Salakhetdinov Shamil
mcp2004 at mail.ru
Tue May 14 01:04:47 CDT 2013
Hi Hans -- I should have written that I have supposed that Linus Torvalds work on Linix was heavily influenced by works of Andrew Tanenbaum ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum ), his MINIX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX ) "educational UNIX like" OS as well as by POSIX ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX ) standard - all the rest was "just the art of system software development" driven by passionate Linus Torvalds and thousands of Linux development contributors... Anyway, I must note I'm completely in agreement with you on what caused MS Windows do dominate in 90-ies and (first part of) 00-ies, what operating system architecture principles makes Linux more stable than MS Windows etc. - I can't only sign under your "MS Windows must die" "petitions" :) - and not because I'm working mainly with MS Windows but because AFAIS MS Windows, all its end-user software (Office (365) etc.) and development tools, MS Windows Azure "cloud" services are getting better with years - would that help MS Windows and all its infrastructure to survive in the coming years - we will see... Thank you. -- Shamil Понедельник, 13 мая 2013, 16:08 -07:00 от Hans-Christian Andersen <hans.andersen at phulse.com>: >Hi Shamil, > >The Linux kernel isn't based on Minix sources or any other source. Linus >Torvalds wrote Linux from scratch and, as it developed into an operating >system, he continued with it simply because there were no freely available >kernels that supported the 32bit architecture - which is what he wanted. > >"*He *[Linus]* has stated that if either the GNU or 386BSD kernels were >available at the time, he likely would not have written his own*" ( >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux ). > >In fact, Linux was originally conceived by Linus to be a terminal emulator >and not an operating system. > >"*In 1991, in Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became >the Linux kernel. It was initially a terminal emulator, which Torvalds used >to access the large UNIX servers of the university. He wrote the program >specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating >system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 >processor*" (same source as above) > >In any event, Linux happens to be a lot more stable because it builds on >top of the original philosophies of Unix. Unix was simply just a better >conceived operating system than Windows was. The fact that Windows >succeeded and we have been living in an Windows dominated world until >recently has little to do with whether Windows is more stable or a better >platform, but has more to do with that Windows was designed to be >consumer-friendly compared to Unix (which wasn't at all consumer friendly >at the time), while also being cheaper than an Apple computer. It also >didn't help that all the different Unix vendors at the time were at war and >completely at odds about anything and everything - X Windows (the GUI) >included - and therefore were not focusing on the computer revolution, >because they didn't anticipate the moment when PCs would suddenly become >cheap enough that everyone would eventually have one in their homes. > >That's not to say that Linux is perfect. In fact, I would argue that its >monolithic kernel is purely pragmatic but not ideal and can suffer from the >same flaws that Windows has of badly written drivers being able to crash >your machine. The approach of a microkernel architecture avoids this, but >it was not considered feasible at the time. But this effect is minimized by >the open source and transparent nature of the Linux project. > >But, nevertheless, Linux and Unix machines in general are just more stable. >Take this as an example (Solaris Unix): >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAUvfqLEWuA That server had an uptime of >3737 days before it was switched off... 10+ years. :) > >- Hans > > >On 13 May 2013 13:43, Salakhetdinov Shamil < mcp2004 at mail.ru > wrote: > >> Hi Hans •- >> >> Thank you for your reference on Linux history. >> >> <<So what are we really arguing about here?>> >> I personally not arguing but expressing opinion on Jim's (rhetoric) >> question how it happened that Linux is a more stable OS than MS Windows. >> And the fact that Linux kernel was based on Minix sources and not on (GNU) >> Unix ones doesn't matter that much. >> >> Thank you. >> --Shamil >> << skipped >> >