It is amazing how #Linux has gone from a completely niche thing for nerds that was readily dismissed by most corporate environments to something ubiquitous that most people interact with in some way on a daily basis.
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Scott Williams 🐧wrote last edited by [email protected]
It is amazing how #Linux has gone from a completely niche thing for nerds that was readily dismissed by most corporate environments to something ubiquitous that most people interact with in some way on a daily basis. A handful of hobbyists, tinkerers, and philosophers birthed a movement that has changed the world. Don't let anyone convince you that your hobbies, tinkering, and ideals will never amount to anything.
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@vwbusguy As an aging geek who was there for 1.0 how do you feel UNIX/MINIX/BSD/AIX/SunOS/etc/etc are to it? In corporate development a *nix has always been the backbone of most infrastructures so being “readily dismissed” just seems weird to think about when the lineage is basically the core competency of the worlds technology.
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@LordofCandy @vwbusguy As someone who started developing OSes in the early 70s I have to say “always” is doing some heavy lifting. Unix didn’t really become infrastructure backbone until the mid 90s and most users had no need to be aware of it and still don’t.
Linux only exists because the AT&T/UCB suit lasted as long as it did and is only widespread because companies like IBM have spent billions developing it.
Sure it has a humble start but it’s a corporate success story.
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Scott Williams 🐧replied to Marty Fouts last edited by [email protected]
@MartyFouts @LordofCandy That is fair. IBM's investment. Intel and Red Hat negotiating to get Intel drivers in the kernel.
It's also a government success story with NSA contributing selinux early on and various government grants and contributions from multiple states along the way.
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@vwbusguy @LordofCandy IBM alone spent over a billion developing Linux in addition to its effort to support an industry consortium; but the biggest corporate contribution was a consequence of embedded computers especially IOT and mobile devices. There are thousands of developers at hundreds of companies who produce the bulk of Linux work.
Linux was mostly hobby software until around 2005 but has been overwhelmingly commercially developed since.
But even that is an OSS success story.
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@MartyFouts @LordofCandy I still remember the IBM commercials with the young boy in the room. Novell has some funny early consumer focused Linux ads, but IBM's ad, in addition to their code and financial investments, definitely helped Linux become more mainstream - there's no denying that.