The Origins of Linux—Linus Torvalds
Computer History Museum2 HN recommenders · 2008–2014
659K views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2008-04-28
Linus Torvalds tells the story of Linux in a 2001 talk at the Computer History Museum, from writing code as a graduate student in Helsinki in the early 1990s to becoming an icon of open source. It covers the project's origins, its growth, and his views on licensing and kernel design.
HN points to it as the long first-person account of Linux history, including Linus on the GPL's role and on microkernels.
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4 comments from Hacker News
[LINK] Even better, a video of Linus Torvalds speaking on the history of Linux at the Computer Museum in 2001: [VIDEO]
Pertaining to the editor wars. There's a great (long) video about Linus and Linux history from 2001. Watch the whole thing if you can—after the 40 minute mark is especially worth it: [VIDEO] 55 minutes in someone asks him, "What editor and mail reader do you use?" He smirks, "The editor is microemacs, the best editor ever made. And vi and GNU Emacs suck, suck."
In this speech on the history of Linux from 2001 [1], Linus makes it clear that he views the viral nature of the GPL to be a crucial component of Linux's success. He likens it to allowing evolution to take place. I'm not sure when this viewpoint took hold for him, but it would suggest that he likes the most fundamental part of the license (though he disagrees with much of the politics). [1] [VIDEO]
Linus is just super clever: "just a hobby" (start small), picked GPL (getting Linux in place of the vaporware-HURD, though he doesn't like the over-ideology) and he totally owns this discussion: "monolithic v.s. micro-kernel" is likewise famous as his initial announcement. Reading this and you can sense that especially he has a lot of good points to make. And he was 22 at this time and already joking about flame-wars (turning them into fests). He already was so knowlegable&smart (certainly you become wiser over time but that's a heck oft a good foundation he shows there). And certainly so much hard work (and anger "f__k you Nvidia"). Kudos to his incredible dedication and sensoring for what is (likely to turn out) right! He has revisited these topics later calling micro-kernels "mental (academic) masturbation" [1] (so been much stricter and confirming himself to be spot on). [1] The origins of Linux: [VIDEO]