535
On this day in 1991, Linus Torvalds announced he was working on what would become Linux
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
535 points (96.5% liked)
Technology
59092 readers
6622 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wasn't Linus an actual asshole back in the day. The same as Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates. Seems to be a running trend with OS makers from the early 90's.
https://itsfoss.com/torvalds-takes-a-break-from-linux/
Not that it is relevant. It's cool we have Linux. Glad we can celebrate a system that just isn't quite there yet.
EDIT: Lemmy is a cesspool. You guys need help.
In my opinion, not the same as these guys. Jobs and Gates were assholes because they got fuck you money and power, so they were assholes for being assholes' sake. Linus was an asshole, but he usually had good reasons for acting like that, usually technical, common sense and no-nonsense driven. Sometimes I miss the time before he got therapy or whatever. It was amusing and cathartic to see him roasting some guys because he was right more often than not.
What are you talking about? I mean, if you mean Linux on the Desktop, sure, but nobody who uses Linux on the IT sector cares too much about that. Linux has won on the server arena for a long time already. E: And then there's also the mobile and embedded market. If you think about it, desktop is the only part in tech that Linux has yet to gain ground.
With Steam Deck it's gained ground there too. Sure. It's still not even close to Windows. But, progress is exciting anyways.
He created linux. He can be as much an asshole as he likes. Fuck your fee fees.
Someone apparently doesn't know how Bill Gates actually got his start or how Apple started. "Money and power."
Bill Gates snuck into a library to learn about computers.
Apple started with a group of people in a damn garage.
"He was an asshole but he had good reason." Apparently not good enough that Linus thought it was good enough to continue being an asshole. Pat on the back to him.
"It's won on Server Arena." Great? Ask enterprise companies and hospitals how secure and reasonable Linux seems for their business models.
"Mobile." Yeah this one is a joke. Linux is far from ready for the mobile world at least for phones.
"Embedded" now this one is actually a fair point.
How one started is irrelevant to the discussion. A lot of big companies out there had humble beginnings. It's about what those guys turn into once they hit it big. And the thing is, Linus never really hit it big, not in the way that Jobs or Gates did, because he was always content to be the tech / architecture guy instead of moving up to more higher-level management roles, which is where the money tends to be.
For all their humble beginnings, Jobs and Gates were ruthless when they hit it big. Go read one of the biographies of Jobs - he was a notoriously difficult guy to work with, and was needlessly an asshole very often. Also remember that Apple wasn't just Jobs; at least half of its early success is due to Wozniak, who is still beloved by everyone to this day, because on top of being a brilliant hardware and software engineer, he isn't and wasn't a dick.
I'll cut some slack to Gates though - as ruthless as he was on his days as CEO, with his philanthropy on the past decade or so he has been at least trying to atone.
He didn't. Did you miss the part where I said he got therapy? He even went so far to apologize, which is more than you can say about most of those tone deaf, narcissistic sociopath CEO types.
I'm not even sure what's your point here. Sure Linux isn't applicable to all kinds of business or how they're built. How that invalidates what I said about the server market?
What? So you're completely ignoring that the largest mobile OS on the market is built on Linux?
...this is a joke right?
Linus' brand of assholery extends to cussing out some of his colleagues via email when they did something stupid, sometimes. It's not even remotely comparable to Steve Jobs (horrible treatment of his daughter) and Bill Gates (EEE strategy, monopolistic practices).
Ahh, classical Torvalds' buttburning. So sad I don't see it anymore