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I really wish that I was born early so I've could witness the early years of Linux. What was it like being there when a kernel was released that would power multiple OSes and, best of all, for free?

I want know about everything: software, hardware, games, early community, etc.

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[-] gadfly1999@lemm.ee 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

What a lot of people forget is that in the early days of Linux there was no software that targeted it. Everything you would want to run on Linux was intended to run on something else like Solaris, BSD, AT&T Sytem V, SCO, AIX or something else. As a result, Linux APIs were the most generic flavor of Unix possible. Almost every thing meant for a Unix would compile and run on it and there was rarely a dependency problem.

I still miss that.

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
198 points (97.6% liked)

Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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