discuss: Thread: Linux 2.0 to Now

LDP,

I started out in the Linux community in 1998 and have followed LDP as things progressed. I survived the Linux upgrades and have seen, as you have seen, the development that Linux has created. 

To provide a starting point for students at the EDU level, perhaps a "autobiography" of the Linux Kernel and it's contributing vendors should be outlined, documented, and published for the masses. 

I exited the US Army in 2012, my right years in the Infantry (as a grunt, trigger puller, cannon fodder) didn't go to waste. I kept up on the effort of the Open Source Community and made sure when I got out, I would be at semi-par. 

What I see now at the University Level is a gap. Students do not know what Linux actually is, as because of that, I feel they lack a fundamental appreciation for the need for Linux. "Why not AIX, or BSD, or ..." Is what I hear. A need for documentation for what lead to Open Cloud Computing is needed. How did we go from awesome uptime to multi-node cloud computers? Why isn't AIX and the other proprietary vendors a success?

End rant. What do you think?

Respectfully,

Paul Hendricksen

Excuse all typos and spelling errors, this is sent from my mobile.

> On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 08:50:29PM -0600, Paul Hendricksen wrote:
>LDP,
>
>I started out in the Linux community in 1998 and have followed LDP as things progressed. I survived the Linux upgrades and have seen, as you have seen, the development that Linux has created. 
>
>To provide a starting point for students at the EDU level, perhaps a "autobiography" of the Linux Kernel and it's contributing vendors should be outlined, documented, and published for the masses. 

Everybody has a choice, and some groups tend to be partial to other
operating systems.  (ie. Windows System Administrator making lots of
money tend to be partial to Microsoft Windows software.)

But with that being stated, every operating system or solution has it's
benefits and problems.  For example, the less people know about an
operating system's internals, the better copyrighted software might be
protected, although debatable.  Also up until after Windows XP, Windows
did perform fairly well with upgrades and being easy to use.  Now, it
still takes forever to apply upgrade patches, still requiring rebooting
at most times versus Linux being designed to have quick and easy
software upgrades.  A good example of building something from the ground
up and properly accounting for possibly problems.  (ie. Similar to
building a pyramid.)

>I exited the US Army in 2012, my right years in the Infantry (as a grunt, trigger puller, cannon fodder) didn't go to waste. I kept up on the effort of the Open Source Community and made sure when I got out, I would be at semi-par. 

It's always a good thing to be well informed.  (ie. Local police during World
War II were often mislead into the slaughters of people, etc.)

>What I see now at the University Level is a gap. Students do not know what Linux actually is, as because of that, I feel they lack a fundamental appreciation for the need for Linux.

Sounds like one of 'dem partial or biased environments of Windows only
system administrators or political bias.  Shrugs.  Look at it this way,
it's their loss, but it's best to remain honest and talk about other
solutions versus remaining tight lipped about something.  (ie. Don't
want to become complicate by indirectly backing bias opinions?)

>"Why not AIX, or BSD, or ..." Is what I hear. A need for documentation for what lead to Open Cloud Computing is needed. How did we go from awesome uptime to multi-node cloud computers? Why isn't AIX and the other proprietary vendors a success?

Very good question.  Why not AIX or BSD?  As I already stated, every
operating system has it's pros and cons.   Maybe they realize this, and
chose Windows for a reason.  But usually, most Computer Science
curriculums have some or a lot of experience with Linux, due to Linux's
many benefits.  (ie. Similar to the King James Bible being the first
initial open and easy to understand Bible!  Prior, every Bible were
written in Latin, etc.)

This thread can get even more detailed, as a programming language is
what makes an operating system.  Why C++ or JAVA, when C is just fine
for Linux?  Why Python scripting, instead of using SH/Bash scripting?  I
personally think C & SH/Bash are still the best solutions due to
popularity and obviously stability.  Python started out great, but then
seems to turn into something like Perl lacking standards.  In other
words, it would be great to a C programming language with writing the
code similar to a scripting language, but without having to define all
the variable definitions accounting for every byte of memory.

Like I said, think Python started out similar to this, but then seems to
have veered into something similar to Perl, with a lacking of
maintaining standards.  In other words, Python code I write with the
first version, isn't compatible with the later Python versions which is
backwards from what most other programming languages progressed.  Why I
won't waste my time with Python, but do see the benefit of Python being a
cross-platform scripting language, or similar to JAVA being
cross-platform.

As you well know, time is important, and wasting time studying something
that is going to provoke many future problems, seems unwise to me.
Shrugs.  Corporate environments might enjoy the social mess though.

>End rant. What do you think?

I don't worry about it.  Open honesty always wins. ;-)

>Respectfully,
>
>Paul Hendricksen
>
>Excuse all typos and spelling errors, this is sent from my mobile.

VIM editor has spell checking, and alongside Mutt email client, always
seeming just work as they're dependent on a lot less coding unlike graphical
user interfaces!  Reminds me of the reliability of typewriters. ;-)
______________________
>http://lists.tldp.org/
>

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014, Roger wrote:

> > On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 08:50:29PM -0600, Paul Hendricksen wrote:
>
> >What I see now at the University Level is a gap. Students do not
> >know what Linux actually is, as because of that, I feel they lack a
> >fundamental appreciation for the need for Linux.

  i find this hard to believe, given that it's university students who
are driving the adoption of linux.  to claim that students don't know
what linux *is* strikes me as simply absurd.

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================

> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 05:55:16AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Mar 2014, Roger wrote:
>
>> > On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 08:50:29PM -0600, Paul Hendricksen wrote:
>>
>> >What I see now at the University Level is a gap. Students do not
>> >know what Linux actually is, as because of that, I feel they lack a
>> >fundamental appreciation for the need for Linux.
>
>  i find this hard to believe, given that it's university students who
>are driving the adoption of linux.  to claim that students don't know
>what linux *is* strikes me as simply absurd.

I tend to agree, but figured I'd overlook this.

However, I have seen and witnessed organizations in the past being bias
and successfully promoting their own agenda.  From what I understand
from people on the web, this is considered the dirt within the
electronics industry.  Likely we can trace this further back to the
beginning of inventions to the beginning of time!

On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 08:50:29PM -0600, Paul Hendricksen wrote:
> LDP,
> 
> What I see now at the University Level is a gap. Students do not know what Linux actually is, as because of that, I feel they lack a fundamental appreciation for the need for Linux. "Why not AIX, or BSD, or ..." Is what I hear. A need for documentation for what lead to Open Cloud Computing is needed. How did we go from awesome uptime to multi-node cloud computers? Why isn't AIX and the other proprietary vendors a success?
> 
> End rant. What do you think?
:
Well, I checked up on courses in operating systems and they seem to cover a lot about Linux.  But a major problem is that there isn't much study of the C-code itself since there is just too much code to study.  However, some colleges do have courses in Linux and some have special ones that are high priced.  And they tend to not study the C-code either but forcus on shell scripting, etc.  All this is unfortunate, because the advantage of using Linux for the study of operating systems is that the source code is freely available for study.
			David Lawyer

> On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 04:40:50PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:
>On Sun, Mar 09, 2014 at 08:50:29PM -0600, Paul Hendricksen wrote:
>> LDP,
>> 
>> What I see now at the University Level is a gap. Students do not know what Linux actually is, as because of that, I feel they lack a fundamental appreciation for the need for Linux. "Why not AIX, or BSD, or ..." Is what I hear. A need for documentation for what lead to Open Cloud Computing is needed. How did we go from awesome uptime to multi-node cloud computers? Why isn't AIX and the other proprietary vendors a success?
>> 
>> End rant. What do you think?
>:
>Well, I checked up on courses in operating systems and they seem to cover a lot about Linux.  But a major problem is that there isn't much study of the C-code itself since there is just too much code to study.  However, some colleges do have courses in Linux and some have special ones that are high priced.  And they tend to not study the C-code either but forcus on shell scripting, etc.  All this is unfortunate, because the advantage of using Linux for the study of operating systems is that the source code is freely available for study.
>			David Lawyer

Assembly/C for driver or hardware engineering.

C/C++ for middleware or applications.

Bourne/Bash (and maybe even Python/Perl) for System Administration.  Could even 
mix in some C/C++/Assembly here as well.

Perl/Python for cross-platform utilities.

I doubt even if Linux kernel and open source tools were written entirely in 
JAVA, people would still tend not to study the code.  But that's also only if 
their interests do not involve hardware engineering or operating system 
designs, etc!

God didn't say we all had to play in the same mud puddle for our entire life, 
did he?

Atypically, Linux administration will mostly involve Bourne Shell or Bash 
scripting.  And nowadays, such as within the Gentoo distribution, a lot of 
scripting is being performed within Python.

-- 
Roger
http://rogerx.freeshell.org/