Linus Torvald's first usenet announcement about Linux 20 years ago today

[chuck2002]

http://www.thelinuxdaily.com/2010/04/the-first-linux-announcement-from-linus-torvalds/

 

[chuck2002]

I dabbled previously with various GUI driven Linux flavors, but it wasn't until Ubuntu about 4 years ago that I began to run a box and stick with it.
I ran it side by side with my XP box at work and synergy to share the keyboard and mouse.
About a year after I started this at work, my home computer blew up and I couldn't find my XP disk. I decided to load Ubuntu as my primary OS and use it until I found something I needed to do but couldn't in Ubuntu.
I still run it as my primary OS at home with another Win7 box that I start up when needed. -Mainly for IE only compatible web sites or to play some random game, but I am not a gamer.
It is amazing to think of what is and can be done with the various flavors of *nix software for absolutely no cost and the contributions of time, bandwidth, and other resources by hordes of coders, corporations others.

 

[lxskllr]

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

Can't call 'em all :^D

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow cool,incredible what it became since then, he must be proud. I know I would be.

 

[swanysto]

"and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks"

Little did he know.....

 

[earthman]

What's interesting is how many other apparently much better supported projects crashed and burned in that time: HURD, which is still not a usable system, Copeland at Apple, with all their supposed talent, and BeOS, which showed a lot of promise for a while. And what is successful? A guy's hobby college project.

 

[jhu]

I wonder how much more successful the *BSDs would have been if AT&T hadn't sued UC Berkeley?

 

[lxskllr]

A lot of Linux's success is due to GPL licensing. I don't really know the ins and outs of BSD licensing, but AFAIK code can be squirreled away, and made proprietary. The openness of GPL made sharing, and advancement possible.

 

[Nothinman]

BSD is still semi-successful in certain areas but it's less obvious because that fact is hidden behind brand names and no requirement to make any source changes available.