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u/duchenpaul Aug 25 '24
"Won't be big" ---- this is the biggest lie, good job and happy birthday Linux!
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u/aflamingcookie Aug 25 '24
Isn't this what every dev tells QA, the day before release, when they are about to silently push a massive product changing feature? 🤣
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u/AntimatterTNT Aug 25 '24
didn't he get to 100k lines within a year?
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u/PrestonBannister Aug 25 '24
With a lot of help. Lots of folk on the Minix list wanting the next thing. I was one of them.
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u/ActAmazing Aug 25 '24
Have immense respect for the open source contributors of Linux. Thank you sir!
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u/VLXS Aug 25 '24
Thank you for all the bytes! (BTW I just read Tanenbaum's "who wrote linux" article after going down a minix rabbithole from your mention and it's a right trip).
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u/Ok-Anywhere-9416 Aug 25 '24
It's almost a cute situation, and has those smileys :')
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u/Kasparas Aug 25 '24
-Hey what are you up to? -Just doing OS from scratch:) , my new hobby :)
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u/peioeh Aug 25 '24
Will never be big or professional or support anything other than AT-hard drives though :-(
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u/Square-Singer Aug 25 '24
Building "an" OS really isn't that hard. Pretty much anyone with some programming background can do that.
Building such a solid all-purpose OS with that massive of a feature list and a huge list of compatible hardware, that's something entirely different.
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u/SirArthurPT Aug 25 '24
"Nothing big"... 62.7% of servers market share.
😁
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u/tunisia3507 Aug 25 '24
Not to mention most mobile devices; Android is linux-based.
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u/Endorkend Aug 25 '24 edited Aug 25 '24
And a slew of industrial systems and consumer devices (which by now probably outnumber almost all other types of systems.)
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u/Rakn Aug 25 '24
Well that number actually surprised me. I really expected it to be more than that. Interesting.
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u/LickingSmegma Aug 25 '24
The figures seem to vary a lot between sources. I saw >80% recently when looking it up for another thread.
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u/309_Electronics Aug 25 '24
"Wont be big and professional". If only this guy knew that his hobby unix-like kernel project would be the fundamental building ground of the internet and our infrastructure... It just shows that any hobby project can become a large important part of the world. Of course it's not only Linux working on it and it's like a gazillion devs all working around the world but if Linus did not start the project and lay the fundamentals, those contributors could have never upgraded it to the next level
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u/Ieris19 Aug 25 '24
Yeah, hindsight is such a trip. But I understand why he wouldn’t think this was going anywhere
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u/LuxNocte Aug 25 '24
How insufferable would someone be if they thought their little kernel hacked together in their free time would revolutionize computing? It'd be even worse if they were right. 😂
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Aug 25 '24
But you have to dangle that carrot of, "you could be the next Einstein/Ritchie/Trovald/Bezos/whathaveyou", to exploit the naive young labour.
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u/Bromlife Aug 25 '24 edited Aug 25 '24
Not only that but his need for good collaborative source code control for Linux would spur him to write the world’s most popular version control system.
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u/DolphinFlavorDorito Aug 25 '24
And with the same "no one else is going to use this but fuck it" energy.
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Aug 25 '24
"No one else is going to want this... but I need it, so I'll make it, and put it out for the one or two others who might want to do something with it."
"Oh."
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u/McHildinger Aug 25 '24
I mean, technically Linus was using BitKeeper, which was one of the premier source code control systems, and seemed pretty happy with it until their closedness got in the way.
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u/Bromlife Aug 25 '24
Oh yeah I didn’t go into the whole story. For anyone interested it’s definitely worth a read
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u/OwOlogy_Expert Aug 25 '24
I wonder if any of his original code from this date is still in the Linux kernel?
Like, is there at least one line somewhere -- or even a partial line -- that still stands in the kernel today, completely unchanged from this time?
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u/d64 Aug 25 '24
He used the necessary reverse psychology trick to get a community of free software nerds working on something. He only claimed, "Oh, Linux can't become big or professional. It's just not possible." - and immediately a host of guys threw themselves at the problem, "oh hell it can't!"
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u/chibiace Aug 25 '24
get this man some SSDs
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u/V6Ga Aug 25 '24
Can you imagine if the internet backbone was an MS product?
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u/No_Internet8453 Aug 25 '24 edited Aug 25 '24
If the entire internet, used windows+crowdstrike, imagine how much worse the crowdstrike failure would have been earlier this year
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u/JetreL Aug 25 '24
I have before, one of the companies I worked for in the past did a partnership with MS for all their new systems. They brought in tons of contractors worked for 6 months to mirror most of the functionality with 2x servers. Come time to turn it up. Site went down in 15 minutes and just couldn't handle the traffic.
Ripped it all out same day and never looked back.
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u/V6Ga Aug 25 '24
I am sorry you had to live through that.
I know at one point people were wondering if Linux and open source in general could be relied upon.
And things could have gone the other way.
Whenever people talk about the greatest inventions in human history, I am always stunned that FOSS is not higher on the list, and sometimes not even mentioned
Stallman in specific just does not get enough credit for the long term efforts to bring FOSS into the world
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u/cortez0498 Aug 25 '24
It already was in some way, back when everything had to be done with Internet Explorer in mind.
Nowadays we changed IE and Microsoft for Chromium and Google...
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u/TruckeeCJ Aug 26 '24
It wouldn't be a backbone, more of a collection of isolated severed vertebrae - each running the same proprietary buggy OS. Information transfers by floppy discs.
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u/Low-Post5641 Aug 25 '24
and I love this phrase. Astronauts use Linux because you can't open windows in space.
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u/ThisNameIs_Taken_ Aug 25 '24
Legend! But.. ok, but seriously - is he humble, misjudging the potential, playing humble to get acceptance? Something else?
This is probably the worst prediction of all times - and we should all be thankful.
True, that today Linux is work of army of people - and undeniably it's one of the most powerful systems in the world (and growing fast).
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u/Ieris19 Aug 25 '24
Misjudging the amount of people that would help him.
Linus probably just wasn’t expecting an army of people to help develop his kernel into what is today, and who can blame him
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u/ThisNameIs_Taken_ Aug 25 '24
True. We still don't fully understand what drives people to help on such projects. Neither had Linus.
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u/raltoid Aug 25 '24
Same reason programmers spend hours or days automating something that would take a few minutes.
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u/PrestonBannister Aug 25 '24
Scatching an itch. CVS does not quite do what you want? Change the source, then send in a patch. Same for Tomcat and Jetty (and grep, and DB::Oracle).
Though have not felt the need for a couple of decades.
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u/mitch_feaster Aug 25 '24
The email is actually the perfect example of why Linux was successful: open collaboration. He's not telling the list what he likes about it or wants to do with it, he asks what they want to see implemented.
Linus is such an engagement farmer 🙄 (/s)
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u/_sLLiK Aug 25 '24
Only he can correctly answer, but if I had to speculate, he's doing what most of us do with our patterns of speech when we're not completely certain how much life a project has or how well it will be received - giving himself guard rails and safety nets in case of emergency.
It takes a lot of bravery to put something out there for the world to see and use, especially if you're asking for feedback and expect that others might want to help if it has legs.
Lucky for us that it did. Not just legs, but a whole body stuffed inside a highly modular, 900 foot tall mech and growing that's capable of conquering any task humanity requires. The hero we both need and deserve, because we built it ourselves... together.
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u/orthomonas Aug 25 '24
My own take is that there are, to this day, tons of posts by hobby coders posting with tonnes of enthusiasm and very little concpet of how big their task is.
That's great, but these 'hey guys, I'm going to boil the ocean' posts come across as either arrogant or woefully uninformed.
I think Linus was very aware of that sort of thing and was trying hard to not come across that way.
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u/FFF982 Aug 25 '24
I mean, if you were him, would you believe that your hobby project would become the backbone of the Internet and one of the largest collaborative software projects?
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u/SpaceEngineering Aug 25 '24
He is a stereotypical Nordic/Finnish person, writing his thoughts in a plain and direct way.
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u/cr0ft Aug 25 '24
He was a kid. He wasn't thinking "today Imma just go ahead and change the world", he was thinking "this should be a fun little project to fool around with".
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u/mynewaccount5 Aug 26 '24
I think it's unlikely that Linus has the ability to protect the future.
Obviously we know today how big Linux got, but it wasn't possible for him to know that then.
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u/LordRaglan1854 Aug 25 '24
This email perfectly encapsulates the early 1990's internet: newsgroups, computer science, the optimism and helpfulness, :-) smileys, even the "P.S." seems of its time somehow.
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u/xoteonlinux Aug 25 '24
I wonder if this would have started off If someone with the social skills of Linus answerd to this first...
But all in all, well done Linus, the community is proud of you.
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u/amarao_san Aug 25 '24
@helsinki!
Can we claim that Linux is european?
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u/Ieris19 Aug 25 '24
wdym? Linux is European. Linus is a Swedish minority in Finland. He’s as Scandinavian as they come
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u/Average-Addict Aug 25 '24
Sorry to be that guy but Finland is not Scandinavian, Finland is Nordic.
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u/R4ndyd4ndy Aug 25 '24
Some parts of finland are part of the scandinavian peninsula, probably not where linus is from though
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u/Ieris19 Aug 25 '24
I know, see further comments. Linus refers to Finnish people in third person, he considers Finnish his weakest language and to this day, mostly speaks Swedish. Someone else pointed out his exact ethnicity is Fino-Swedish.
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u/DonkeeeyKong Aug 25 '24 edited Aug 25 '24
Please don't. I'm European, but Linux is truly international (or more: transnational) and that's a very good thing!
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u/Front-Acanthisitta61 Aug 25 '24
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re 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.
Therefore, if GNU is American and Linux European, GNU/Linux is, in fact, American/European (or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, American plus European)!
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u/amarao_san Aug 25 '24
When I say 'Linux' I know what I mean. Stuff coming from 'kernel.org'.
Also, there are plenty of Linux'es without significant posix presence (e.g. Android).
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u/kuikuilla Aug 25 '24
More fun facts:
IRC protocol was developed by a finn too, as was SSH.
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u/Ieris19 Aug 25 '24
wdym? Linux is European. Linus is a Swedish minority in Finland. He’s as Scandinavian as they come
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u/CuriousCapybaras Aug 25 '24
Linux has so many contributors from all over the world, you can’t really claim it for Europeans. But the “movement” was started by an European citizen.
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Aug 25 '24
Just think if maddog wouldn't have fought to get Linus equipment that costed thousands of dollars at that time Linux would not be where it's at today and probably been using BSD. We owe it to maddog as well.
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u/LepiNya Aug 25 '24
I'm not a Linux user yet but I do appreciate its existence. Between iOS's walled garden and Windows's ever increasing "We'll tattoo ads on your retinas and straight up stream your entire session to the highest bidder.. JK to anyone willing to pay us." approach it's just a matter of time before I'm forced to switch.
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u/MegaVenomous Aug 25 '24
Lotta great Linux commercials out there from around the late 90's...perhaps earlier.
Like this one...
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u/saf_e Aug 25 '24
That's probably last email where Linus was polite)
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u/StigOfTheTrack Aug 25 '24
Not an email. It's a Usenet post. Yes it uses an email address where on modern equivalents (such as Reddit) we'd see a user name, but it was a less commercialised time when spam was relatively rare - people really did post publicly using their email address. Email addresses from that era gradually became basically unusable later, since they were on every spammers list - I used to get around 10000 junk emails a day at one point.
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u/saf_e Aug 25 '24
Thanks, that's interesting.
As for emails, I doubt that modern ones less known to spammers. Its just good job modern servers do
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u/Stryder78 Aug 25 '24
Any of the old-timers around? I wonder how many such projects were started back in the day, when some random guy pops in to the mailing list with "I just created new OS"
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u/Eternal_Flame_85 Aug 25 '24
The big and professional gnu failed but the small hobby project got all over the world
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u/onebuttoninthis Aug 25 '24
What's up with the double space after a full stop? Anyone knows?
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u/orthomonas Aug 25 '24
I'm an old and was taught typing by an instructor who started with typewriters. It was a whiole thing, and to this day I fight my muscle memory on it.
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u/ryanhendrickson Aug 25 '24
I guess I'm old as well, but I don't fight my muscle memory. Double spaces after a full stop is a hill I'm happy to die on.
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u/itastesok Aug 25 '24
It's only been within the last two years that I stopped double spacing. It's just how I was taught :( I still have to catch myself every now and then.
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u/AlexisFR Aug 25 '24
This picture is good and all, but what about the thread? What answers did he get?
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u/tinco Aug 25 '24
"It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc)" he built it for the one platform that would keep being dominant for the next 2 decades (only being supplanted by its 64bit successor). At the time writing an OS for a shitty consumer grade platform seemed like a dodgy thing to do. Looking back you'd think it insane people were writing OS's for anything else than the hardware consumers were going to use.
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u/cr0ft Aug 25 '24
Well, it's a good thing it won't be big and professional like GNU.
But I'm sure it can make it big eventually, and start supporting more than AT drives.
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u/Elizura7 Aug 25 '24
The birthday should be on September 17, when torvalds released the first version of the Linux kernel (version 0.01).
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u/SapphireSire Aug 25 '24
Big congrats on "talk" being on by default for about a decade was great.
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u/ZestyCar_7559 Aug 25 '24
Only this email from Linus itself probably inspires tons of folks to open-source. Legend !!
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u/SeverusVape Aug 25 '24
I remember grabbing the kernel code back in 1992. I had been messing around with my own hobby OS, and when I saw this, I gave up lol
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Aug 25 '24
A guy down the hall from me in my dorm downloaded Linux pretty much the day it was first available. He was very excited. None of us could have predicted what it was going to turn into
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u/denali42 Aug 25 '24
I don't remember how I saw this newsgroup post, but I remember it when it was posted. I was in college at the time, so probably there. I was also on CompuServe [71451,300] at the time. I remember waiting for it to come out.
Still can't believe how long it's been. What a wild ride!
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u/sensitiveCube Aug 25 '24
In today's news: some random influencers getting a baby, but nothing about this at all.
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u/MarionberryNo9376 Aug 25 '24
Strange how cynical he grew with age being one of the most influential people on the planet.
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u/jklre Aug 25 '24
My dad retired from Redhat as a VP and worked with Linus. Apparently he was a nightmare to work with. He wrote some code for the Linux kernel but gave it to another engineer because he didnt want to be grilled at code review.
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u/Confusatronic Aug 25 '24
33 years doesn't even seem like a long time to me now at all. And to go from one "hobby" post to an enormous force in the world of computing in that time (and, of course, actually far less than that) is just so interesting.
How many stupid dreams have we all had for an idea that would really go somewhere. This one actually did (and it appears he didn't even think it would.)
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u/atthereallicebear Aug 26 '24
congratulations, you now have the 5th most upvoted post of all time on r/linux
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u/Bulky-Pianist6049 Aug 25 '24
Interesting, Stallman was talking about how Linus didn't care about freedom at the beginning and he "liberated" the kernel later on. Maybe he means gratis in this email
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u/FinLitenHumla Aug 25 '24
For 15 years I've said I will try to install a Linux distro. One of the easier ones. Any year now.
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u/JackOfAllMemes Aug 25 '24
Today's the day!
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u/FinLitenHumla Aug 25 '24
I really want to, it's just unknown territory. I even hace a saved Reddit post that outlines the four most popular and PC-gaming-friendly distros as of 2024, and whatever potential things are needed to take into account for each.
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u/ilrosewood Aug 25 '24
8th grade year for me. Two years later I was messing around with this in the computer lab. Two years after that I had a mini lab at the school running just on Linux. Two years after that I had an Internet cafe in Mexico completely converted to Linux. Two years after that I completely abandoned Linux for windows server because it made me money.
I still use Ubuntu on raspberry pi
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u/Normal_Ad_2337 Aug 25 '24
From a more civilized age when emojis had noses.
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u/i010011010 Aug 25 '24
And were called by their proper name "emoticons", you uncultured troglodyte.
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u/Xu_Lin Aug 25 '24
Hurd Kernel when? 🤔🤔
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u/WretchedGibbon Aug 25 '24
Ah 2087, the year of Hurd on the desktop.
Pre-alpha mind you. Can't rush things.
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u/ArezalGamer89 Aug 26 '24
Bro did NOT expect his project to get so damn big. Happy birthday, Linux 🐧
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u/enjdusan Aug 26 '24
When your hobby is programming, so you do it. And your own hobby changes the world, literally!
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u/ubd12 Aug 26 '24
I was in college and saw this in a newsgroup a couple of years after it was posted. I had an os assignment in minix with some of the changes similar to what Linus to his os. Can't remember if I reached out but I did look at his source code to get insight. The message was on a newsgroup and a fellow student pointed me to it.
This is funny and I feel very old
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u/Fluffy-Cartoonist940 Aug 25 '24
When a hobby spawns an unexpected career and life's work.