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 🤍

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    8·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Dr. Bob@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Baut [she/her] auf.@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Mereo@lemmy.ca
      5·
      1 year ago

      And this:

      and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks

      • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
        4·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
        1·
        1 year ago

        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).

        • xill47@lemm.ee
          01·
          1 year ago

          But what about Linux distributions compiled without GNU tools? Most popular Linux distribution’s 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

          • duncesplayed@lemmy.oneEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            It doesn’t change the larger point that GNU is way bigger than Linux, though. There are a tonne of things that are larger than Linux, and GNU is one of them.

            • xill47@lemm.ee
              0·
              1 year ago

              That is an entirely different argument which I did not contest and the comment I have answered to did not make

              EDIT: Although, it depends on what we define as “bigger”. Binary size is certainly bigger, but user adoption is abysmal comparatively.

              • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
                11·
                1 year ago

                but user adoption is abysmal comparatively

                I guess this is a matter of perspective. What I was saying in my previous comment is that what people commonly refer to as “Linux” (as in “Linux distributions”) is not just Linux (which is just a kernel) but also includes a bunch of other stuff, including GNU (that is what GNU/Linux refers to). If you’re talking about the actual thing called Linux, you’d be right, because most GNU systems are GNU/Linux systems, whereas arguably most Linux systems are not GNU systems; Alpine and Android are non-GNU Linux systems.

                However, if like many in the Linux fandom you discount Android, then most Linux systems are GNU systems and vice-versa.

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • f00f/eris@startrek.websiteEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • lars@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      It is a happy coincidence that the evening before the 1970s began, at 4pm Pacific, they decided to invent UNIX.

        • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I think it’s 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.

          • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
            1·
            1 year ago

            Oh right, the UNIX epoch actually starts when UNIX was invented

            Somehow, I didn’t expect that…

  • aggelalex@lemmy.world
    5·
    1 year ago

    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

  • lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Polar@lemmy.ca
      21·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • DeltaWhy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • stevedice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          23 days ago

          While we’re on the subject of esoteric issues with Windows, Update just recently had a bug where it couldn’t update if your Recovery partition wasn’t big enough. The Recovery partition that was created on install. Automatically. By Windows.

      • eee@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • stevedice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        23 days ago

        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.

  • Treczoks@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    Quoting from memory: “Remember the times when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?”

  • haruki@programming.dev
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.