[humorix] Brief History of Linux (Part 3)

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Brief History of Linux (Part 3)
March 17, 2000

It's time again for the next installment in our "brief"
history of Linux.  In Part 3, we explore the rise and rise
of Microsoft, and the mysterious events surrounding Linus
Torvalds' creation of Linux.

* There are lies, damned lies, and Microsoft brochures

When we last left off, Bill Gates had forged an unholy
alliance with Big Blue to bundle DOS with new PCs.  At this
point Gates ticked off Step 1 in his master World
Domination timetable and proceeded to the next step.

Even from the very first day, the Microsoft Marketing
Department was at full throttle.  Vaporware has always been
their weapon of choice. Back when MS-DOS 1.25 was released
to OEMs, Microsoft handed out brochures touting some of the
features to be included in future versions, including:
Xenix-compatible pipes, process forks, multitasking,
graphics and cursor positioning, and multi-user support.  

The brochure also stated, "MS-DOS has no practical limit on
disk size. MS-DOS uses 4-byte Xenix compatible pointers for
file and disk capacity up to 4 gigabytes."  We would like
to emphasize in true Dave Barry fashion that we are not
making this up.

Big vaporous plans were also in store for Microsoft's
"Apple Killer" graphical interface.  In 1983 Microsoft
innovated a new marketing ploy -- the rigged
"smoke-and-mirrors" demo -- to showcase the "overlapping
windows" and "multitasking" features of Interface Manager,
the predecessor to Windows.  These features never made it
into Windows 1.0 -- which, incidentally, was released 1.5
years behind schedule.

* The rise and rise of the Microsoft Empire

The DOS and Windows releases kept coming, and much to
everyone's surprise, Microsoft became more and more
successful.  This brought much frustration to computer
experts who kept predicting the demise of Microsoft and the
rise of Macintosh, Unix, and later, OS/2.  "Why do people
keep using crapware like DOS?" they frequently asked.

Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft (at least not
until recently), which was the prime reason that DOS and
Windows prevailed.  Oh, and DOS had better games as well,
which we all know is the most important feature an
operating system can have.

In 1986 Microsoft's continued success prompted the company
to undergo a wildly successful IPO.  Afterwards, Microsoft
and Chairman Bill had accumulated enough money to acquire
small countries without missing a step, but all that money
couldn't buy quality software.  Gates could, however, buy
enough marketing and hype to keep MS-DOS (Maybe Some Day an
Operating System) and Windows (Will  Install Needless Data
On While System) as the dominant platforms, so quality
didn't matter.  This fact was demonstrated in Microsoft's
short-lived slogan from 1988, "At Microsoft, quality is job
1.1".

* Boy meets operating system

While everyone was looking towards Redmond, certain events
transpired in Finland that would later have grave
repercussions for Microsoft.  That's right, Internet Relay
Chat was invented in Finland.  IRC would form  a major
communications channel by which collaborative development
on free software would take place.

Oh, and Linux was started in Finland, too.

The young Linus Torvalds might have been just another
CompSci student if it wasn't for his experiences in the
University of Helsinki's Fall 1990 Unix & C course.  During
one class, the professor experienced difficulty getting
Minix to work properly on a Sun box.  "Who the heck
designed this thing?" the angry prof asked rhetorically,
and somebody responded, "Andrew Tanenbaum".

The name of the Unix & C professor has already escaped from
Linus, but the words he spoke next remain forever etched in
his grey matter:  "Tanenbaum... ah, yes, that Amsterdam
weenie who thinks microkernels are the greatest thing since
sliced bread.  Well, they're not. I would just love to see
somebody create their own superior Unix-like 32-bit
operating system using a monolithic kernel just to show
Tanenbaum up!"

His professor's outburst inspired Linus to order a new IBM
PC so he could hack Minix (as an excuse not to do
schoolwork, of course).   The new machine was quite
expensive, so Linus had to rent it.  He planned on paying
the monthly installments from his meager salary as a nude
model for the university's Art Department.

You can probably guess what happened next.  Inspired by his
professor's words, Linus Torvalds hacks together his own
superior Unix-like 32-but operating system using a
monolithic kernel just to show Mr. Christmas Tree up.

* An unexpected plot twist

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Linus Torvalds was
tragically hit by a bus on the morning of January 5, 1991
while he was crossing the street to pick up his new PC at
the post office.  

At this point, you, the reader (assuming you've made it
this far without dozing off), are probably wondering, "What
the heck? Linus can't be dead; I talked to him last month
at a Linux expo and he gave me his autograph, which I sold
last week on eBay for $1,000!  If Linus died in 1991, then
where did Linux come from?"

We could make up some answer involving a conspiracy
conconcted by the Helsinkian Underground in which "Linus
Torvalds" is nothing but a  fictional character portrayed
by a cast of Finnish actors. We could then argue that Linux
is a fiendish instrument distributed by the Finns to spy on
the rest of the world.

However, that's not the truth.  Occam's Razor tells us that
the simplest explanation is usually the best.  Indeed, the
real explanation for the creation of Linux is much simpler
than a Finnish meta-conspiracy ever could be: it involves
such common everyday occurences as alien invasions and
temporal paradoxes.

* A Linux-free universe

Without Linus around to create Linux, the Unix world
fragmented and collapsed in the late 1990s.  Apple went
bankrupt in 1998; a year later several prominent Macintosh
advocates surrendered to Microsoft by signing the historic
Treaty of Redmond. All other operating systems faltered,
and by the year 2000 Microsoft had 100% market share on all
system software.

It's not hard to imagine what happened next.  The Microsoft
Network (formerly called the Internet) soon permeated
throughout society. The US Congress replaced several
executive departments with the Department of Software,
headed by Chief Software Architect Bill Gates.  The
"Microsoftization" of the US, and then the world, continued
unabated until 2054, when the United States of Microsoft
launched a space probe towards Gatesia Prime (previously
known as Alpha Centauri) using ActiveIonDriveX
propulsion.  

Space aliens intercepted the probe en route to Gatesia
Prime and were not pleased with what they saw.  The probe's
computers ran Windows 2050 (Interstellar Edition), which
the aliens considered to be a dangerous virus.  "What if
this thing spreads to our computer systems?" the aliens
wondered.  "Our entire galactic civilization will collapse
in a colossal Bluescreen!"

So, naturally, they travelled to Earth and blew up the
entire planet without warning using their fancy ray guns.  

That would be the end of the story, except the captain of
the alien's invasion ship started feeling a little guilty
about the destruction of several billion pseudo-intelligent
life-forms. Nevertheless, he couldn't think of anything he
could do to save the Earthlings. It's not like he could go
back in time and alter events so that Microsoft would not
obtain a software monopoly, thus preventing the creation of
the abomination known as Windows 2050.

And then he remembered that a new time machine had recently
been installed on his ship.  Of course!  The ship's captain
travelled back to 1991 and arranged for the bus to have a
flat tire, thus preventing Linus from being run over.  He
also left a copy of the Faux Press book, "How to Write Your
Own Unix-Like 32-Bit Operating System in Only 365 Days".

* Linux is born

We all know what happened next.  Linus' superhuman
programming talent produced, within a year, a full
operating system that rivaled Minix.  The first official
announcement on comp.os.minix came October 5th, in which
Linus wrote these famous words:

   Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men
   were men and wrote their own device drivers?  Do you
   want to cut your teeth on an operating system that will
   achieve world domination within 15 years?  Want to get
   rich quick by the end of the century by taking money
   from hordes of venture capitalists and clueless Wall
   Street suits?  Need to get even with Bill Gates but
   don't know what to do except throw cream pies at him? 
   Then this post might just be for you :-)

Linux (which was known as "Lindows", "Freax", and "Billsux"
for short periods in 1991) hit the bigtime on January 5,
1992 (exactly one year after Linus wasn't hit by a bus)
when version 0.12 was released under the GNU GPL.  Linus
called his creation a "better Minix than Minix"; the famous
Linus vs. Tanenbaum flamewar erupted soon thereafter on
January 29th and injured several Usenet bystanders.

It's one thing to create your own operating system from
scratch, but it's another thing to convince guinea pigs...
er, other people... to use it.  Thankfully, the fledgling
Linux community had help from the GNU Project -- a certain
organization that I completely forgot to mention until
now.  As we shall see in the next installment (assuming you
weren't so horribly bored with this installment that you'll
actually read the next one), Linux and the GNU Project team
up and begin the process of attacking the Microsoft Empire.

To be continued...

---

James S. Baughn
http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/

-
Humorix:      Linux and Open Source(nontm) on a lighter note
Archive:      http://humbolt.nl.linux.org/lists/
Web site:     http://www.i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/