Happy Birthday, Linus
Dec 28, 2009, 20:33 (2 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Glyn Mody)
"Today is the birthday of Linus. Although that's essentially a
private event for him, there's an interesting historical link to
the creation of the Linux kernel, too. A
"s is well known, before he started writing Linux, Linus coded
on a Sinclair QL, a brilliant if rather bizarre system that was
based on a cut-down version of the Motorola 68000 chip used in the
Amiga, Atari ST, Apple Lisa and Macintosh. Linus was prepared to
put up with the limitations of that chip because it offered
multi-tasking – and hence the possibility of some advanced
programming.
"It was for similarly rigorous reasons that he avoided buying a
PC for some time: he disliked the underlying architecture of
Intel's chips. But when the 80386 came out, Linus finally
succumbed, and at the end of 1990, decided to buy a PC. The only
problem was finding the funds to pay for it."
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