On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 13:25:50 -0500 Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 06:40:13PM +0100, Antony Stone wrote: > > On Thursday 20 January 2022 at 17:24:46, Peter Duffy wrote: > > > > > On Sun, 2022-01-16 at 04:12 -0500, Steve Litt wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCr_KFl41E > > > > > > Thanks for the link to that - brilliant talk. I've always thought > > > that Brian Kernighan himself was the great communicator in the > > > UNIX group - I wonder whether "The C Programming Language" and > > > "The Unix Programming Environment" would have happened without > > > his obvious ability to take abstruse and difficult material and > > > make it accessible. > > > > > > If I had one incredibly tiny nit to pick, it would be that he > > > didn't mention GNU (it appeared once in the slide showing Linus' > > > original email). Without GNU, it's reasonable to suppose that > > > linux wouldn't have happened. > > > > I disagree with "it's reasonable to suppose that". > > > > Linus Torvalds was building a system for himself, partly (I > > believe) because he liked Unix but couldn't afford a Unix system of > > his own, and therefore he was of course going to build it using as > > much free (of charge) software as he could. > > > > That meant GNU. > > > > I think the Unix philosophy and design principles are beautiful, > > and formed the basis of an amazingly efficient system, but some of > > those principles are embodied in Linux and some are embodied in GNU > > (for example, devices as files, and pipes, in the first; and tools > > such as tr, cut, grep in the second), so these days we can't really > > separate the two - Linux is nothing without GNU (although the > > reverse is not true). > > And don't forget Minix, the system he used while developing his > kernel. Didn't Linus start what became Linux because Minix was only 286 capable and was not going to be upgraded and Linux wanted something that would run on 386 cpus. I think there was also a licensing issue involved in modifying Minix. > _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
