If you haven't read it, Torvalds' book is pretty interesting. He's a fairly blunt writer of prose - alas, no Hemingway - but has a good voice and his slightly-cynical Finnish humour comes through clearly. Doesn't have the massive ego that you might have expected, either - he knows he's one of the planet's biggest nerds.
Essentially, his somewhat geeky summer project was to implement the POSIX parts of Minix as a learning exercise, and basically locked himself in his room till he'd done it. Photocopied the spec sheet, and was 'ticking off' all the calls he'd got working. He was dual-booting with Minix for a while, which is why the filesystem layout is the same, but at one point managed to break his Minix boot, and Linux had to become self-hosting.
Fair play to him - took him a few months to produce the OS kernel that the whole GNU team couldn't manage in a decade. Perfect is the enemy of good. Open-sourcing 'something that works' was all that was needed for everyone else to add in all the bits they needed as well, and the rest is history.
Ukraine existed as People's Republic and then a republic within the USSR since 1917, with some border changes particularly after WW2. And of course, it was Zaporozhian Sich / Cossack Hetmanate before that.
37 Comments
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works · 108 pts · 21d
Man, it's such a shame it only works on that one, outdated kind of disk
walden@wetshav.ing · 67 pts · 21d
Bummer it's not big and professional like Gnu, either.
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 59 pts · 21d
I like how it has the sad face at the end, like: this won't amount to much...sorry to disappoint you guys.
frongt@lemmy.zip · 54 pts · 21d
NOT protable :-(
dzsimbo@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 21d
Code for against Windows (table was the code word)
ilinamorato@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 21d
And he has stuck to his guns on that.
Zachariah@lemmy.world · 37 pts · 21d
What an idiot. Linux became huge.
walden@wetshav.ing · 20 pts · 21d
Total dolt!
reddit_sux@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 21d
I would say a git.
A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 21d
🤔 there's a short and pregnant term that hasn't been used for Linux software yet
Zedstrian@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 21d
He didn't have any way of knowing at the time what Linux would become.
inari@piefed.zip · 20 pts · 21d
Thatsthejoke.jpg
Zachariah@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 21d
Someone smart enough to make Linux so huge should have been smart enough to know that.
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 21d
Mind you, there was no stackoverflow back then, so he most likely learned all that shit reading hard papers.
sanitation@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 21d
Well look at this rich kid who had access to relevant printed books.
Before internet I had nothing
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 21d
I didn't even have power in my house back in 1991. Walked 5(both ways combined) miles to school every single day. Lmao.
frongt@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 21d
I literally used to walk uphill, both ways, in the snow.
Well, in winter anyway. To the bus stop. Because I lived on one side of a hill and the bus stop was on the other.
DonutsRMeh@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 21d
Man, we really had it rough back then. God damn.
addie@feddit.uk · 27 pts · 21d
If you haven't read it, Torvalds' book is pretty interesting. He's a fairly blunt writer of prose - alas, no Hemingway - but has a good voice and his slightly-cynical Finnish humour comes through clearly. Doesn't have the massive ego that you might have expected, either - he knows he's one of the planet's biggest nerds.
Essentially, his somewhat geeky summer project was to implement the POSIX parts of Minix as a learning exercise, and basically locked himself in his room till he'd done it. Photocopied the spec sheet, and was 'ticking off' all the calls he'd got working. He was dual-booting with Minix for a while, which is why the filesystem layout is the same, but at one point managed to break his Minix boot, and Linux had to become self-hosting.
Fair play to him - took him a few months to produce the OS kernel that the whole GNU team couldn't manage in a decade. Perfect is the enemy of good. Open-sourcing 'something that works' was all that was needed for everyone else to add in all the bits they needed as well, and the rest is history.
https://goodreads.com/book/show/160171.Just_for_Fun
katze@lemmy.4d2.org · 6 pts · 21d
I can second that. The book is definitely entertaining to read.
vrek@programming.dev · 26 pts · 21d
Per a post on Mastodon, today is also the 35th anniversary of the founding of Ukraine...
Not making a political statement but crazy that both of these happened on same day.
3abas@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 21d
That was yesterday...
Today, 35 years ago, Belarus declared independence.
vrek@programming.dev · 0 pts · 21d
Damn, trusted Mastodon, should of confirmed with other sources...
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 21d
Please stop.
Zachariah@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 20d
should’ve
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 21d
Ukraine existed as People's Republic and then a republic within the USSR since 1917, with some border changes particularly after WW2. And of course, it was Zaporozhian Sich / Cossack Hetmanate before that.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 23 pts · 21d
"it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks"
Liar!
Johanno@feddit.org · 2 pts · 21d
Probably
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 20d
Okay...
Probably a liar!
A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 21d
Never say never
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 20d
Never!
ignotum@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 21d
Damn, i don't have an AT disk, if i did i would try it out
Guess i'll have to stick to Linux 😞
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 21d
You could also try that new Microsoft thing. Bob, I think.
Avicenna@programming.dev · 7 pts · 21d
life has a unique way of fucking up with your expectations
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 21d
I sort of remember that announcement. I ran to the university library to read about minix, but I don’t think I found any books.
obviouspornalt@fedinsfw.app · 2 pts · 21d
the first edition of this book is what you would have been looking for: https://minix1.woodhull.com/osdi2/
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 21d
Cool, thanks!