Linux Is Obsolete

So far I’ve looked at Linux as something that people accept as religion rather than something with a substance and solid grounds. If you are a purist, you would get hurt to see the way Linux architecture is based on technically outdated 70s operating system and no amount of hype can convince you that this thing won’t hit the wall sooner or later. To be precise, Linux essentially functions as stop gap quickly pulled out hack just to keep geeks going who are apparently as much in need of a religion just as most other human beings. This is the type of arguments I have had few years back with a Linux zeolet and it all got fresh when I was reading this 1992 email thread with subject “Linux Is Obsolete” by Prof. Andrew Tanenbaumn and then replied by Linus Torvalds and later by few others including Ken Thompson! It’s fun to read young Linus’s fiery email replies to the critic and Tanenbaumn’s calm and witty follow ups 🙂

“your job is being a professor and researcher: That’s one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix [an OS designed by Prof. Tanenbaumn].”

-Linus Torvalds

“From a theoretical (and aesthetical) standpoint linux looses. If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I’d not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn’t and still isn’t.”

-Linus Torvalds

“Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.”

-Andrew Tanenbaumn

“I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design 🙂 “

-Andrew Tanenbaumn

“Writing a new OS only for the 386 in 1991 gets you your second ‘F’ for this term. But if you do real well on the final exam, you can still pass the course.”

-Andrew Tanenbaumn

“There are two kinds of researchers: those that have implemented something and those that have not. The latter will tell you that there are 142 ways of doing things and that there isn’t consensus on which is best. The former will simply tell you that 141 of them don’t work.”

-David Cheriton

On other topic, why does discussions threads that got created between 1990-1993 usually have a high quality?