115 lines
4.6 KiB
HTML
115 lines
4.6 KiB
HTML
<html>
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<head>
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<title>Keith Barrett Home Page</title>
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<body bgcolor=white>
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<h1>LINUX HISTORY</h1>
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Here are some early document events in the history of Linux.
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At some point, I may construct
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a timeline of the significant events (I have newsgroup discussions
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and announcements of many events).
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<h2>Linux 1991</h2>
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Linux was a fairly active entity on the internet in 1991, when
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most of the activities revolved around kernel and file systems. Back then,
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there was no WWW -- users interacted via the Linux newsgroup (which
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had no spamming and little flames back then), and email. Binaries (especially the
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kernel) were so small that they were sometimes posted directly to the
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newsgroup as UUENCODE files. Here is an archive of the Linux newsgroup from 1991.
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You will notice
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that Linus was very interactive, as well as Ted Ts'o (I believe he was
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the person who created this archive file).
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<br>
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<p>
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<a href="linux-activists91.txt">1991 Linux Activists</a>
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<h2>Linux 1992</h2>
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<p>
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Here is an archive capture of the newsgroup from 1992.
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<br><p>
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<a href="linux-activists92.txt">1992 Linux Activists</a>
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<br><p>
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Also in 1992, a publishing company named JANA was the first to create
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CD-ROM captures of the mit and newsgroup archives and sell them. These
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were labeled "Expo Edition CD-ROM NEWS" (when they had a label). It is
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from these CDs that I have extracted these archive files.
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<h1>Personal Linux Histories</h1>
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Here are most likely the first postings of some well known (to me) people in
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the Linux community. The people are listed roughtly in the order that they
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began to appear on the network. By March 1993, all of these people were frequent posters
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to the newsgroups and there are a large number within the archives. One of the
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more entertaining things to look for is the old tag lines in their signatures and
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their old email addresses.
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<p>
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<h2>Linus</h2>
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<a href="linus.txt">This 11/6/91 posting</a> is the first I have from
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Linus. Obviously these aren't his first, but it must be darn close.
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<p>
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<h2>Ted 'Tim' Ts'o</h2>
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Ted is probably the oldest poster next to Linus. His
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postings go all the way back to the first 1991 postings I have in the archive. <a href="ted.txt">This 11/7/91 entry</a>
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is his first posting claiming that he just heard about Linux and is creating the Linux 0.10 archives on tsx-11.mit.edu.
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<p>
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<h2>Alan Cox</h2>
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<a href="cox1.txt">THIS</a> this is the first post I have by Alan, made
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on 7/17/92. <a href="cox2.txt">HERE</a> are a few more.
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<p>
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<h2>Bryce Copland</h2>
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<a href="bryce.txt">HERE</a> is Bryce's first newsgroup posting from 10/2/92, and
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possible his first use of Linux, Bryce was
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also handling the Network FAQ (which was his <a href="bryce2.txt">2nd posting</a>).
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<p>
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<h2>Stephen Tweedie</h2>
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Stephen was a very frequent poster.
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<a href="tweedie0.txt">This 10/12/92 entry</a> is the first postings I
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have on record from Stephen. <a href="tweedie2.txt">HERE</a> are a few more. He
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was hacking everything! He and I had several interactions on the newsgroup.
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<p>
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<h2>Erik Troan</h2>
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<a href="troan.txt">
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This 2/8/93 posting</a> is the earliest post from Erik I could find (it's followed
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by an interesting post from Linus).
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His <a href="troan2.txt">next postings</a> were later that same month, and
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contain a reponse from Ted. <a href="troan3.txt">Other early posts</a> also included his
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mentioning that this new thing called Windows NT will be coming out soon
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(PROVING that Linux is older than NT), and his responding to the suggested creation
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of the first Linux magazine. There's also an interaction between Erik and Ted in there.
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<p>
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<a name="kgb">
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<h2>Keith Barrett</h2>
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I personally became involved in studying Linux in late 1992,
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and eventually took the
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plunge installing TAMU on <a href="1st_time.txt">March 27, 1993</a>.
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The kernel release was .99pl3 in the popular distributions SLS 1.01 and TAMU.
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Slackware was also out, but SLS was still more popular. The .99pl5 kernel was
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just about making the rounds I believe.
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<br><p>
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<a href="barrett2.txt">HERE</a> are some of my posts concerning problems when I
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quickly switched to the SLS release,
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<a href="1st_posting.txt">HERE</a> is my first posting to the newsgroup, and
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interestingly the
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first person to respond to my post was Ted Ts'o. I was asking about SCSI tape
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drives and eventually did some driver testing and got listed in the
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SLS and Slackware "Hardware Compatibility" document.
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<br><p>
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<a href="barrett3.txt">HERE</a> is posting where I suggested a breakup of the
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Linux newsgroups, immediately followed by Stephen Tweedie proclaiming his support.
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<br><p>
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I also was THE FIRST PERSON to suggest that Linux have a mascot!. Look at the end of
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<a href="1st_mascot.txt"> this posting.</a> Where's my royalities?
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</body>
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</html>
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