Being able to install a UNIX-type operating system on my personal computer, one that was <i>free</i>, was a life-changing experience for me.<p>At the time there were prohibitively expensive UNIX operating systems on the market, many of which required even more expensive proprietary hardware to run on, and then you'd have to fork out even <i>more</i> money for a compiler.<p>An enormous thanks to Linus and the GNU team for changing all of that and making this accessible to pretty much anyone crazy enough to try and install it on their computer.
Linux is amazing! From 86% of the world's smartphones to pretty much all of the top500 supercomputers to millions of Chromebooks in schools to tens of millions of critical servers to umpteen embedded uses I've never even heard of!<p>Linus must be considered one of the greatest project managers ever (seriously!)...results don't lie. His manner is almost identical to Leslie Groves, who managed both the construction of the Pentagon and then the Manhattan Project (greatest engineering project in history). Some tasks seem to demand people who don't need to be liked.<p>It is just incredible that we can use something as awesome as Linux in a free and open manner.<p>Thanks Linus! I don't care if you're a jerk, you deliver like a freaking boss!
Linux and Linus are amazing, but let's give our props to another humongous catalyst to the open-source, free software movement: Stallman and gcc.<p>RMS and his grudge against the brain drain at MIT single-handedly changed the free software movement forever.
Ah, google groups, the only reliable way to download more than a megabyte of data to render 1kb of text.<p>Somewhere, I still have a copy of this message, from when it appeared in my newsreader. It would be an interesting exercise in archaeology to see if modern linux has the tools to mount that old filesystem... guess the rest of today's productivity will have to take a back seat.
I'm not usually nostalgic but my circa 1994 Slackware CD distro is special.<p>Incidentally I can't overemphasize how far basic sysadmin skills will get you.
It's really amusing to see Linus in humble, I'm not really worthy, it's just a hobby, it might be interesting to someone perhaps, etc. mode.
Huh. What am I going to do with this old 386. This article says this..."Linux" thing will work on it.<p>Damn. That's a lot of floppies.<p>Well, I'll be damned. It works! Let's see if I can't get this Apache web server (what silly names! Tee hee!) to go.<p>Ha! That works better than (whatever I was using - I forget).<p>(still using it)
Been a full time Linux user for over a year now. Windows 10 pushed me off the Microsoft treadmill. The future is Linux, everything else will be an historical oddity.
I love all the parentheses (including nested parentheses!) in that introduction post from Linus, and how he's careful to make it clear that it's just a hobby and not professional.
Remember getting Linux root and boot diskette images via FTP mail (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTPmail" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTPmail</a>) and downloading them using UUCP on a "superfast" 9600 baud dialup connection. Thx Linus!
Can someone explain how there's a post in the middle of this from before it all started?<p>"Thanks for creating Linux." 24/06/2011 John
> Most of these seem possible (the tty structure already has stubs for window size), except maybe for the user-mode filesystems<p>And thus Linus dug a hole out of which Linux has only recently begun to clamber.