Hi Aki, I know a guy who re-wrote the linux kernel for embedded systems for automation and others who went ahead to even write drivers to communicate with the system chips they had created. They are all on the list and I guess they respect what everyone has achieved since in one way or another it is assising them in their life. Something else, on this list are guys who have created games, apps etc but don't critic others or judge them. My point is, is it really fair to critic/judge Linus, he still goes down in history as the father of linux.. ./TheMburu On 11/27/11, Martin Chiteri <martin.chiteri@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 1:26 PM, aki <aki275@gmail.com> wrote:
Its amazing how its seems now looking at it differently. Being the genius he was, did he add more innovative features to the Linux kernel? For those who know both the Unix and Linux kernel well enough, please enlighten us more.
Its amazing how its seems now looking at it differently. Being the genius he was, did he add more innovative features to the Linux kernel? For those who know both the Unix and Linux kernel well enough, please enlighten us more.
@Aki, actually what Linus did was to write an alternative for the MINIX microkernel that had been available at the time as an academic operating system. See more here [ http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/ ]. Linus had been an avid follower of the system and was interested in extending it. When he contacted the original author, Prof. Tanenbaum, about it, Andy did not like his design. Linus was writing a monolithic kernel while MINIX is a microkernel so they disagreed in principle. Torvalds then decided, "WTH?" and in six months he had whipped out his own UNIX-like clone.
The other thing you should realise is that UNIX is not a kernel. There probably has never been one (technically) since the original AT&T UNIX by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. As we speak, UNIX is actually a standard [ http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix.html ] that computer systems implement if they adhere to the POSIX (Portable operating systems interface) [ http://www.unix.org/version4/ ]. So if you write an O.S with standard libraries defined like "string.h", "time.h", "malloc.h", and has utilities like shell and pipes, cat, ls etc and implemented according to the specifications, you essentially have a UNIX-like system. Find more here [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX ]. So Solaris / Macintosh are not UNIX but UNIX-certified.
The real innovation that Linus did was to make it pretty easy for guys to port devices to his UNIX clone. "Pure" UNICes are pretty hard to install on generic hardware since they really value reliability and perfomance. They mostly run on particular pieces of hardware and they do it very well, consider Macintoshes / FreeBSD. That is why Linux in different variations runs on different devices (Super-computers, mainframes, P.Cs, mobiles, embedded devices, etc) unlike any other operating system available.
Lastly, the guesses as to why he actually did it? The guesses go from the fact that the BSDi system that was being used at the time for teaching purposes (Universities and all) had a court case pending, something about patent-infringement. Its future was so uncertain, most people were avoiding it, including companies. That is why Linux caught up so fast and Linus at some point admitted that if *BSD did not have any issues, he would never have written his own system. For the rest of the users and kernel developers, some say the biggest problem was that BSD did not allow guys to dual-boot with Windows, so they could not essentially run it side-by side with DOS. That plus the fact that Linux supported many other devices, even if not as perfectly, is the idea behind Linux wild success.
Hope that helps, corrections are highly welcome.
Martin.
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