It was on this day 30 years ago that a younger Linus Torvalds announced a free operating system to the comp.os.minix group and from there it exploded across servers, desktops and plenty more.
Now one of the most popular operating systems in the world, you can find it nearly everywhere you look including 100% of the top 500 supercomputers. There's a Linux distribution for everything, and Linux is what will also be powering the upcoming Steam Deck with Valve using SteamOS that's based on Arch Linux. What Torvalds said "won't be big and professional like gnu" has changed the world.
We might not have reached the "year of the Linux desktop", which is a running joke, but there's no denying the great strides the Linux desktop has made over the last few years thanks to many companies and individual contributors. The desktop share is different depending on where you look with StatCounter giving it 2.38% while NetMarketShare put it at 1.79% - both higher if you decide to include ChromeOS which is Linux-based.
The Linux desktop is even now a truly viable gaming platform - something many thought would probably never happen. Thanks to various major game engines and toolkits supporting Linux, drivers constantly improving, lots of native Linux games, Steam Play Proton and more. According to the latest figures from Valve, Linux is sitting at 1% right now of Steam users polled. Perhaps the Steam Deck will bump that up, depending on how Valve include it in their survey.
Happy Birthday, Linux. Here's to another 30 and beyond.
What does Linux mean to you? Let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I started looking at Linux with Mandrake and Red Hat distros.
Last edited by Bogomips on 25 August 2021 at 11:36 am UTC
Happy Birthday, Tux! (I declare this Tux' birthday as well.)
dziadulewicz Aug 25, 2021
AussieEevee Aug 25, 2021
QuoteWhat does Linux mean to you? Let us know in the comments.
I've said this before and I'll say it again... To me, Linux is freedom personified. The freedom of choice. The freedom of privacy. The freedom of security.
Unlike the other two major desktop operating systems, Linux gives you the freedom to change what you don't like about the OS. Not a fan of the desktop? Swap out gnome for MATE or KDE or Budgie or one of the many other choices. Don't like Ubuntu (And its derivatives) release cycle? Go with Arch and its rolling releases.
I admit that it does still have some way to go when it comes to gaming. Would be nice if Steam wasn't the only major platform to support it. Would be nice if Proton worked with all games flawlessly (Though I understand Valve and EasyAntiCheat are working on this). Would be nice if the other platforms I mentioned could release their own native clients that made use of said Proton.
ETA: Outside of gaming, I think Linux is perfect. You can do virtually anything you can imagine. While it is true that Adobe products present an issue, there are other powerful alternatives like Davinci Resolve.
Last edited by AussieEevee on 25 August 2021 at 12:15 pm UTC
I had been using it off-and-on since I received my first laptop in college. My first distros were openSUSE and Ubuntu in 2004. For the last 7 or so years, I've been using it exclusively for my home computing, mostly on Fedora.
I like that I can customize anything I want, package mangers, SELinux, and writing my own programs and sharing them.
I feel like I really own my OS, more than paying a price for it; I've paid with my time and effort.
Thanks to Linus for getting the party started, and thanks to everyone who has worked on the kernel and the entire universe of free software.
Greetings from Denialtown! Come visit us sometime! We're all young here!
Linux via dualboot for a several years, first more as a test than a real utilization, and little by little, less Win, more Linux.
My last dual boot was with Win7. Then Linux only with Ubuntu and Mint. Today is Manjaro for about 5 years, and happy to be there.
Linux for me is simply an alternative, and i believe alternatives are a must, a question of life or death, with any topic. One choice means no choice. So i’m on Linux to participate on the Life side. Also the obvious "free and open" stuff. Free i mean not the money part, the liberty/freedom one.
Last edited by Tchey on 25 August 2021 at 1:41 pm UTC
ssj17vegeta Aug 25, 2021
In 1999, I traded my beloved Amiga for a PC and reluctantly got Windows on it, which was already something I profoundly disliked.
I had only heard about Linux, but at that time, it wasn't something that appealed to me : I imagined writing dozens of lines of shell scripts just to launch a piece of software.
On my first job in 2003, I discovered Knoppix which was kinda cool but still required to compile your ethernet driver, and nowhere near Windows in terms of AAA software. But then came Ubuntu, and I boarded the hype-train, never to look back.
Looking back, Linux was already attractive in the mid 2000's, and it's even more so now, when the alternative is having terabytes of silent spywares sharing your data, aggressive ads forced onto you, and giving my bucks to a bunch of greedy b****ards who deserve none of it.
I'm quite proud of having converted my wife, mother, step-father and a couple of friends to Linux :D
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