Happy birthday ๐๐ 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 ๐ค
wonโt be big and professional like gnu
that didnโt age well
Weight your words my friend! GNUโs a behemoth !
GCC alone is almost as big as Linux. Add core/binutils, the Hurd, โฆ 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 doesnโt understand computers very well: is Hurd usable as a kernel nowadays?
Thatโs debatable, since what people generally call โLinuxโ is more GNU than Linux anyway. โLinuxโ as the Linux fandom considers is it big and professional like GNU, because it is GNU (among other things).
But what about Linux distributions compiled without GNU tools? Most popular Linux distributionโs 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 is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as thatโs all I have :-(.
Famous last words
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 Torvaldsโs involvement; he โonlyโ 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.
I think itโs 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.
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
No way Linux is 32! I remember when it first came out and it was justโฆoh.
Donโt mind me, Iโll just be here yelling at the cloud.
Sigh, my condolences. Iโm 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 collegeโs aix mainframes and thus the internet via a slip connection - but only through Unix like systems. Linux was amazing, I couldnโt 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 thatโs changed finally.
The Linus that was promised.
Itโs 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 heโs 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. Iโd say the respect heโs 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.
I have a feeling heโs more okay with having less fortune though. Just the impression I get about him.
I canโt imagine heโs struggling for money, heโs a smart guy and wrote an OS used in some capacity by so many corporations
Heโs probably written books that sell quite well
