[plug] Linus didn't write Linux (some idiot says so)

[Shayne O'Neill]

Brown reeeealy messed up here. There seems to be old school hackers coming
out of the woodwork at the moment.

When linux came out (ie the first broken as hell version) , I remember
trying to get it going on my own machine to no particular success. It
seemed a winner , because it had stuff like rudimentry memory protection
and the like that minix didnt (which I used, and once the userland ppp
patch was applied to the system , worked quite ok for network.. mindyou
no bsd sockets meant it was basically useless for all but telnet.)

Having a look thru the code at the time to figure out why linux was
borking at my hard drive, it occured to me that it was deeply flawed code.
I kept on with minix (and was still frusturated ast wasnt interested in my
patch to minix to make my hd controller work.. it did go in there
somewhere when v2.0 came out)

But thats ok. Its surpassed everyones wildest expectations and here we are
today. But it begs an interesting question;-

If linus stole unix code to make the original linux, why on earth would
anyone USE unix , since it must therefore of sucked eggs reeeeeal hard.

The reality was, linux didnt steal the code, and unix didnt suck. I
learned on unix, and still reserve a place in my heart for it (someone
PLEASE buy out SCO and donate that o/s to the public domain plllleease.
side benifit to purchaser;- you get to fire darl then sue him into the
ground personally.)

And linux has come a heck of a long way. I even wonder if I replicated my
hd controller patch for linux (both had the same problem, my hd controller
was a freaky wang one that didnt even work properly with dos except under
bios command) would we have hit where we are a few days earlier......



------------------------------------
"Must not Sleep! Must warn others!"
-Aesop.
Shayne O'Neill. Indymedia. Fun.
http://www.perthimc.asn.au

On Fri, 21 May 2004, Richard Meyer wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Scurrilous rubbish about our hero  ;)
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/20/tanenbaum_on_adti_brown/
>
> http://linuxinsider.com/story/33873.html
>
> <quote>
>
> "Linus perpetuated the lie [that he is the inventor of the Linux kernel],
> and I have a problem with this smarmy attitude," Kenneth Brown, president
> of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, told LinuxInsider. "How did he
> develop so much code in just six months? Everyone else has taken years to
> develop operating systems."
>
> </quote>
>
>
>
> .. and to finish off a nice article by Tannenbaum (Minix owner/inventor) on
> Brown himself
>
> http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/
>
>
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