Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old
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 🤍
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
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.
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.
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!
No way Linux is 32! I remember when it first came out and it was just...oh.
Don't mind me, I'll just be here yelling at the cloud.
Sigh, my condolences. I’m shouting right beside you. I first learned about linux in 1993 in college. I got it working on a shiny new 486 with super vga graphics. We were allowed access to the college’s aix mainframes and thus the internet via a slip connection - but only through Unix like systems. Linux was amazing, I couldn’t believe we had x going, and loading up cad, matlab, maple, ftp, fsp, irc, nettrek, and everything else possible in the computer centers - but over a telephone line from our apartment.
Magical.
Funny how it really only became my daily driver three ish years ago - despite using it forever. Cuz games - glad that’s changed finally.
Most of the cloud runs Linux.
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.
I have a feeling he's more okay with having less fortune though. Just the impression I get about him.
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.
Can this be the new GNU/Linux copypasta?
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?
Open source is one thing but "free" is a lot of things.
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
Linus was so nice back then...
His soul still intact
This was before he discovered that Jenson was an aborted spawn of lucifer himself.
linus is still based as always though
he's very open about his ideas and it's great
Quoting from memory: "Remember the times when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?"
What are AT-harddisks? Google is not helpful.
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.
I'm not quite sure, but maybe it refers to the IBM PC AT ( model 5170) hard drive?
I love GNU/Linux.
Before I used Debian, I'd constantly fight with my operating system. Every time I opened michaelsoft binbows(which would take ages to open), I'd make sure that simplewall is running, so that bill doesn't get any more info, after every 180 days, I'd run MAS to renew my office 365. I'd manually sync time since windows would use that same domain to send telemetry.
Now everytime I turn on my computer, the swirl of Debian greets me in a flash, my i3 being ready even before I sit.
I can spend hours doing work without any mandatory updates . It is an operating system that never makes me feel its presence. For that I'm grateful to people like Ian, Stallman, Linus, among countless others making my life better.
I can spend hours doing work without any mandatory updates .
Weird way to say spend hours fixing something that just randomly borked your PC.
Seriously, though. Windows has a fuck ton of issues, but it seems like every distro I install I am eventually greeted with something just completely breaking for no reason whatsoever and spend the next 6 hours scouring Linux forums for a solution, where everyone is just hostile as fuck screaming at people to "figure it out yourself" and to "use Terminal".
Glad it works for you, though. Wonder how many downvotes this cold take is going to net me lol.
Weird way to say spend hours fixing something that just randomly borked your PC.
by work, I meant actual work, and not fixing something.
Last time I fixed something was a few weeks ago. It was MPV needing an update(which was totally my fault, as I often forget to do updates) as a yt-dlp script wasn't working.
As for something breaking, my experience has been the opposite. Probably because I don't own any newest hardware and don't do much gaming, or any other stuff that might require some proprietary service for optimal functioning.
Also, my experience with the community has been excellent so far. Even my basic questions(e.g.: dual boot) were answered promptly and nicely by the community(I mostly use #linux on IRC, or distro-specific forums like linux mint forum).
I'd suggest you to give GNU/Linux one more try. Probably try out something like Nobara if you're into games. Or maybe Linux mint if you want it to just work.
Maybe you just weren't lucky the first time.
And don't worry about fake internet points. They mean nothing.
The only times I've "broken" something it's because I did dumb shit lol. I've heard tell of it happening but usually not on something like Debian LTS, usually arch. Also, if you're looking for a GUI solution that doesn't exist, yes, people will often say "use the terminal" and unless you said "no terminal" they usually say "try this command.." with it. I've only had one dude be an insufferable prick about it in all my time on linux, and it got him (CHEFKOCH) banned from c/linux like 2y ago. I'm not gonna downvote you for being wrong, but you are at least outdated in your info.
Yep, this has been my experience too.
People shit on windows, but it was easy to navigate, and generally made an effort to keep you from breaking it and you pretty much never had to enter a command line for anything as an average user.
Linux troubleshooting, especially for new people, is going to become a much bigger problem as time goes on because any searched solution basically boils down to copy and pasting stuff into terminal and hoping its 1)still relevant and 2) doesnt break everything worse. Which is probably why so many immutable distros have popped up, to give that windows level of protection.
As for hostility? Its still there, in pockets. Not so much on lemmy from what i've seen, but it still exists elsewhere.. but it is significantly better overall than it was 10+ years ago, where questions about problems were seemingly treated as insults against the prophet and were responded to with great aggression, and often racist undertones.
Amen to that.
A lot of Linux users have forgotten how tech-savvy they are even compared to the average power user. Saying "Linux just works" shows just how tone deaf they are.
As someone who didnt know anything about file systems besides FAT32 and NTFS, and as someone who isn't comfortable using command line, trying to switch to Linux was horrible. On windows something might not work they way you want it to, but it does kinda work. On Linux I felt like I had to fight every step of the way to do simple tasks.
Its like buying a car - I'm not a gearhead, I just want something that gets me around when I put petrol in. I want to drive it off the lot, even if there are a few maddening features like the cup holder being in the wrong place. I don't want to have to choose the right wheels and assemble them, I don't want to have to buy seats and install them, and I don't want to stop every other day to figure out why something isn't working.
Maybe I’m the minority, but I’ve never really broken my Linux. Sure, it’s NixOS, so it’s a little more stable than many other distros, but still, I have a much better time with it than I do with Windows
Weird esoteric issues happen on Windows too. I had a bug where I couldn’t create a new folder from Windows Explorer, which I never figured out and didn’t resolve itself with reboots or even Windows updates. I probably could have spent a half day tracking it down and fixing it, but someone less tech savvy would probably have had to reinstall Windows. Instead I just popped a terminal and used mkdir whenever I needed a new folder until I upgraded to Windows 11 and that resolved it.
Point is, computers just suck sometimes regardless of what software they run. Or I’m just a magnet for ridiculous arcane bugs, you decide.
This might come across as Linux fanboyism but I currently have Linux, Windows, macOS, iPadOS, Android, and FreeBSD all running on various devices around my house and they all suck in their own unique ways.
every distro I install I am eventually greeted with something just completely breaking for no reason whatsoever
This happens on Windows too and the fixes you have to apply aren't less esoteric.
For example: User complains that Spyder won't start on her brand-new laptop. Installation seems perfectly fine, nothing wrong there, no corruption or obvious missing bits. Dig around in the Windows log files, find some fairly generic error. Do a bit of googling, eventually decide to just search Github for issues mentioning Spyder not loading. Turns out the laptop is just too new and the AMD graphics driver Windows installs on its own has issues with the IGPU. So replacing that with newer the version AMD distributes fixes it.
Or, with Windows 11, if you want the start menu on the left and the Explorer context menu usable: Sure, just open powershell and run these commands to create new, weird registry keys to force it, btw these are not supported by Microsoft, you're on your own.
I'd rather choose the OS that doesn't have the audacity to charge money and then blast me with ads in the start menu.
What on earth are you talking about? Windows is the king of a system just breaking itself for seemingly no reason with no way of fixing it. At least on Linux, I know there'll be hundreds of forum posts telling me how to fix something.
This happend to me a lot 10-15 years ago but since then has never again happened to me. With the noteable exception of Arch Linux which does tell you to read update notes though.
Same, does it work? If it means booting into a DE and being able to move your mouse and type on your keyboard, sure most distros can do that.
It’s those little gotchas everywhere that gets you. Enabling video acceleration on Nvidia in firefox? Getting LDAC to work on Bluetooth? Etc. etc.
Do most distros work? Yeah, only if you don’t mind software encoding, or compiling from some user-provided repos.
I have a few hobby boxes running all flavours of distros, but whenever I need something to just work with no caveats, I go back to w11.
Just a hobby 😉
Won't be big
happy birthday you bloody penguin <3
IDK about anyone else, but I first heard this story in the form of a song, and I still enjoy listening to it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/oHNKTlz1lps
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot
"Just a hobby"--famous last words
Did stallman coat-tail Linux on day one, or did he latch onto the "ackshually, it's got some gun in there so we deserve top billing" only a little after?
Linux doesn't have any GNU in it. Linux is a kernel that GNU runs on top of. That's what Stallman means by "GNU/Linux."
Maybe he is a little bitter about his life's work and philosophy being erased by Linux fans, but that is understandable. Maybe he is a little too bitter.
People think it's about Stallman being bitter. But it's because GNU is a political project with the goal of total user freedom and control over their computer. The software is a step on the way there. But if people use free software without understanding, valuing or taking advantage of the freedom it gives them, the GNU project has failed.
No, its because Linus Torvalds doesn't consider libre software to be important. Torvalds sucks when it comes to free software.
GNU Hurd is an incredibly important project because there can't be just one "free software kernel."
Richard Stallman doesn't care about popularity. He already changed the world. What he does care about is people forgetting their commitment to freedom.
He doesn't give a shit if people say Linux, he does give a shit if people are "marketing" Linux without an emphasis on freedom.
Something that many have failed in.
Probably after he gave up on his own kernel (Hurd) being a viable competitor.
I hate this language, its so fucking dehumanizing. "Viable competitor" is such bullshit. Torvalds gave away his commitment to freedom with binary blobs. That's his decision to do. But to label Hurd on that same level is the biggest disservice to history you could ever do.
Hurd will never be the "viable competitor" because you hold selfish attitudes about how makes software valuable or not.
Torvalds sold out. Hurd didn't.
I first recall him trying to shoulder surf Linux’s popularity not long after the XFree86 project switched to a new license that included an acknowledgement clause, so around 2004/2005. I still chuckle when I see that he wants me to call it GNU/Linux, but he has a shit hemorrhage because XFree86 added a license clause requiring similar labeling. He’s made more than his share of contributions, but he takes pedantry to a whole new level.
Ah yes, the guy they named Linus Tech Tips after. 😇
/s
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).
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
Read as Law Enforcement Officer. And I was, huh? Then it hit me. Ah, the zodiac...
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
Horoscopes for August 25, 1991
Leo
Today, and forevermore, you will be the subject of many arguments on the internet.
Actually it's just called 'Linux'
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU+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!
I’d just like to interject for a moment. I agree that it is most accurately just called Linux.
The GNU project was an attempt to create a free POSIX compatible operating system. At least, that was the vision. Instead of starting with the kernel, as most OS projects do now, GNU started by writing the utilities and other important tools that such a system would use ( most notably the C library and C compiler ). In practice, GNU became an alternative userland that ran on the proprietary UNIX systems of the day. Even MINIX, while being a teaching OS, was proprietary and cost money. The only “free” UNIX was BSD and its existence was being threatened as it was being sued by AT&T ( inventors of UNIX ). Linus set out to create a “free” ( as in money ) POSIX system because none existed. His job was made significantly easier because of the existence of GNU and especially GCC and Bash which Linus selected because they were free ( yes, as in freedom but more important to him at the time — in terms of money ).
Ironically, nobody used the term GNU / Linux in the early days of Linux. That is despite the fact that GNU + Linux would certainly have been the best description of what Linux was in the 90’s.
These days though, the term GNU / Linux, while being politically important, is descriptively wrong.
First, a relatively small fraction of the software installed on a typical Linux desktop is provided by the GNJ Project. The parts that define the experience for the end user ( eg. desktop environment ) are not GNU. Huge systems like X, Wayland, and Mesa are not even GPL ( they are MIT licensed ). Almost none of the GUI applications people use are GNU.
True, most Linux distros ship the GNU userland. Not all though. Most importantly, what make a Linux distro a Linux distro is Linux, not GNU. GNU is not the important part.
Linux dominates in the cloud. These days, the most important aspect of that is Linux specific containerization ( eg. Kubernetes ). Perhaps the most widely deployed Linux in the cloud is Alpine which uses MUSL instead of Glibc and Busybox instead of the GNU core utils. It is not GNU / Linux but it is certainly Linux.
How is modern Linux gaming possible? Well, the emergence of things like Valve’s proton ( not GNU ) are certainly important. But GPU drivers like those from AMD and NVIDIA are even more important and those use infrastructure which is entirely Linux specific.
Look at the Debian project. When we say Debian, we think of Linux and certainly it is one of the distros most likely to be called GNU / Linux. Debian Linux is certainly a Linux and provides the full Linux experience. Debian also offers Debian HURD ( a true GNU system ). Are Debian Linux and Debian HURD the same? They are both “Debian”. The answer though is that they are not at all the same. Debian HURD cannot even host all Debian packages. The truth is that Debian HURD is unsuitable for a huge percentage of the people that daily drive Debian Linux today. You are certainly not gaming on Debian HURD ( it lacks the Direct Rendering Infrastructure for example ). You are not live steaming or video editing either.
How about software developers? I would argue that this is the audience that GNU was originally created for. Well, Debian HURD is unsuitable for them as well because Linux matters more than GNU. For most developers today, tools like Docker or Podman are vital and they depend on the Linux kernel completely to function. These days, these kinds of tools are more essential even than the compiler. You can switch from GCC ( GNU ) to Clang ( BSD - not GNU ) easily. But how are you using containers ( Docker / Podman ) or virtual machines on Debian HURD?
As an extreme example of a Linux workstation, Chimera Linux installs with basically zero GNU software by default ( MUSL again and the FreeBSD userland including Clang / LLVM instead of GCC ). From the perspective of an end-user, it is exactly like any other Linux. Chimera uses GNOME as the DE which is not GNU either.
I can make a Linux system that contains no GNU software and it is still Linux. I can do any of the things that I expect a Linux system to do ( as a desktop, as a server, or in the cloud ). GNU is historically important but, at this point in history, it is completely overshadowed and entirely non-essential. If I take away the Linux though, GNU offers me almost nothing that I expect from a modern Linux.
GNU is still trying to create a free implementation of the kinds of UNIX systems that Richard Stallman encountered in the 80’s. An improvement of such systems you could argue but then again, it still has not got there. For the GNU project to be taking credit for what modern Linux has become is totally ludicrous.
What you are referring to is Linux and, more specifically, certainly not GNU / Linux. “Linux” is not just the Linux kernel anymore—it is the massive ecosystem of software that was designed specially to run on Linux and to work together to create a Linux system. Often people use GNU on Linux but that does not give GNU the right to equal billing. Not anymore.
happy birthday mr torvold
I read in "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" that Linux was not that revolutionary (it reused code and ideas from Mimix) but the collaboration of the entire talent pool from the Internet to develop the kernel is. Massively respect for Linus.
I whish I was 32 happy birthday
Love to see this piece of history!
I mean Linus Torvalds is older than my Father, that shocked me.
Beb.nk. m am ..z zz
that didn't age well
And this:
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.
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).