First time stories on the birthday of Linux
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Did you know it’s the 27th birthday of Linux? 🎂 The free and open source operating system that powers every bank, stock exchange, plane in the sky, Fortune 500 company and Tamagotchi on the planet. Okay I’m guessing about the Tamagotchis but you get the point.
The 25th birthday was a big deal. But Linux making it to 27 is kind of rock and roll. What started as a hobby is now the cornerstone of technology as we know it.
On August the 25th in 1991, Linus Torvalds sent out the following message about a project he wanted help on. Seems legit.
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).
It’s useful to remember that Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Finland is a nation so infamous for being understated that it generated a viral #bragforfinland tourism campaign to help it market itself (including this hilarious video). In my time living in Helsinki I learned that phrases like “won’t be big and professional” are a Finnish clue for “I really think that this will be epic”.
When did you first Linux?
One of the best parts of Linux anniversaries are the user stories. I enjoyed reading a bunch of them over on opensource.com today. So I thought I’d add my own.
I’m struggling to remember exactly my first encounter with Linux in general. But I can certainly remember my first conscious use of Linux as a dedicated platform.
And strangely it was because of Microsoft (back when they hated Linux and not now when they love it). And would spark enough curiosity that one day I would end up working at Red Hat because of it.
Way back in 2001 I was setting up a new computer in the part of my bedroom that I would optimistically call “the studio”. I had the first royalty cheque from some music I had produced and, while it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of a new computer, I convinced myself that there’d be more where that came from.
Like many people upgrading in 2001 I pushed aside a rattling Windows 95 box and pieced together a system built around the newly released Windows XP. Which came with a file system called NTFS.
I can already feel heads nodding in recognition. Uh oh.
Somehow in the process of setting up the new system and migrating over my data and external drives (and my entire studio data at the time without a backup) I managed to mess up 😱 NTFS was not FAT32 and XP had something to say about formatting partitions. I didn’t understand how or what or why, but I’d made some kind of error and was stuck.
I upgraded the “uh oh” to a Scooby-Doo grade “ruh roh”.
Pulling out my Nokia (remember Nokia?) I sent an SMS (remember SMS?) to a friend to ask for ideas. One of those ideas was using a bootable operating system to sidestep the Microsoft situation (and my own stupidity) making paperweights out of my shiny new super-serious-music-guy hardware.
That bootable OS was of course Knoppix.
Within the space of 30 minutes I’d fixed the problem. It booted perfectly from a CD-ROM (remember CD-ROM?) and let me take control of my hardware and back up to speed. The “control” element being the key point of that era of open source, and something I fell in love with right away.
While I was forced to use XP still, due to music production software back in those days, I kept Knoppix on hand as a solution for problems for years to come.
And I continued my open source journey to the point of one day sitting in my chair and wondering exactly how this software that was so good and so free could actually… make money?
A decade later I would join Red Hat and learn exactly that. A journey that led to building an open source startup inside of the company and eventually spinning out Corilla. So to Linux I say happy birthday (and thank you!).
What’s your Linux story?
David Ryan is the creator of Corilla, a collaborative publishing tool for software teams. All about PM and UX and happy content teams. A technical creative formerly of Red Hat and NUMA Paris accelerator.
