Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux.
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.
It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.
What a lovely journey 🤍
won’t be big and professional like gnu
that didn’t age well
I appreciate the absolute humility though
Sure it aged well. WAY WAY BIGGER than gnu.
Weight your words my friend! GNU’s a behemoth !
GCC alone is almost as big as Linux. Add core/binutils, the Hurd, … And you easily outclass the kernel itself !
~ $ du -sh linux-6.4.12/ gcc-13.2.0/ 1.5G linux-6.4.12/ 1.1G gcc-13.2.0/Oh, and Emacs.
Speaking as someone that doesn’t understand computers very well: is Hurd usable as a kernel nowadays?
Yes if you cherry pick the hardware :)
What is actually the point of using hurd other than being able to say you use Hurd though?
Maybe it hurds in a good way.
Nah, it’s a kernel it does kernel stuff and does not offer anything a normal user notices compared to other kernels.
It might be interesting for people who work on kernels just to see different ways on how to solve common problems.
afaik microkernels have a security advantage since kernel modules do not share the same address space as the main kernel or other modules
Hurd is not a monolithic kernel, so it’s an interesting technical endeavor. It’s also a GNU package which means it’s guaranteed to stay libre.
Hurd is also a smaller project relative to linux without the many eyes of the Linux board members.
Possibly licensing reasons. Linux is GPLv2 only, Hurd seems to be GPLv2 or later, there could be reasons you may want to use something under the GPLv3.
That’s debatable, since what people generally call “Linux” is more GNU than Linux anyway. “Linux” as the Linux fandom considers is it big and professional like GNU, because it is GNU (among other things).
Allow me to interject for a moment…
I mean the GPL allowed linux to become a commercial entity. And the whole “professional” outlook is because theres a ton of companies who contribute either funds or development to the project.
But what about Linux distributions compiled without GNU tools? Most popular Linux distribution’s kernel currently is compiled with Clang, not GCC, and as far as I am aware does not include anything from GNU. Of course Linux is historically influenced by GNU, but in current day and age they are orthogonal
It doesn’t change the larger point that GNU is way bigger than Linux, though. There are a tonne of things that are larger than Linux, and GNU is one of them.
That is an entirely different argument which I did not contest and the comment I have answered to did not make
EDIT: Although, it depends on what we define as “bigger”. Binary size is certainly bigger, but user adoption is abysmal comparatively.
but user adoption is abysmal comparatively
I guess this is a matter of perspective. What I was saying in my previous comment is that what people commonly refer to as “Linux” (as in “Linux distributions”) is not just Linux (which is just a kernel) but also includes a bunch of other stuff, including GNU (that is what GNU/Linux refers to). If you’re talking about the actual thing called Linux, you’d be right, because most GNU systems are GNU/Linux systems, whereas arguably most Linux systems are not GNU systems; Alpine and Android are non-GNU Linux systems.
However, if like many in the Linux fandom you discount Android, then most Linux systems are GNU systems and vice-versa.
Why would I discount the most popular applications of the kernel? That is almost the whole userbase
hi rms
And this:
and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks
Well, Linux is 32 years old; GNU goes back to 1984, and Unix all the way back to 1970! The history of this OS is much older than Linus Torvalds’s involvement; he “only” created and maintains the most popular kernel.
But yes, happy birthday to Linux. Many thousands have contributed to making this operating system what it is today and they all have my utmost thanks for it.
It is a happy coincidence that the evening before the 1970s began, at 4pm Pacific, they decided to invent UNIX.
The world didn’t exist before 1970.
How so?
I think it’s a joke about how UNIX timestamps work. They count milliseconds from January 1st 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, which is 4pm the day before in PST. So the happy coincidence is that they invented UNIX at the very millisecond when its clock starts.
There, ruined the joke.
Oh right, the UNIX epoch actually starts when UNIX was invented
Somehow, I didn’t expect that…
Are you sure unix will be created in the year 3.843063914 E+5636(1970!)
How would anything even survive 3.843063914 E+5636 years after the end of the universe to make unix
They misspoke: Hurd will be usable in year 1970!
My brain gets numb when I start thinking about all the branches that have come from Unix… and the branches from those branches and so on.
What are AT-harddisks? Google is not helpful.
deleted by creator
Aka PATA or IDE hard disks. Basically consumer grade kit.
The statement that the kernel would only ever handle IDE was basically a confession that this would never be a product suitable for enterprise or professional use where SCSI was the typical interface.
To be fair, it’s actually not suitable for professional use. That’d be an understatement, it’s damn perfect for literally everything!
except running solidworks 🥲
Yet…
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie
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 :-(.
Famous last words
*protable
Imagine making a typo and it continually being shared and highlighted for over 30 years.
Kinda makes me glad I’ll never be famous for anything.
TIL Linus B. Torvalds is anti-table
The Linus that was promised.
It’s a shame. Linus was and is far more deserving of respect for his contributions to technology than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Probably even Woz. But he’s by far down the line in terms of fame and fortune. Except maybe Woz.
Watch some of the interviews in his home office. Dude is a happy dad with a nice family. Meanwhile a lot of tech billionaires are miserable. I’d say the respect he’s earned by not selling out is worth more than mainstream success. Linux and Linus are just the right size.
Fair point. Out of all the tech legends, Linus (and Woz) seem the happiest.
They seem to have their priorities in the right place, living a happy comfortable human life instead of trying to mimic the exploit-profit-control-infiniteGrowth-fullThrottle24/7 priorities of the companies they started/own/work for.
I have a feeling he’s more okay with having less fortune though. Just the impression I get about him.
I can’t imagine he’s struggling for money, he’s a smart guy and wrote an OS used in some capacity by so many corporations
He’s probably written books that sell quite well
What books has Linus written?
Google search found “Just for fun the story of an accidental revolutionary” by Linus torvalds as the first result
My point was more that there are absolutely ways he can make money off Linux’s success
They meant gain wealth like apple founders or any other big tech. Believe he derives a salary from Linux foundation for his work. I don’t imagine that being anything comparable to owning large percentage of a tech company.
True but he’s also going to make more than enough to live comfortably I’m sure
Don’t need to be a billionaire to have a good comfortable life
Didn’t mean he wasnt earning well. Just clarified what the original comment meant.
“He oversees and has final say over every line of code [of Linux] to this day. The Linux Foundation pays Linus around $1.5 million per year to support the software.”
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/linus-torvalds-net-worth/
He has an estimated net worth of $150 million.
https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tutorials/linux/linus-torvalds-net-worth
sniffle They grow up so fast!
Posted via android.
It’s as if it was only yesterday that I watched him flip nvidia off.
Posted via arch.
He should do it again
Quoting from memory: “Remember the times when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?”
Beb.nk. m am …z zz
If we are marking the birth of Linux and trying to call it GNU / Linux, we should remember our history.
Linux was not created with the intention of being part of the GNU project. In this very announcement, it says “not big and professional like GNU”. Taking away the adjectives, the important bit is “not GNU”. Parts of GNU turned out to be “big and professional”. Look at who contributes to GCC and Glibc for example. I would argue that the GNU kernel ( HURD ) is essentially a hobby project though ( not very “professional” ). The rest of GNU never really not that “big” either. My Linux distro offers me something like 80,000 packages and only a few hundred of them are associated with the GNU project.
What I wanted to point out here though is the license. Today, the Linux kernel is distributed via the GPL. This is the Free Software Foundation’s ( FSF ) General Public License—arguably the most important copyleft software license. Linux did not start out GPL though.
In fact, the early goals of the FSF and Linus were not totally aligned.
The FSF started the GNU project to create a POSIX system that provides Richard Stallman’s four freedoms and the GPL was conceived to enforce this. The “free” in FSF stands for freedom. In the early days, GNU was not free as in money as Richard Stallman did not care about that. Richard Stallman made money for the FSF by charging for distribution of GNU on tapes.
While Linus Torvalds as always been a proponent of Open Source, he has not always been a great advocate of “free software” in the FSF sense. The reason that Linus wrote Linux is because MINIX ( and UNIX of course ) cost money. When he says “free” in this announcement, he means money. When he started shipping Linux, he did not use the GPL. Perhaps the most important provision of the original Linux license was that you could NOT charge money for it. So we can see that Linus and RMS ( Richard Stallman ) had different goals.
In the early days, a “working” Linux system was certainly Linux + GNU ( see my reply elsewhere ). As there was no other “free” ( legally unencumbered ) UNIX-a-like, Linux became popular quickly. People started handing out Linux CDs at conferences and in universities ( this was pre-WWW remember ). The Linux license meant that you could not charge for these though and, back then, distributing CDs was not cheap. So being an enthusiastic Linux promoter was a financial commitment ( the opposite of “free” ).
People complained to Linus about this. Imposing financial hardship was the opposite of what he was trying to do. So, to resolve the situation, Linus switched the Linux kernel license to GPL.
The Linux kernel uses a modified GPL though. It is one that makes it more “open” ( as in Open Source ) but less “free” ( as in RMS / FSF ).
Switching to the GPL was certainly a great move for Linux. It exploded in popularity. When the web become a thing in the mid-90’s, Linux grew like wild fire and it dragged parts of the GNU project into the limelight wit it.
As a footnote, when Linus sent this announcement that he was working on Linux, BSD was already a thing. BSD was popular in academia and a version for the 386 ( the hardware Linus had ) had just been created. As BSD was more mature and more advanced, arguably it should have been BSD and not Linux that took over the world. BSD was free both in terms or money and freedom. It used the BSD license of course which is either more or less free than the GPL depending on which freedoms you value. Sadly, AT&T sued Berkeley ( the B in BSD ) to stop the “free”‘ distribution of BSD. Linux emerged as an alternative to BSD right at the moment that BSD was seen as legally risky. Soon, Linux was reaching audiences that had never heard of BSD. By the time the BSD lawsuit was settled, Linux was well on its way and had the momentum. BSD is still with us ( most purely as FreeBSD ) but it never caught up in terms of community size and / or commercial involvement.
If not for that AT&T lawsuit, there may have never been a Linux as we know it now and GNU would probably be much less popular as well.
Ironically, at the time that Linus wrote this announcement, BSD required GCC as well. Modern FreeBSD uses Clang / LLVM instead but this did not come around until many, many years later. The GNU project deserves its place in history and not just on Linux.
The BSD license allows incorporation of BSD code in non-free projects. That was both an advantage for capitalists while simultaneously moving hobbyists away from it’s development. Kind of an important bit of info.
Something is open source or isn’t. There’s a set, binary definition.
I get the feeling you’re implying a difference/aversion between those two terms which doesn’t exist. This and the combination with a nonsensical statement about amount of GNU packages vs non-GNU packed makes it feel like you’re pushing an agenda here: There’s far more free software than just GNU’s - that’s a success for free software and the GNU project. There’s no connect between the argument you’re obviously implying.
Also HURD never took off - but why should it? The GNU project’s goal is a fully free operating system, with Linux being persuaded to adopt a proper license there’s no real need for HURD. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun project.Which two terms? Everyone has an agenda but I am not sure what I am being accused of here. Do you mean Free Software vs Open Source? The FSF goes to great lengths to distinguish between those two terms:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html
I am pretty sure my usage is consistent with the owners and creators of those terms. Have I made an error?
The error is in saying something is made “more open source”. The definition:
https://opensource.org/osd/
Does your license uphold these rules? It’s open source. Does it not? It isn’t.deleted by creator
That is not correct. Who is this “they” you are talking about? The OSI?
Open source is a term with a definition - which has been written by software freedom advocates by the way.
With free software you have politics and a philosophy, in which somebody can have more freedom or less with a piece of software. I really wouldn’t confuse that with the practicability of the OSI definition.
Copyleft or push-over is a whole separate topic. Copyleft might be favoured by software freedom enthusiasts, but I disagree with your idea of separation through that. Even if you don’t care about software freedom, you could like the practical effects of the AGPL.
I feel like you’re spreading at least misguiding information here.deleted by creator
These statements do not contradict anything I have said. Some people are pragmatic, some dogmatic about software freedom. So what?
Another correction since I am on a roll: Linux can’t switch from GPLv2. There are too many copyright holders, you’d never be able to contact all of them and get them to agree to a license change. Even if Linus Torvalds wanted to change, which I honestly don’t think would be a sensible thing to do in his position.
Open source is one thing but “free” is a lot of things.
Can this be the new GNU/Linux copypasta?
This is an interesting piece of history that I have never seen. Thanks for sharing
That makes Linux a Leo. Someone who cares about that tell me what that means
It means low earth orbit. You’re welcome.
pretty sure there’s lots of linux running there
Means it has positive polarity, fixed modality, and fire triplicity. Don’t you know nothing?
might as well be any Pokemon
I choose Empoleon, the penguin
Isn’t the end date for Leo the 23rd? So shouldn’t it be Virgo instead?
I NEVER CLAIMED TO GOOD AT THIS LOL. perfect
Read as Law Enforcement Officer. And I was, huh? Then it hit me. Ah, the zodiac…
Horoscopes for August 25, 1991
Leo
Today, and forevermore, you will be the subject of many arguments on the internet.
Ah yes, the guy they named Linus Tech Tips after. 😇
/s
Love to see this piece of history!
I mean Linus Torvalds is older than my Father, that shocked me.
Seems like only yesterday I was co-admining my first public server in 1996.
Fun times.
Good on you. I was still watching cartoons in 1996. To be fair I matured very late (if ever).
