10. Linux

This chapter is going to look suspiciously like the preceding chapter because Linux is just another variant of UNIX, and the Mac is just a variant of FreeBSD, which is essentially UNIX. I know that I’ve started another argument, but the reality is that Linus Torvalds was dirt broke and couldn’t afford UNIX, so in 1991 he started writing something that worked like UNIX.1 Starting with a task switcher and posting the results to comp.os.minux, Torvalds commented that it was really just a hobby.2 However, the support that he received and the involvement of others spurred him on to continue with his project. We know the results of that project as the Linux kernel.

The pure will say that Linux and BSD differ, and they are correct. However, ...

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