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I'm sorry, and I don't want to be disrespectful or rude, but as a person who has no clue about computers I am very surprised the creator of Linux is still alive. I somehow thought he is super old and probably dead by now or at least not using the internet. I'm so sorry for my ignorance.
Edit: Thank you everyone for the many interesting replies, I've learned a lot of random stuff which I greatly appreciate!
He's 55 years old
Computer aren’t very old! Most of the pioneers are still alive and kicking
That's the thing, my dad was one of the first informatics people (computer based algebra in Russia and Germany) and my mom did her thesis on how to design a cigar shaped body in 3D on a computer. But they are in their mid to late 60s now and my dad went from being a professor of IT to "how do I open the internet" so my confusion is based on bias from my family. All his former colleagues also didn't stay up to date with technology and they worked for an elite university in Germany.
Anyway, good that they are alive and kicking! And glad their kicks are not so random as my folks'.
Ahhh, that's Germany for you though
I've literally seen my dad trying to figure out how to fax some documents in like 2012
Faxes are still pretty normal in Germany in like 2025
The people that invented the internet are still using it!
Al Gore is still alive!
A good benchmark is Windows 95, and that was only 30 years ago.
It's easy to remember because the 95 means 1995. And 19 means the before fore times our ancestors are from.
Ouch. Fucking ouch. We're right here you know. Looking over your shoulder as you write on that magic tablet. No need to denigrate ghosts.
Some of us are barely even middle aged
Dude wrote the first Linux kernel in grad school in his early-mid 20s. He's like 50 something now.
Unix predates Linux by a bit, but most of those old guys made it to at least the Obama era.
Vint Cerf is still around, and he got to see himself portrayed in one of the Matrix films.
Don’t feel shameful, you’re one of the lucky ten thousand
Linux was "invented" in 1991, FYI, and Linus was a student at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#The_creation_of_Linux
Your ignorance is adorable; keep it up and don't stop being inquisitive or apologetic of it.
Thanks man, I'll try my best
Linux is not that old. There's a reason why the "Actually it's GNU+Linux.." meme exists, because Linux is built using tools that were already around, he didn't start entirely from scratch.
spoiler
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Oof for someone who isn't tech savvy this was a hard read but I appreciate it!
My experience with Linux - and as I now know, probably GNU? - is limited to not pressing a button while my dad's computer at work turned on so that I would end up in not in Windows. He had one amazing game on Linux where some troll had to roll stones (I wish I could find it again). I came to work with him every now and then and was allowed to play while he would half desperately half violently try to get rid of the chaos on his desk, which consisted of about 700 pounds of paper and occasional random paper clips.
I loved these days. And the canteen's gravy with rice for some reason.
(Edit: this was in the mid to late 90s)
Oof for someone who isn’t tech savvy this was a hard read but I appreciate it!
I'm sorry, I should've clarified, that's the socalled copypasta/meme I mentioned. But now you're cursed with the knowledge of it existing.
I wish I had 90s memories of linux, but in my family it was all microsoft, from DOS to Windows. My uncle was an electrical engineer and was interested in computers, so our family got some hand-me-down PC's over time, and I probably played Leisure Suit Larry way too young in the early 90s, but I still believe that typing in text commands is a great way of learning a language.
It wasn't until 1999 I saw Linux for the first time at school, and later around 2003 I saw it again at a LAN where someone was showing off how fast it could run Unreal Tournament 2003, which was faster than Windows at the time.At least there's still rice and gravy around :)
@RedSnt @volvoxvsmarla Well... not all of them. There is <strong>at least one</strong> <a href="https://chimera-linux.org/">Linux distribution</a> that's decided to use a BSD userland instead of a GNU one, so I guess it could be called BSD/Linux...
(and no, I'm not associated with them. Right now I run Ubuntu, but project #3 on my list of personal projects is customizing either CachyOS or OpenMandriva to my taste, complete with custom repos, I haven't decided yet.)
Ha, I was just looking up a similar meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wz9BkzU1zY (It's about alpine)
But yeah, it's actually what I like about linux, and also what I dislike about systemd, the fact that things are interchangable. With regards to systemd, it's mainly because canonical is the driving force there, I'm distrustful of corpos having too much power of a critical part of the system like that.Very interesting distro, I like the name as well. "Chimera" because it's not like any other OS. Also, never heard of the "dinit" init before, interesting!
You might be thinking of Unix, which is what Linux is based on but not really. Unix was created in the 1960s and for sure the people who created it are passed
Actually, Ken Thompson and Douglas McIlroy are still alive
dang... in their 80s
guess I should have looked before I said anything
Brian kernighan is still writing code, at least as of 2022:
The cognitive dissonance of just how fast technology has advanced is pretty crazy huh
Heh, back in the early 2000s when I was busy reading up on computer history I was very surprised that a lot of Internet standard pioneers and computer science giants were still alive. Like, people from the stone age. This is such a young field.
I seriously thought John McCarthy (creator of Lisp programming language) had reached such a status of existence that he would probably never die. (sadly, he did.)