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Linux was called 'obsolete' in 1992, and now it powers servers around the world (www.xda-developers.com)
submitted 19 hours ago by fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.world
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[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Tanenbaum laid out why his hobby OS beat out Linus Torvalds' own pet project.

The primary reason why Linux beat out Minix, is that Tannenbaum wouldn't allow Minix to win. There was a desperate need for an open source Unix-derived OS at the time, and many people wanted Minix to become that, but Tannenbaum wanted to keep it clean and educational. FreeBSD could have been it had Linus not created Linux, but he did so at exactly the right time for it to be embraced by the community and launched into the stratosphere.

[–] moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 2 points 6 hours ago

It's more to the credit of RMS, who was looking for a kernel to join GNU. And he picked Linux.

1989 was when the GPL was written, so this followed a few years later.

[–] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

It might not have the relevance that Linux has gained, but Minix is an operating system that you can run today. Ymmv.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

[–] AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 hours ago

You know this is actually kind of funny, cause I think it might be very possible that the roles between Tanenbaum and Intel could hypothetically be reversed.

There was a controversy a couple of years ago, with Wizards of the Coast and D&D, where they were planning on making a bunch of really bad and sweeping changes to the Open Gaming License. One of the controversies had to do with the license not having language for irrevocability, which Wizards believed allowed them to go ahead and deny people the right to make use of the old OGL moving forward, forcing everyone who publishes their OGL content to adhere to their new, more restrictive, license terms.

They never moved forward with the bullshit because the backlash was that bad, but supposedly licenses are not irrevocable by default, and so any license that lacks explicit language granting irrevocable rights can be susceptible to the same rug pull that WotC almost pulled.

And the last time I checked, guess which super permissive license does not grant irrevocability?

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip -1 points 5 hours ago

Need more pixels. I can't read any of that text.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

That you do run today (even though you don't know it), most likely.

[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 2 points 6 hours ago

If you have a modern Intel processor. Some of us went AMD to avoid all that, although it's not exactly clear what's running in the negative rings of those either.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 hours ago

Tanenbaum is still around

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 2 points 6 hours ago

"...but ‘vector’ is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature." - Lord Kelvin

[–] topperharlie@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, from what we learnt on university the "messiness" of a monolithic kernel seems "wrong" and a microkernel arch seems "better design". Once you spend a couple of decades in the workforce and opening your mind... I haven't seen a single "good modular design" that doesn't suck balls, super bloated and with many performance issues just to make it "pretty".

So, while I'm not claiming it doesn't exist... I think is at the very least debatable.

[–] mHtt@lemmy.ca 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Also, in 1992, when this article came out: you couldn't just walk into Walmart and get a CD with Debian or Slackware on it (still cant but thats another story). If you wanted the latest reliable word processor, email, hardware drivers and access to excel you basically had no choice but to slap down $100 for a Windows or OSx install. Only enthusiasts, academics and scientists had the bandwidth capacity to download and update an entire OS in 1992. CD burners themselves were $10 000 in 1992.

[–] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

TBF, in 1992 you might have had a hard time getting slackware at all since it was officially released in 1993.

However, when I first used it around 1997, it was just a stack of floppies, no CD needed.

[–] PetteriPano@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

That's painful. I had a proper purchased slackware 3.1 CD in 1997.

I tried a two-diskette non-distro from "so much shareware 2". I think it was minted in 1993 and labelled Linux 0.99b

[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 79 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

"was called obsolete" - by 1 person who happened to be the developer of a competing OS/kernel.

[–] Smug_Marmot@lemmy.zip 18 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Tanenbaum also believed that the Intel x86 was on the way out, the very CPU that Linux was hard-coded to run on. On the other hand, Minix was ready to adopt the upcoming RISC tech, which Tanenbaum believed would drive the x86 into extinction.

A genuine Nostradamus, here.

[–] RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 15 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Kinda wish he was right about risc tbh

[–] Mynameisallen@lemmy.zip 11 points 12 hours ago

I would argue he was, but it's taking far longer than I'd like

[–] WillieShen@lemmy.world 40 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Windows was called obsolete (by me) years ago, and it's abandoned (by me) since mid 2024.

[–] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 13 hours ago

That statement really has the same vibe as the one in the post. Well done.

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 5 points 12 hours ago

In 1987, Bill Gates predicted in an interview that in 3 years time, 80% of new office systems would be based on OS/2, an operating system from IBM.

The first release of Windows was in 1985, so that Computerworld interview was basically Bill Gates calling Windows obsolete.

[–] halfapage@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

my kind of authority

[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 9 points 12 hours ago

It powers servers, smartphones, a growing number of personal computers, and at least three gaming consoles (Deck, Machine, Legion Go S), with more coming.

[–] IpsumLauren@lemmy.world 25 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

... and millions of phones 🙃

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 16 points 16 hours ago

And your car and likely your fridge too. Linux is everywhere.

[–] mmmm@sopuli.xyz 21 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, if it were for novelty and "cleverness" then it would be Plan-9 (or BeOS) the one who shoulda take over. At the end of the day both Linux.and Minix are both following the UNIX model which even at that time it already was "obsolete". But reality is often more pragmatic

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly plan9 is neat but it suffers from being incredibly stringy and so does Linux / unix.

There's some new paradigms out there that probably need to be uncovered. Computers have way more processing capabilities then they did in the 90s

[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 5 points 13 hours ago

More processing power means new paradigms are less likely to be uncovered, I think. The deficiencies of current designs are obscured, and maybe moot, due to the raw power the processors. There isn’t any real pressure to improve kernel design.

All of the big current kernels (NT, Linux, XNU) are rooted in the i386 era. There’s certainly been a lot of changes in all of them but I don’t know if any have been completely re-architected.

Might have to wait for some kind of completely new processor before we see completely new kernels.

[–] meat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

And it captured our hearts along the way. I bet few of us knew it existed in '92.

[–] Rawrosaurus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I had no clue how to operate a computer in '92. Pretty sure I had no clue what MSDOS was, much less what Linux was. Was a few years later that I actually got my first PC and started to learn stuff.

[–] eurodyne@piefed.world 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

How? Torvolds released the Linux kernel in 91, lol.

Oh, maybe because UNIXWare 1.0 (System V 4.2) came out in 1992, the first major release in years. :P 🖕

[–] KiwiTB@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

It's a old design shoe horned to do modern things. That's fine but yeah.... Obviously something more modern would be nice.

[–] 20cello@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

Linux obsolete before windows 95 , lol

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 0 points 14 hours ago

Always has been

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world -1 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

Called "obsolete" by whom? Microsoft?

[–] Klear@piefed.world 21 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Reading is hard, isn't it?

[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 5 points 18 hours ago

And it's in the big bold title...

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

Especially when the linked article does not open, yes.

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 17 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The image reads Andy Tannenbaum.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 0 points 14 hours ago

Ah, OK, the Tannenbaum discussion. Yes, we had good laughs back then.

[–] cy888@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Andy Tannembaum. Mi ix is microkernel. Linux is monolithic

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

I've been there with the MINIX debate back then. I've actually used MINIX on a job back then. Tannenbaum knows his stuff, but with that, he was completely off. I don't think that most people in the Linux scene nowadays have ever heard of him or his OS. So much for relevance.

[–] libewa@feddit.org 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

No, Microslop called it a "cancer".

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

That, too.