Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux.
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.
It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.
What a lovely journey 🤍
Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux.
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.
It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.
What a lovely journey 🤍
Did stallman coat-tail Linux on day one, or did he latch onto the “ackshually, it’s got some gun in there so we deserve top billing” only a little after?
No, its because Linus Torvalds doesn’t consider libre software to be important. Torvalds sucks when it comes to free software.
GNU Hurd is an incredibly important project because there can’t be just one “free software kernel.”
Richard Stallman doesn’t care about popularity. He already changed the world. What he does care about is people forgetting their commitment to freedom.
He doesn’t give a shit if people say Linux, he does give a shit if people are “marketing” Linux without an emphasis on freedom.
Something that many have failed in.
What’s holding GNU/Hurd back? Can’t be hardware anymore since it became blazing fast
Nothing is holding hurd back. Debian and GNU Guix both ship hurd. The world has failed hurd instead.
Hurd will never accept firmware blobs or proprietary drivers. Thus, it will not work on OEMs who use those tactics for their machines. You are still able to install hurd in a VM as those have libre standards.
This is true for all GNU packages, not just hurd.
Oh that’s sad. The nature of commerce and competition means that proprietary stuff will never go away because making closed stuff is the way MBAs are taught to create “competitive advantage”
The strategy of the GNU project is to create and support as much free software as possible to make proprietary software obsolete.
Firmware is one of the biggest hurdles as the freeworld has the userland locked down for the most part (albeit some editing software like CAD or becoming feature competitive with photoshop).
There will always be people seeking to control others through dirty licenses and EULAs. The solution is not to target them (yet!) but to reject them and empower ourselves.
If that means not being able to use a wifi card: use an adapter! Or use ethernet. If that means we can’t get microcode, we’ll find cpus unencumbered by patents or reveree engineer them. Want to use an apple m1? There are people trying to liberate that machine as much as possible.
Probably after he gave up on his own kernel (Hurd) being a viable competitor.
I hate this language, its so fucking dehumanizing. “Viable competitor” is such bullshit. Torvalds gave away his commitment to freedom with binary blobs. That’s his decision to do. But to label Hurd on that same level is the biggest disservice to history you could ever do.
Hurd will never be the “viable competitor” because you hold selfish attitudes about how makes software valuable or not.
Torvalds sold out. Hurd didn’t.
I first recall him trying to shoulder surf Linux’s popularity not long after the XFree86 project switched to a new license that included an acknowledgement clause, so around 2004/2005. I still chuckle when I see that he wants me to call it GNU/Linux, but he has a shit hemorrhage because XFree86 added a license clause requiring similar labeling. He’s made more than his share of contributions, but he takes pedantry to a whole new level.