The Greatest OS That (N)ever Was
www.wired.com
Linus Torvalds and thousands of disparate hackers created Linux, perhaps the only alternative to Windows NT. It may be the greatest software story never completed. Nor yet were you seen neither seen nor heard when this earth was made when the sky was built… – Kalevala 3:245-248 The Kalevala is an epic poem of some […]

How does this coverage hold up? It was a fun read from back in my highschool days, when I was still five years from trying Linux on my own AMD Thunderbird 1Ghz. It wasn’t until 2008 that I tried again and it stuck.

  • demesisx@infosec.pubEnglish
    292·
    1 year ago

    Edit: my below comment was actually wrong. They actually do use git.

    Thanks for sharing. What I find most interesting is that Linus is still using the same email-based software development methods for the kernel while the rest of the software engineering world has evolved to use his other invention, git, for that. I’m kind of second-hand embarrassed for those geniuses who have yet to adopt proper version control for (what I’d argue is) the most important project in the computing world.

    Here’s a far more nuanced explanation from Spore’s reply to this comment :

    Git and Email are not mutually exclusive. In order to collaborate with git, you need and only need a way to send your commits to others. Commits can be formatted as plain-text files and sent through emails. That is how git has been used by its author from literally the first release of it.

    • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
      61·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, that’s not quite right. You need a means to discuss things and review code. You can do this via a website or mailing list. The Linux kernel uses the latter. Lots of other devs use the former. Like Github. And Github and Git aren’t the same. The issue tracking, discussion platform etc are something Github does on top of Git. You can as well use Email or a different service/online platform for the communication. The actual program code is stored in Git in both cases.