Linux 21 Years of Success

The great Free Linus OS has turned 21 on this 25th August and It was exactly 21 years back that the favourite operating system kernel was launched. It was on 25 August 1991 that Linux Torvalds, the creator of Linux, made the announcement of making Linux free. A landmark was created, which became the basis of open source technology and that helped in changing the face of technology. Linux grew magnificently in these years. Torvalds himself had very little idea of this growth. Making this announcement on comp.os.minix newsgroup, he wrote:

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).

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

There are actually three "birthdays" one can identify for Linux:

The first was July 3rd, 1991, when Linus posted his first query to a newsgroup for some information he needed to help him with a project. That project was, of course, Linux:

From:torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroup: comp.os.minix
Subject: GCC-1.40 and a posix question
Message-ID: 1991Jul13, 100050.9886@klaava.Helsinki.FI
Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT

Hello netlanders,
Due a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix
standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably)
machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be
nice.
Linus Torvalds torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi

The next was August 25th, 1991, when Linus first let the cat out of the bag about his project:

From:torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroup: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: 1991Aug25, 20578.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki.

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-sytem
due to practical reasons)among other things.

I've currently ported bash (1.08) an gcc (1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that i'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd
like to know what features most people want. Any suggestions are welcome,
but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

Linus Torvalds torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi

Finally came Linus' call to arms on October 5th, 1991, when he posted this:

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT
Message-ID: <1991Oct5.054106.4647@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote
their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying
to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you
finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-
nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just
for you :-)

As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a
minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage
where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want),
and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is
just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully
run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it.

Three clear candidates for a birthday, but one can, of course, have only one.

The 3-Jul-1991 message does not actually mention what the project *is*, while the 5-Oct-1991 message refers to his message earlier, which clearly mentions "I'm doing a (free) operating system".

Therefore, by convention, Linux was "born" on 25-Aug-1991.

By the way, the name "Linux" didn't come from Linus. That name was given by Ari Lemke, who chose it over Linus' preferred name for the OS when he created the subdirectory for the source code on nic.funet.fi.

So what was Linus' preferred name for his baby?

"Freax"

One can see that while Linus may be a great programmer and leader of (wo)men, he really should leave the process of naming projects to other people ;-)

Linux is now a part of almost every technology aspect of our lives. From desktop computers to servers, to mobile phones, to super-computers, to home equipments and even space, Linux is almost everywhere. Cheers to this true spirit of open source. 
Even when any computer is at risk of being hacked then we use Linux so linux is everywhere now. 
Long-live Linux! 

Happy 40th birthday Atari

Established in 1971, by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney as Syzygy Engineering, Atari went on to become a household name in the gaming business. It started out making arcade games, then made its way into people’s homes, and can easily be credited for building the foundation for home consoles.

To make a long and boring story short, Atari's Nolan Bushnell is said to have stolen Ralph Bare’s idea for a little game known as Pong and started selling it as an arcade game around the same time that Bare released the game as a home console called the Magnavox Odyssey.

The most successful people in the world of technology are the ones who have stolen other people’s ideas. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are notoriously considered exponents of this maxim.

Well, after the success and fall of the arcades, the next logical step was to enter the average man’s household. That's what Atari did with the Atari 2600. But, was that a move in the right direction?

The Fall of Atari:
Mistake 1: Selling Atari to Warner Brothers: To make this dream into a reality, it seemed like a good idea for Nolan Bushnell to sell Atari to Warner Brothers. For launching the system, Warner got rid of Nolan and brought in Ray Kassar.

Some of us in today’s world are lucky enough to have jobs we love. We occasionally walk into office in track pants and play a bit of Mortal Kombat before beginning our day. What if this culture was disrupted? Our tech-loving productivity would be in turmoil! And, that's what happened to Atari.

Mistake 2: Getting a corporate veteran, Ray Kassar to run a video-game company may have seemed like a good idea. Rules were put into place and deadlines had to be met. But, making video games isn’t like a bank job. It is a creative field driven by imagination and culture, not rules. There was a cultural clash between the management and the designers and hit the point of no return.

Apart from having to wears socks to office, the designers and developers of the games were not given credit for their work. No royalty was paid to them, there was lack of motivation, their names were not put in the credits and making video games suddenly wasn't an awesome job anymore.

Some senior game designers left Atari and formed a small company of their own known as Activision, you will probably recognize this name as it is the publishing house for some awesome games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

Seeing this, every nut-head who thought he was a geek, decided to make video games. The market was so flooded with terrible games that it was difficult to distinguish the good from the bad that ultimately led to the crash of the video game market in 1982.

After a lot of restructuring, failed reboots, and lawsuits, Atari eventually became a division of Hasbro in 1998, then a part of IESA in 2001. IESA changed its name to Atari, SA, in 2009 and Bushnell returned to serve on the company's board in 2010.

Fun Fact: The late Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak developed a game called Breakout for Atari. Yes, it is true, the founder of Apple worked for Atari and since he wasn't a programmer himself, took help from his dear friend and co-founder of Apple, Steve “Woz” Wozniak.

Atari got the ball rolling for the world of gaming, as we know it today. I was one of the fortunate few who not only witnessed the arcades in their original form but also owned an Atari 2600 as well. Some of my best and worst moments are listed below.

Some games that defined not only Atari but arcade games in general are as follows:
1. Pong
2. Space Invaders
3. Combat
4. Asteroids
5. Pitfall

Some games that destroyed the Atari 2600
1. Pac Man for the Atari 2600
2. ET (the game based on the Spielberg movie E.T.)
3. Donkey Kong
4. Defender
5. Double Dragon

All the above five mentioned games were great as arcade classics and even on some consoles. However, the hardware of the Atari 2600 just wasn't right to translate these arcade classics onto the home system.

Source:thinkdigit