Talk:Linux

Hm, I believe the references to Minix is not entirely correct.. possibly for the very first 0.1 release (Oct. 1991, which I didn't test), but you certainly didn't need Minix installed first for any of the versions I started with (Jan. 1992). Linux used a Minix filesystem, but that was all - it bootstrapped itself just fine. This was before SLS came along, which as I recall was mid-1992, and with the speed of development, that was comparatively _ages_ later (by then X11 was supported, booting from harddisk was easy, there was a new filesystem ('ext', which came before 'ext2'), networking was up and running, etc.). -- Tor 12:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Early Linux needed Minix to compile, boot etc as it was incomplete back then. It was cross built from within Minix remember, and there was no program to create Minix file systems & partitions other then Minix at the time. I distinctly recall having one version that you'd install Minix, then unpack the linux stuff ontop of it, then dd the boot diskette, then use some kind of sector editor under MS-DOS to alter it to mount the hard disk for the root.. neozeed 15:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I dug around some more, and it's the first public version of linux, 0.1 that relied far more on linux, although the filesystem thing was in there for a whlie... neozeed 16:00, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

With the specifics you added to the article I'm certainly happy now.. :-) I could have kept all the old versions from when I started out, but as with all history there's a tendency to ignore and destroy data until it's too late, when it's become history. At least until a disk broke recently I still had applications dating back to 1992 on one box.. now there's only a lonely script from 1993 left there. Oh well. -- Tor 18:05, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The page feels happier now with some more concrete info on the origin.. Now I'll have to backtrace the rise of the Dec Alpha port, along with the 68k flavors that all felt like they happened at the same time. At least I know an Atari emulator that will run it. neozeed 00:48, 16 August 2010 (UTC)