Posted on 08/26/2022 6:59:48 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Today is August 25th in many parts of the world, which means that Linux is turning 31 years old, so join me in celebrating Linux’s 31st birthday with a glass of good champagne and a delicious cake!
While some don’t recognize August 25th as Linux’s birthday, I do. It was on August 25th, 1991, when 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Benedict Torvalds made his now-famous announcement on the comp.os.minix newsgroup that he’s working on a free operating system for 386(486) AT clones, just as a “hobby.”
Hello everybody out there using minix –
I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them 🙂
Linus
PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. 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 :-(.
He probably never dreamed that the so-called “hobby” turned into something of mass proportion and Linux is now basically everywhere around us, from Android smartphones, Wi-Fi routers, smart assistants, and smart fridges, to big screen TVs, satellites, and airplanes.
Even if you don’t use it, Linux is there, believe me! It powers the entire Internet, the world’s top 500 supercomputers, Wall Street, and even the ISS (International Space Station).
Personally, I don’t like the phrase “this is the year of Linux,” because Linux is in our lives for 31 freaking years and it was always the year of Linux. I’ve enjoyed Linux for more than 20 years now and I still remember my first Mandrake Linux and Red Hat Linux installations, and how hard Slackware Linux was to install.
Without further ado, let’s raise the glass and wish Linux a happy 31st birthday! Here’s to many more years of Linux awesomeness to come and stay right here on 9to5Linux.com for the latest Linux news and Open Source software releases.
Happy 31st birthday, Linux!
I’ve used Linux Mint on my laptop for 5 years and use Windoze only for programs that I absolutely cannot find on Linux. If it requires a reboot, it is done in 2 minutes. NO 45 minute reboot and updates.
and Ubuntu will be 18 next month.
Same here. Kubuntu is my daily driver. dual boot alongside Win 7 Pro which is not allowed to connect and has updates turned off. Tuns like the day I installed it. So does Kubuntu for that matter but it gets regular updates. Speaking if which.
update done - 2 minutes - no restart - was a little one, 5.3mb
Really like how well Linux Mint Cinnamon runs on $30 Chrome boxes from eBay. Just wish I could get VNC to work with Cinnamon vs just xfce,
if [ -f 0826.log ]
then
echo “Happy birthday”
fi
I met Linus online at that time. We ported what we were doing on SCO to Linux. Linux has been very very good to me.
That’s pretty cool.
My first Mint 18.3 install is 6 years old and still problem free. And I have never updated it once... :)
Wow, I got to do a bit of that myself. Heady days indeed.
I’ve used Linux Mint on my laptop ... If it requires a reboot, it is done in 2 minutes.
We built what might have been one of the first large Intel based servers. I used an EISA motherboard, experimental I/O cards with 16 drives. I naked it Frankenstein because it looked like hell with all the ribbon cables and that I was pushing cold air in to the cases using a spot cooler. We setup a database on it that had over 22 million records.
After that and up until right now I jumped from technology to technology and today everything is cloud based.
I’m still having a ball. Haven’t worked in years. Lol.
Linux wasn’t ‘born,’ it was grafted off UNIX. The output from “data +%s” is proof of that.
In its tiny little penguin heart, Linux believes it was born on January 1st, 1970.
That’s merely a POSIX standard.
Not familiar with the 'data' command. Is that something similar to 'date'?
$ date +%s
1661537451
$
Ah the good old days when I didn’t need Winblows. a 200mhz pentium with Open Office (I think that is what the M$ office clone was) was all I needed. Now I’m stuck with garbage Windows.
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