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 🤍
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.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Doesn't this depend a lot on the vendors having a lock-in on the GPU market? Semiconductor manufacturing is super expensive and there is little incentive for Nvidia to release a Free as in Libre device driver. There aren't any FOSS GPUs in development so FOSS drivers can't be made.
So we either have the choice of accepting proprietary drivers or just not using the functionality of GPUs.
If you're willing to accept that, then why are you so critical of Linus? The fact that you can build a fully free version of Linux seems like the best of both worlds. From your perspective: get market share now by allowing non-free components, and then eventually transition them out while maintaining compatibility with the majority of the ecosystem.
We do in fact not have much control over non-free software especially when they have a monopoly and exclusive features.
There is a(n) (unofficial) version of Linux that strips away all the non-free blobs. So we do have a completely free OS. Not to mention BSD.
Tell that to Windows.
I agree with the first part. By unofficial I meant not from the Linux maintainers.
Yes, but in the end, Windows still has all that market share.