For Gates, a knight to be remembered

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Not reinventing UNIX

Info Source: http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/illuminata/linrfpt2.shtml

"Linux started off as a hobbyist exploration. Finnish university student Linus Torvalds wanted to run Unix, but didn't have the $15,000 or so needed to buy a Unix workstation of the day. Instead he bought a 386 PC, on which he ran Minix, Andrew Tanenbaum's simple Unix clone for educational purposes.1

Not particularly impressed with Minix's performance, Torvalds struck off on his own. His first release, humbly numbered "version 0.02," was known to run just three programs, two of which were programming utilities.2 Both the OS and applications had to be cross-compiled from source code on a companion Minix host. Linus freely admitted: "You also need to be something of a hacker to set it up...," but even that was a fabulous understatement. You needed to be an OS hacker even to care to, much less to make the attempt to, install and use the software.

From these unassuming beginnings emerged today's Linux kernel. Linux is now available from many distributors. Beyond companies such as Caldera, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, and TurboLinux that get the most air-play, there are dozens of lesser known "distros."3 Through the combined efforts of Mr. Torvalds and the Linux community, the OS has grown in functionality and capabilities. Many of the updates, critically, have occurred to layered software and applications?the software that makes an OS worth running in the first place.

This path of development is neither new nor untried. Unix itself evolved in this fashion, first as a tinkering project and research vehicle, 4 and only later as a platform for more "serious applications." "

My translation: He took a system that was out of reach of the masses on an affordable platform and gave to them (us) the power, stability and security of a UNIX work station / server that can run on just about any platform that has a processor and RAM. Something no other OS has done. UNIX ports to many platforms but to my knowledge not to any true X86 architectures. MS, well I will not go there and MacIntosh... we know the story there as well.

Bottom line is Linux is a more flexible and powerful OS that MS could even hope to be, just by it nature to scale from a wrist watch up to a main frame or even a very VERY large cluster, all with the same kernel. That is an impressive feat if you ask me. And the fact that Linux can do these things with open standards and a non-proprietary approach has MS royally tweaked! They can't buy it, if they incorporate it into anything they do they are subject to the GPL which MS will not allow!

Bottom line, I am glad Linus did what he did. He gave me and my family a chance to use our computers without costing us a fortune and without fear of infection. For that I thank Linus and the many thousands of developers and testers that work day in and out to provide a computing eXperience that surpasses any I have had with MS Windows.

Linux User: 147560
SuSE 9.0 Professional on all 4 of my PC's and Laptops!

Posted by: MkIIISupra   Posted on: 01/26/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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