That's pretty cool. Remembering back to the old Minix/Linux flame fest I would not have ever predicted it would end up this way.
I'm struck by the fact that these sorts of things are often given to people who have persisted, year after year, in pursuit of singular excellence in a particular topic. I highly respect folks who have that level of grit.
I have always been curious whether Linus has made good money for his contributions. This both made me happy that he was given some money and prompted me to find out whether he has made money otherwise.
Isn't this really more the windowing environments and the driver support? Gone are the days when it was difficult to get a working UNIX installation, thanks to Linux, but as far as the kernel is concerned, I was happy with Solaris, NetBSD, HP-UX. Some might argue SE was a welcome addition, but for me it's the first thing I disable.
I know there have been a large number of features added to the kernel over the years, and support for new hardware, but those developments have also happened with the other flavors of UNIX.
I guess my point is, did the world really need another flavor of UNIX?
I think I personally have been more impacted by LT for having authored git. Even though I write this on Chrome running on Ubuntu. I'd have been just as happy to have installed any other Unix flavor.
I think Linux played an important role in providing a free and Open Source Unix at a time where the BSDs were fighting demons both internal (segregation of their community) and external (with all their lawsuits). Linux was the turning point between Unix being a very expensive commercial product, and a hobbyist tool for the wannabe hacker.
It also, and this may be a personal impression more than an absolute truth, was the Unix to play the most insistent role on the desktop. I, like many, got introduced to Unix through Linux (Ubuntu to be exact - the year was 2006). Sure I fell in love with Unix and quickly moved on to other distros/unices, but at the end of the day, I still believe that I, and a lot of people my age, only discovered Unix because somebody somewhere fought for the desktop, something neither Solaris nor HP-UX deemed "profitable" enough.
I was using Unix long before Linux came along, and you're right it was the fork that pushed the most for the desktop. Even though today I am using it as my desktop that's really only because I write server software. I think the main thrust for Unix on the desktop was in fact OS/X, but among us geeks it has been Ubuntu. But that was really my point, it was the distros like RH and Ubuntu that put together something installable with a mostly workable window manager that most people associate with Linux, not the kernel.
While I am very much not taking anything away from the work that Linus has accomplished, my point was that much of the credit for today's Linux installations comes more from RedHat than anything Linux did in the kernel.
There indeed was the BSD wars, but most of the old timers that started their career with a flavor of Unix (for me, it was HP-UX on an HP9000), since then they have all been much of a muchness, varying only in their applicability to a given problem (including suitability to the desktop.)
I am reasonably sure that the number of Linux desktops is very small, nearly every practical use for Linux is running servers. I would wager that OSX dwarfs Linux in terms of unix-on-the-desktop comparisons.
Since history provides no A/B testing capabilities, it's very difficult to isolate the impact Linux has had. Would we today be all using some form of BSD, or maybe Solaris/Intel with ZFS. Who knows, but I am thankful to Linus for a number of things including his efforts to promote OSS.
While it is true that OSX very probably accounts for more unix-on-the-desktop than linux, they are two very different desktop audiences.
While OSX is indeed a unix, it hides this so well that unless you know what you're looking for you would never use any of the things that most people mean when they refer to unix.
I write this on a iMac I use for developing iOS applications, but honestly, if I hadn't been using linux since 2006(Ubuntu, gentoo then arch for the past 2 years) I would never have learned the use of the command line(and tools such as find, sed, grep, etc...) just from using the mac.
For me, the switch to linux was mainly because I wanted an alternative to Windows(when I first heard about Vista) and I could definitely not afford a mac(I was a student at the time). I suspect that many a tinkerer/hacker has gone down this path. In fact, most linux users have met have had similar stories, while mac users have mostly been professionals and/or design/hipster-type people. I have not met a single programmer whose main unix learning experience has come from OSX while I've met tons that have learned from linux(and a few from other unices) even if they eventually ended up using OSX in their daily work.
As I said, this is all anecdotal, but I wouldn't be surprised if these trends were more general.
You're probably right. I'm a developer and I fit this group.
I've always been amused because it is a "free OS" that's really evolving. Since the my first tries with Red Hat, Mandrake, Connectiva... I never stopped. Used Debian for some time and 4 years ago I really got into Ubuntu, switching all my machines to take full advantage of the client x server environment it provides.
Now I've just switched back to it after a year of OSX on a macbook air. Lion is a great OS, but I just like Ubuntu approach and to be involved with Linux, I can't help it.
My experience was extremely similar. I think one of the many reasons that Linux has gotten more popular was due to how poor Vista was as an OS. Ubuntu 7.04 was my first intro to Linux and I was only using it because a friend had given me a LiveCD after hearing me complain about Windows Vista.
I don't mean to take away from Linus' achievement, nor to sound like RMS, but every time people refer to "the Linux operating system" it's misappropriating credit. They usually mean GNU/Linux and the kernel is only one piece of that.
EDIT: Disregard this comment, the article has been edited removing references to Linux as an operating system.
The first point is debatable. In academic circles (where Linus has spent a big part of his career), operating systems usually designate the kernel. In commercial products, the kernel by itself is not very useful, so you'd add a few userland utilities to your definition.
The second point is simply wrong. Busybox is a very widely used alternative to GNU, and Android, arguably the most successful mass consumption Linux system to date, has zero GNU tool.
As much as I appreciate GNU, the FSF and rms, this constant demand for credit is, too often, misplaced and above all, a bunch of misguided rhetoric.
Can't we simply be happy for an engineer who fully deserves the recognition he's getting?
GNU's a little more than some userland tools thrown in for good measure. It is actually an operating system.
If you look at the posix spec, which defines what a real "unix" should have and how it should behave, there's a tremendous amount of libraries and little tools (like how, for example, 'sed' is mandatory).
If you look at a barebones installed unix-like system, most of these utilities and libraries actually come from GNU.
In these days of X and GUI-goodness, they don't seem very important anymore, but nevertheless, they are needed to be able to claim one has a full unix-like operating system.
As for credit hogging, a lot of work went into writing GNU, and most of it was not rockstar-programming like kernel work. Most of the people who wrote GNU wrote it with a specific reason. That those people make a plea to call it by a name that would acknowledge those reasons, is neither unreasonable nor overly burdensome, and most importantly, not mandatory.
As such, I don't feel it's "misplaced", or a "bunch of misguided rhetoric".
>Can't we simply be happy for an engineer who fully deserves the recognition he's getting?
Of course, any money in Linus' pocket is well spent. His approach to online collaborative development advanced the entire industry! ( the kernel is, of course, a great achievement as well, just not quite as remarkable )
I gave GNU as an example of one userland that is commonly conflated with Linux. As you note, there are others. The main point is - Linux is not an operating system and it is misleading and incorrect to refer to it as such.
RMS's shrill remarks about how Linus is "stealing" credit from the FSF are misguided. I try to maintain the distinction between kernel and OS primarily out of a desire to be accurate about how I describe an operating system. Android and Ubuntu are clearly different and describing both as "Linux" is not particularly helpful to anyone.
> "Android and Ubuntu are clearly different and describing both as "Linux" is not particularly helpful to anyone."
except they both run on the Linux kernel, so it is, nevertheless, accurate.
personally, i think it is helpful. there seems to be an ongoing criticism of Linux that it hasn't made much progress as the basis for a desktop operating system. while that may be true, talking about Linux in relation to android helps raise awareness that there's another kernel out there not put out by apple or microsoft that's responsible for running a large percentage of mobile devices on the market.
as apple frequently states, we're now living in the "post pc era". who's to say that the desktop and mobile spaces won't continue to merge, at which point your "not particularly helpful to anyone" use of the word Linux to describe both will become more relevant.
I'm struck by the fact that these sorts of things are often given to people who have persisted, year after year, in pursuit of singular excellence in a particular topic. I highly respect folks who have that level of grit.