http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1020136,00.html Was Linux created in the Land of Shadow? This episode in our series of Linux creation myths casts Linus Torvalds in a hobbit-like role. Check out more of these fractured fairy tales after you tuck into this one by Phillip A. Schrodt. â Jan Stafford, editor
The true origins of Linux lie in the waning years of the Second Age of Computing, the Age of Big Iron. Forged by coding-elves in the sunless sub-basements of MIT, Linux was the mightiest of the Utilities of Power. Of the Utilities of Power, there were three dynasties. The Seven Utilities -- written in Algol and granted to the computer scientists -- have long been fading away. The original Nine -- written in COBOL and granted to business -- consumed the souls of those who used them and lurk now as invisible wraiths in legacy systems. Only the Three Utilities of Power -- written in C and entrusted to Unix -- survive unsullied: grep, make and yacc. But what happened to the One Operating System? At the end of the Second Age, it disappeared following the climatic battle where IBM threw down Sperry Rand, Burroughs, Honeywell, Univac, Control Data and the others. A lone coder, pursued by a shrieking mob of grey-suited accountants, tossed the last remaining tape of the source code into the Charles River. Moments later he was captured, strangled with a polyester necktie and buried face down, nine-edge first. The tape floated out to sea and remained there for decades, unseen, until it washed ashore on the cobbled beach of a fjord. It was found by the most unlikely of creatures: a Finn from Helsinki.......... _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug %LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
