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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
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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.
IDK about the topic of him being an asshole. I don't follow him like, at all.
But, I might argue about the server arena part. From my understanding, (not in the field, so feel free to prove me wrong), but Azure, AWS, and others are built on Linux. Right? Just the two sites are a very massive percentage of the internet.
Mobile, again I might be wrong. Android is a fork of Linux or runs the Linux kernel. Is that right?
Yes, you are right, on all accounts. Pretty much all of cloud infrastructure is built on Linux, including Microsoft's Azure, except when you have apps deployed there that are based or dependent on legacy (.NET Framework and older stuff) or proprietary (AAD and stuff like that) Microsoft tech, but again, those are becoming more and more the exception rather than the rule. On-prem setups tend to be more mixed between Microsoft and "other" stacks, but Microsoft hasn't had the lead for a long time even there.
And you're absolutely right, Android runs on the Linux kernel; although the userspace is not pure GNU, the fact that Android runs on Linux is 100% relevant to the discussion since Linus is the lead maintainer and creator of the kernel.
The OC clearly has some bone to pick with Linus, I'm outta here.
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?
You seem like you have zero idea what you are talking about...