you are not familiar with Linus's standard tone and vocabulary. A Linus email doesn't typically make news unless it is vitriolic. You have a selection bias.
- swcool888 13y agoAgree!
- asdfologist 13y agoIt's called a joke.
- michaelhoffman 13y agoAren't jokes usually funny?
- nraynaud 13y agofunniness is about the couple sender/receiver, not an intrinsic quality of the joke.
- 13y ago
- ics 13y agoI'm impressed by how well received it was, right off the bat. The first couple responses include actual offers of help! Maybe it's just because there are so many new projects posted here regularly but it seems rare to see that mix of humbleness and enthusiasm present in the thread.
- winter_blue 13y agoYea, the typical HN response in often highly critical and even quite discouraging at times.
- zorbo 13y agoI would put it as downright hostile and exceptionally cynical actually. Critical would be fine in itself. I once accidentally (by a third party) had an article of mine reach the front page of HN, and I was actually afraid of reading the comments. They were actually quite positive, which surprised me. That in itself seems like kind of a sad thing.
- mro 13y agoI was only six at the time, so I don't have first hand knowledge, but from what I gather there was no really free kernel/operating system at that time. Minix was under license restrictions, the BSDs was tied up in legal battles, and GNU was still on it's endless search for the perfect kernel. Linux was sorely needed at the time!
- cmbaus 13y agoThe other thing to remember was Windows was still 16 bit at the time. Linux started off as 32bit. Being free was great, but I would have also (and did) payed for a 32 bit operating system at the time. I actually used OS/2 in the mid-90s before moving to Linux. I can't stress enough how basic it was. Getting the kernel up and running was only 1/2 the battle. Getting X to run was a significant undertaking, and probably more difficult.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
- m0wfo 13y agoNot sure if this is a bit late, but I'd like to see ZFS support ;-)
- omegaham 13y agoI've always been fascinated by "made it big" stories. It doesn't really matter which genre - every story is unique. From a band that goes from playing in dive bars to playing in arenas to a web startup like Facebook, it's interesting. And it's really cool to see things like this because it's history. Maybe it's also a reminder that you don't have to be a corporate team with focus groups and handsome funding to make something that people want. Even if it's extremely unlikely, it still gives the same feelings that a vintage "Radiohead - playing tonight in Mickey's Beer Cave" poster inspires in a struggling band. They were in your shoes, and they made it big. Maybe you can too if you work hard enough. Sure, there was a lot of luck involved... but it's possible.
- state 13y agoI have always thought of this as one of the best ways to start off a project. Be humble, ask for feedback, and share your work.
- loser777 13y agoThat insistence on his operating system being NOT portable put a nice smile on my face.
- ivanbrussik 13y agoBSD sockets first feature request ever
- nrivadeneira 13y agoIt'll be interesting to look back on StackOverflow posts one day to find little gems like this where users are trying to get help on what may become the next Google or Facebook.
- dpweb 13y agoThe guy creates Linux and Git. A true hero.