I was part of a Windows system install in 1993 for a mid-sized corporation. At that time, Windows 3.11 was wonderful. People were amazed by it. There were no writable CDs back then (floppies ruled), but it was being researched and people were excited about the huge storage potential. Things have changed a lot since that time, but some things have stayed the same (red black trees are still red black trees). MicroSoft is still a heck of a systems programming shop, but back then, they were God.
The Linux name change is a fitting tribute to Windows system programmers everywhere.
It is not a tribute. It is obviously a sarcastic joke cued by the coinciding version numbers. I am not sure how good Microsoft was at systems programming at the time, but I guarantee you Linus has very little regard for Microsoft's systems or any other type of programming acumen and is not about to start making tributes to Microsoft.
Although Windows for Workgroups was largely considered a joke (Windows for Warehouses) I also remember it being pretty wonderful. It brought to Windows all the SMB stuff that I enjoyed from OS2 as well as an actual built-in TCP/IP stack. I was happy to ditch WinSock.
Thank you for not making me feel like such an oldtimer here. As soon as I saw the name I thought "I bet I'm the only one who remembers it".
windows 3.11 aka "windows for warehouses" was actually pretty nifty and in a prior life I installed it at many small businesses who took full advantage of it's built in network mail client and many other very useful features.
It absolutely killed Lantastic which, at the time was pretty much pervasive in small businesses. Also at about the same time we replaced a lot of Arcnet and Token ring networks with UTP ethernet which I would have been amazed back then to hear would still be widely in use in 2013.
Wow. I think my first run-in with Windows 3.11 was in high-school -- and after having lived for years with an Amiga 2000 -- Windows was a complete joke of an OS.
I do remember having fun typing in single letters to files, and renaming them "somethin.com" -- I seem to recall eg: a "b" would predictably crash the computer instantly.
Not too long after that, as the pc hardware caught up with, and surpassed the Amiga, I got started with Slackware GNU/Linux. I find it hard to accept that anyone would seriously consider Windows 3.11 a good example of systems programming...
I'm not sure I would describe a team that releases an OS without memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking, or a 32-bit API several years after the introduction of the 386 a "heck of a systems programming shop".
The NT kernel, developed around that period, was good for its time though. Windows 3.x ... not so much.
My first experience with Windows for Workgroups was in 1994 when we were forced to use it at work. By that time I'd already been using Linux for a few years (since before 1.0).
In my opinion, WFW didn't really hold a candle to X11 and Linux, and the networking options were frankly laughable. Even with Linux's crummy NFS implementation at the time, it was far superior to using Netbeui/IPX and connecting to a Novell Netware server.
"At that time, Windows 3.11 was wonderful. People were amazed by it."
These must have been people with little computer experience.
In '93 I also ran 3.11, at home. At work I had access to Big Iron, VMS, DG UX, and a hand full of other OSes. There wasn't a really decent Microsoft OS until Windows 2000. Microsoft was only god on the desktop because it allow the average user tools like Office. The engineers and professionals used Sun workstations and Macs, production used VMS, which was decades ahead of any of the PC OSes at the time.
Personally, I don't think it was all that wonderful, particularly when WfW 3.11 required a 386 anyway. This is part of why I hate the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco quite a lot.
As a Mac user at the time, the love for Windows 3.11 left me scratching my head something fierce. By comparison to System 7.1+, Windows 3.11 was awwwwful.
Of course, around that time you could also run an Irix desktop, complete with Photoshop and SoftPC and even (later on) IE, but that was sadly beyond the reach of most consumers.
Charming gestures like this is part of the reason I like the open-source community.
You don't see nonsense like this very often in commercial products (except maybe the Goats transported system-counter in Android, whose open-source status is constantly under debate).
As a Windows user, I'm always surprised to see how conservatively Linux uses its swap area. On Windows, even with enough free memory, it still pages to disk and gives me a sluggish experience.
Does anyone have any idea why Windows is so aggressive about paging disks out compared to Linux?
I can't explain the sluggish experience, but a plausible explanation is that Windows sees a bunch of unused pages, and also a bunch of uncached disk blocks that are used often, and decides that it would be preferable to put those disk blocks in memory in exchange for putting the "unused" memory in swap.
zram in its various incarnations is awesome and has been available in Linux for a few years at least now. It's interesting that Apple is copying it.
Linux gives lots of tuners to adjust swappiness. As far as I know, Microsoft assumes that one (conservative) setting fits all, in typical Microsoft fashion.
I'm still on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which has kernel 3.2.0-49, I thought 'old' was 2.6 or really old 2.4. What the heck is going on now, the kernel is already up to 3.11? Did I miss anything good in between? By my perceptions I would have imagined that newest kernel would be around 3.6 or so but I was wrong: https://www.kernel.org/finger_banner
2.4 is really old, originally released in 2001. 2.6 has also been around for a long time, and the release cycle changed during the 2.6 timeframe, so the old release number system no longer makes sense.
Rather than having a major stable release like 2.4, and then a long period of development in 2.5, followed by a stable 2.6 kernel later on, it switched to much shorter merge windows and release candidate cycles that last about 2-3 months. So you had 2.6.x kernels which were new stable branches, and would get patches such as 2.6.x.y.
After a while, this got a little silly. When numbers were getting up to things like 2.6.32.60, it gets hard to keep track of the numbers. Since the first two numbers were just sitting there unused, at some point Linus decided it was silly, and they would cycle to 3, and the second number would be for each stable release.
So yeah, 2.2-2.4 was about 2 years between new stable versions. 2.4-2.6 was about 3 years between new stable versions. But then there have been new stable versions about once every 2-3 months, and new long term supported versions picked from those about once a year (for distributions which prefer to do long-term support on a single kernel version, rather than updating to the latest stable).
The kernel numbering system changed when Linus moved over to v3. Basically the switch from 2.4.x to 2.6.x was the last major change to the Linux kernel. Since then, all the 2.6.x releases have been pretty standard incremental updates. So a few months ago Linus decided it was time to switch to v3 - just to round the numbers off (it wasn't a big nor noteworthy release - it was just an excuse to round the numbering off). So now the the second digit is what used to be the 3rd digit in the 2.6.x releases.
It usually takes distro developers a while to vet kernels and ensure stability with their userspace stuff. 3.7 and 3.8 had a few regressions, and were skipped by a few distros. 3.9 only made it into Debian Stable last month (as a backport from testing).
On Ubuntu, you can always get some newer kernel versions through apt-get, but the default will always be what they consider to be stable (especially for an LTS)
If you want to move to the newer 3.5 kernel line, you can do so. This is what the 12.04.2 LTS is distributed with. Here is the apt-get for that:
sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-quantal
You will also want to update your x.org install:
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-lts-quantal
Note that some older video cards (nvidia I think) have had their support dropped, so this operation may or may not be safe.
Just an interesting observation that both of these "3.11" are actually referring to different relative versions.
Windows was not using the now-common semantic versioning. Windows 3.11 is actually a patch to 3.1, which in semantic versioning would actually be 3.1.1.
Linux 3.11 however, is a minor upgrade to Linux 3.10.
[+] [-] 16s|12 years ago|reply
The Linux name change is a fitting tribute to Windows system programmers everywhere.
[+] [-] hristov|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spudlyo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HNJohnC|12 years ago|reply
windows 3.11 aka "windows for warehouses" was actually pretty nifty and in a prior life I installed it at many small businesses who took full advantage of it's built in network mail client and many other very useful features.
It absolutely killed Lantastic which, at the time was pretty much pervasive in small businesses. Also at about the same time we replaced a lot of Arcnet and Token ring networks with UTP ethernet which I would have been amazed back then to hear would still be widely in use in 2013.
[+] [-] e12e|12 years ago|reply
I do remember having fun typing in single letters to files, and renaming them "somethin.com" -- I seem to recall eg: a "b" would predictably crash the computer instantly.
Not too long after that, as the pc hardware caught up with, and surpassed the Amiga, I got started with Slackware GNU/Linux. I find it hard to accept that anyone would seriously consider Windows 3.11 a good example of systems programming...
[+] [-] peterkelly|12 years ago|reply
The NT kernel, developed around that period, was good for its time though. Windows 3.x ... not so much.
[+] [-] Patrick_Devine|12 years ago|reply
In my opinion, WFW didn't really hold a candle to X11 and Linux, and the networking options were frankly laughable. Even with Linux's crummy NFS implementation at the time, it was far superior to using Netbeui/IPX and connecting to a Novell Netware server.
Wow. I sound like a crotchety old man.
[+] [-] xradionut|12 years ago|reply
These must have been people with little computer experience.
In '93 I also ran 3.11, at home. At work I had access to Big Iron, VMS, DG UX, and a hand full of other OSes. There wasn't a really decent Microsoft OS until Windows 2000. Microsoft was only god on the desktop because it allow the average user tools like Office. The engineers and professionals used Sun workstations and Macs, production used VMS, which was decades ahead of any of the PC OSes at the time.
[+] [-] yuhong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbsdp|12 years ago|reply
Of course, around that time you could also run an Irix desktop, complete with Photoshop and SoftPC and even (later on) IE, but that was sadly beyond the reach of most consumers.
[+] [-] artificialidiot|12 years ago|reply
I think he's trying to tell us something. :)
[+] [-] alatkins|12 years ago|reply
http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|perkeleen%20vittup%C3%A...
[+] [-] _pmf_|12 years ago|reply
- get Linus to swear at me in Finnish
[+] [-] sampo|12 years ago|reply
Here's the changeset: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/ad81f0545ef01ea6518...
[+] [-] petepete|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josteink|12 years ago|reply
You don't see nonsense like this very often in commercial products (except maybe the Goats transported system-counter in Android, whose open-source status is constantly under debate).
[+] [-] mikevm|12 years ago|reply
As a Windows user, I'm always surprised to see how conservatively Linux uses its swap area. On Windows, even with enough free memory, it still pages to disk and gives me a sluggish experience. Does anyone have any idea why Windows is so aggressive about paging disks out compared to Linux?
[+] [-] jstanley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|12 years ago|reply
Linux gives lots of tuners to adjust swappiness. As far as I know, Microsoft assumes that one (conservative) setting fits all, in typical Microsoft fashion.
[+] [-] theboywho|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yuhong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jebblue|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambda|12 years ago|reply
Rather than having a major stable release like 2.4, and then a long period of development in 2.5, followed by a stable 2.6 kernel later on, it switched to much shorter merge windows and release candidate cycles that last about 2-3 months. So you had 2.6.x kernels which were new stable branches, and would get patches such as 2.6.x.y.
After a while, this got a little silly. When numbers were getting up to things like 2.6.32.60, it gets hard to keep track of the numbers. Since the first two numbers were just sitting there unused, at some point Linus decided it was silly, and they would cycle to 3, and the second number would be for each stable release.
So yeah, 2.2-2.4 was about 2 years between new stable versions. 2.4-2.6 was about 3 years between new stable versions. But then there have been new stable versions about once every 2-3 months, and new long term supported versions picked from those about once a year (for distributions which prefer to do long-term support on a single kernel version, rather than updating to the latest stable).
[+] [-] laumars|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] proland|12 years ago|reply
On Ubuntu, you can always get some newer kernel versions through apt-get, but the default will always be what they consider to be stable (especially for an LTS)
[+] [-] bebop|12 years ago|reply
You will also want to update your x.org install: sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-lts-quantal
Note that some older video cards (nvidia I think) have had their support dropped, so this operation may or may not be safe.
[+] [-] uzyn|12 years ago|reply
Just an interesting observation that both of these "3.11" are actually referring to different relative versions.
Windows was not using the now-common semantic versioning. Windows 3.11 is actually a patch to 3.1, which in semantic versioning would actually be 3.1.1.
Linux 3.11 however, is a minor upgrade to Linux 3.10.
[+] [-] jjindev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archmacbookuser|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caycep|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanbrussik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
I believe your packets may have made a wrong turn while en route to reddit.com.
[+] [-] ivanbrussik|12 years ago|reply