Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux.

Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.

It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.

What a lovely journey 🤍

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    No way Linux is 32! I remember when it first came out and it was just…oh.

    Don’t mind me, I’ll just be here yelling at the cloud.

    • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Sigh, my condolences. I’m shouting right beside you. I first learned about linux in 1993 in college. I got it working on a shiny new 486 with super vga graphics. We were allowed access to the college’s aix mainframes and thus the internet via a slip connection - but only through Unix like systems. Linux was amazing, I couldn’t believe we had x going, and loading up cad, matlab, maple, ftp, fsp, irc, nettrek, and everything else possible in the computer centers - but over a telephone line from our apartment.

      Magical.

      Funny how it really only became my daily driver three ish years ago - despite using it forever. Cuz games - glad that’s changed finally.

      • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
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        1 year ago

        That’s debatable, since what people generally call “Linux” is more GNU than Linux anyway. “Linux” as the Linux fandom considers is it big and professional like GNU, because it is GNU (among other things).

        • xill47@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          But what about Linux distributions compiled without GNU tools? Most popular Linux distribution’s kernel currently is compiled with Clang, not GCC, and as far as I am aware does not include anything from GNU. Of course Linux is historically influenced by GNU, but in current day and age they are orthogonal

          • duncesplayed@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            It doesn’t change the larger point that GNU is way bigger than Linux, though. There are a tonne of things that are larger than Linux, and GNU is one of them.

            • xill47@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              That is an entirely different argument which I did not contest and the comment I have answered to did not make

              EDIT: Although, it depends on what we define as “bigger”. Binary size is certainly bigger, but user adoption is abysmal comparatively.

              • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
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                1 year ago

                but user adoption is abysmal comparatively

                I guess this is a matter of perspective. What I was saying in my previous comment is that what people commonly refer to as “Linux” (as in “Linux distributions”) is not just Linux (which is just a kernel) but also includes a bunch of other stuff, including GNU (that is what GNU/Linux refers to). If you’re talking about the actual thing called Linux, you’d be right, because most GNU systems are GNU/Linux systems, whereas arguably most Linux systems are not GNU systems; Alpine and Android are non-GNU Linux systems.

                However, if like many in the Linux fandom you discount Android, then most Linux systems are GNU systems and vice-versa.

      • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Weight your words my friend! GNU’s a behemoth !

        GCC alone is almost as big as Linux. Add core/binutils, the Hurd, … And you easily outclass the kernel itself !

        ~ $ du -sh linux-6.4.12/ gcc-13.2.0/                    1.5G    linux-6.4.12/                                   1.1G    gcc-13.2.0/
        

        Oh, and Emacs.

  • f00f/eris@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    Well, Linux is 32 years old; GNU goes back to 1984, and Unix all the way back to 1970! The history of this OS is much older than Linus Torvalds’s involvement; he “only” created and maintains the most popular kernel.

    But yes, happy birthday to Linux. Many thousands have contributed to making this operating system what it is today and they all have my utmost thanks for it.

    • lars@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It is a happy coincidence that the evening before the 1970s began, at 4pm Pacific, they decided to invent UNIX.

        • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I think it’s a joke about how UNIX timestamps work. They count milliseconds from January 1st 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, which is 4pm the day before in PST. So the happy coincidence is that they invented UNIX at the very millisecond when its clock starts.

          There, ruined the joke.

          • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            Oh right, the UNIX epoch actually starts when UNIX was invented

            Somehow, I didn’t expect that…

  • lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    I love GNU/Linux.

    Before I used Debian, I’d constantly fight with my operating system. Every time I opened michaelsoft binbows(which would take ages to open), I’d make sure that simplewall is running, so that bill doesn’t get any more info, after every 180 days, I’d run MAS to renew my office 365. I’d manually sync time since windows would use that same domain to send telemetry.

    Now everytime I turn on my computer, the swirl of Debian greets me in a flash, my i3 being ready even before I sit.

    I can spend hours doing work without any mandatory updates . It is an operating system that never makes me feel its presence. For that I’m grateful to people like Ian, Stallman, Linus, among countless others making my life better.

    • Polar@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I can spend hours doing work without any mandatory updates .

      Weird way to say spend hours fixing something that just randomly borked your PC.

      Seriously, though. Windows has a fuck ton of issues, but it seems like every distro I install I am eventually greeted with something just completely breaking for no reason whatsoever and spend the next 6 hours scouring Linux forums for a solution, where everyone is just hostile as fuck screaming at people to “figure it out yourself” and to “use Terminal”.

      Glad it works for you, though. Wonder how many downvotes this cold take is going to net me lol.

      • lemmesay@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Weird way to say spend hours fixing something that just randomly borked your PC.

        by work, I meant actual work, and not fixing something.
        Last time I fixed something was a few weeks ago. It was MPV needing an update(which was totally my fault, as I often forget to do updates) as a yt-dlp script wasn’t working.

        As for something breaking, my experience has been the opposite. Probably because I don’t own any newest hardware and don’t do much gaming, or any other stuff that might require some proprietary service for optimal functioning.

        Also, my experience with the community has been excellent so far. Even my basic questions(e.g.: dual boot) were answered promptly and nicely by the community(I mostly use #linux on IRC, or distro-specific forums like linux mint forum).

        I’d suggest you to give GNU/Linux one more try. Probably try out something like Nobara if you’re into games. Or maybe Linux mint if you want it to just work.

        Maybe you just weren’t lucky the first time.

        And don’t worry about fake internet points. They mean nothing.

    • jasondj@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      It’s a shame. Linus was and is far more deserving of respect for his contributions to technology than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Probably even Woz. But he’s by far down the line in terms of fame and fortune. Except maybe Woz.