this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Linux
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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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Linux didn't exist until I was 25.
But are we talking earliest age, or length of time using it? I've been running Linux on PCs for over 30 years.
Yes, at least seeing a 50yo guy like me. We come from the 8bit world, there was no linux!
Been there! It was Avery different time.
The first program I wrote was in the Logo Turtle Game on an Apple Iie in 4th grade. Did some BASIC programming on the Apple IIe's building interpreter too.
I use Arduino boards with Atmega, Esp32/8266, and M0 chips on them for embedded projects. These $8 boards have more processing capability then my first desktop computer....
I know it's just nostalgia, but I sometimes really miss the days when you could memorize the entire memory layout of your computer. You knew that if you poked a value into a memory location, some pixels would flip at a certain place on the screen.
It was nice living in such a small, constrained world.
I still live it. I use some Atmega chips like the attiny85. It only has 256 bytes if RAM and 5 i/o pins to work with. I code in C++ so I have 100% control over memory if I want it.
Someday I'll find a reason to work with attiny10 chips... There's almost no resources on it and it's about the size of a grain of rice!
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/attiny10
Man, you make me wish I'd have followed an embedded career. When I first entered the market, embedded was niche and the domain of specialty industries like the MIC. If you cut out companies like Lockheed, building stuff to kill people, the job pool was really small. But there was a window, juuust around the time I moved to management, when you could find embedded jobs. I wish now I'd have taken that fork in the path.