Happy birthday ππ GNU/Linux.
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old.
It was thankfully released to the public on August 25th, 1991 by Linus Torvalds when he was only 21 years old student.
What a lovely journey π€
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Doesn't this depend a lot on the vendors having a lock-in on the GPU market? Semiconductor manufacturing is super expensive and there is little incentive for Nvidia to release a Free as in Libre device driver. There aren't any FOSS GPUs in development so FOSS drivers can't be made.
So we either have the choice of accepting proprietary drivers or just not using the functionality of GPUs.
Linus Torvalds has a large political influence, even he couldn't hold back and flipped off Nvidia. But Torvalds and the rest of the foundation don't go further than that. They're willing to criticize but not to condemn.
You're right in that the larger hardware industry is an even bigger shithole artifice than IT is. Thats a failure of state actors who have an open secret of corruption (esp in the US) and laziness. Projects like RISC-V and coreboot are promising in that regard.
Thats just life. This is still a transitionary period. But soon in the future, all software will be libre and all proprietary elements will be purged, never to come back ever again.
If you're willing to accept that, then why are you so critical of Linus? The fact that you can build a fully free version of Linux seems like the best of both worlds. From your perspective: get market share now by allowing non-free components, and then eventually transition them out while maintaining compatibility with the majority of the ecosystem.
"ecosystem" is a misleading term here. There is no "ecosystem" in CS, market giants explicitly make decisions about what their product policy is and rarely budge on them out of goodwill. Ecosystem implies that we implicitly lack a large degree of control and are only observers. That may be true for cutting edge research (only sometimes from a certain perspective), but hardly the case for when a company wants to create jails in their software for their clients. Or refuse to release firmware for a wifi card that they don't even sell anymore. Those are gardens meant to trap users in. The garden of the GNU project is all unapologetically libre software meant to prevent users from endangering themselves with nonfree software.
The GNU project never "allowed" non-free components, but they will always exist. The goal is to obtain a fully free operating system on all levels. It's okay to use proprietary software for the purposes of study and reverse engineering (a la using UNIX to develop userland/kernel). What's not okay is to stop agitating for more freedom.
The current GNU/Busybox + Linux desktop is virtually a complete operating system, but is held back by blobs and users advocating for proprietary software (users complaining that proprietary "X" doesn't run on "Linux").
We get market share by being more free, not by making ruinous compromises.
We do in fact not have much control over non-free software especially when they have a monopoly and exclusive features.
There is a(n) (unofficial) version of Linux that strips away all the non-free blobs. So we do have a completely free OS. Not to mention BSD.
Tell that to Windows.
The control we should have was taken away from us. Though efforts like RISC-V and Asahi Linux are both examples of purposefully regaining control.
Linux-libre or Linux-gnu is the official de-blobbed linux kernel of the GNU project. However, Linux-libre is an ongoing project that needs to overcome microcode and blobs as does Hurd. The linux kernel itself is free software, but is often built or packaged with nonfree blobs.
Windows has continually added anti-features, jails, and other injustices. They are a subgroup of the microsoft corporation, which spends millions upon millions in legally gray practices to spread their nonfree software.
Windows gets users by capturing them.