this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Linux

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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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Happy birthday 🎊🎉 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 🤍

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is a happy coincidence that the evening before the 1970s began, at 4pm Pacific, they decided to invent UNIX.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think it's a joke about how UNIX timestamps work. They count milliseconds from January 1st 1970, 00:00:00 UTC, which is 4pm the day before in PST. So the happy coincidence is that they invented UNIX at the very millisecond when its clock starts.

There, ruined the joke.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh right, the UNIX epoch actually starts when UNIX was invented

Somehow, I didn't expect that...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

The world didn't exist before 1970.