Twenty Years of Linux according to Linus Torvalds | Hacker News Reader

Twenty Years of Linux according to Linus Torvalds

zdnet.com

64 pointsGarbage7 comments

Long time desktop Linux user here. I used Linux on the desktop in the late 90s when the only usable GUI apps were Netscape 4.7, Xemacs and terminal windows and there were some half-baked Windows95 like window managers. I got a heck of a lot of real work done on that config though.

The darkest day for Linux was when Windows 2000 came out. It was a Windows that didn't crash, had good networking and performed pretty well. A lot of people I knew who had been using Linux up to that point switched back.

I think with Android and Ubuntu over the last few years there's been a new dawn and Linux has caught back up as a end-user OS. For instance, I needed to scan a document and I was prepared for the hours of fiddling that I thought was probably necessary to get this to work with my Canon scanner/printer/copier. I used Simple Scan, it worked perfectly the first time I used it without reading the manual and with no configuration and it saved to a multi-page PDF. Mind=Blown!

Big deal with GNOME and Ubuntu for me is the six month release cycle. I know every half year I will get a new version with lots of fixes and improvements.

This kind of expectability lacks from almost all other desktop OSs

When I first wanted to try Linux on my laptop, it took an age just to find a distro that could recognise the display. A few weeks ago I bought some new wireless hardware, and it took longer to get it installed on Windows than it did on Linux. 95% of my time is spent on Linux now, and there are only a few programs (Flash Develop) that I need Windows for.

I don't think it will ever be the year of the Linux desktop, but that certainly doesn't make it a failure like the wonderful comments on that article would suggest.

"October 5th 2001, when 0.02, the first public release was made?"

Uhh....

SJVN: Looking ahead, any thoughts on where Linux will be at 40?

LT: Bah. I don’t plan that far ahead. I can barely keep my calendar for the next week in mind. I really have no idea.

So true. At work they want us to set all of our goals for 2011. I don't even know what I want to do tomorrow.

I only became a user some day in 1999/2000, but still it's impressive how Linux has changed and developed since then. I literarily could see void bubbles above people's head when talking about Linux. if only they would have known that there mobile is running on Linux in 2010 ...

Wow those comments are really something. I'm lovin' it.

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