Linux is Timeless
August 24, 2008
As many of my readers know, I am a huge advocate of the Linux operating system. I recently found a book on linux that was written in the early 1990’s. I was astonished to find that it was very, very simalar to a book on linux that i had read the other day which was written in 2005. I had stumbled onto another great advantage of linux: Linux is timeless. The operating system you can find today is almost exactly the same as the one from many years ago. Sure, a few utilities have been added and updated, but otherwise, no actual difference in the operating system is revalent. The GUI (Graphical User Interface p. goo-ee) is a different story. Many linux distro’s today are decked out in fanciful GUI’s, especially ubuntu and fedora. This provides ease of use for beginners but can be annoying to the Linux/UNIX wizard.
Next: About the GUI. The good, the bad and the ugly.
August 25, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I think it is extremely misleading for you to state that the Linux base of today hasn’t changed much from the early kernels of over a decade ago. As the first version of the kernel was only released in 1991, any book written in that time period would only reflect a very early and minimal project as opposed to the mature and stable system that Linux is today.
One has only to consider all of the hardware and protocols that have been introduced since, say 1995, to get an idea of how much more support is in today’s Linux as opposed to the early kernels.
Granted, if one is merely referring to OS concepts & implementation, then not much has changed in that arena for quite awhile. However, to say that not much has changed in the OS itself is like comparing a horse & buggy to a Bugati.