Evolution of shells in Linux

A brief article on the IBM developerWorks site about the history of Unix shell programs and their Linux implementations:

Evolution of shells in Linux:

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The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix - IEEE Spectrum

For those of you interested in where the basic concepts and design (but not code!) in Linux comes from, here is a great article in IEEE Spectrum on the development and history of Unix.

The Strange Birth and Long Life of Unix - IEEE Spectrum:

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Stop SOPA

I just emailed Congress to urge them to oppose the Internet Blacklist Legislation, known as the PROTECT-IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House. This legislation seeks to give the executive branch power to conduct slash-and-burn campaigns against websites that allegedly host – or even link to – content that infringes on intellectual property rights. That would “disappear” whole domain names, fundamentally undermining Internet security, and/or choke off their financial support. The Internet Blacklist Legislation puts more sites than ever at risk, effectively upending the DMCA safe harbors that have been crucial to the growth of Internet innovation and creativity.

Sadly, these short-sighted and dangerous bills won’t do much to stop online infringement – but they will jeopardize our ability to speak and read online with the kind of freedom we cherish in the offline world. Deep-pocketed Hollywood lobbyists are aggressively pushing to control and censor the open Internet, willing to sacrifice free speech and our Internet culture in hopes of controlling how people view their movies and products.

We need to stop this bill before it goes any further. Will you contact your representatives in Congress and urge them to oppose the Internet Blacklist Legislation? Visit: https://eff.org/r.C8A

Two decades of productivity: Vim's 20th anniversary

Two decades of productivity: Vim's 20th anniversary:



The Vim text editor was first released to the public on November 2, 1991—exactly 20 years ago today. Although it was originally designed as a vi clone for the Amiga, it was soon ported to other platforms and eventually grew to become the most popular vi-compatible text editor. It is still actively developed and widely used across several operating systems.
In this article, we will take a brief look back at the history of vi and its descendants, leading up to the creation of Vim. We will also explore some of the compelling technical features that continue to make Vim relevant today.

Installing Linux on a 386 Laptop

I saw an interesting article today.  A DIY project installing Linux (albeit old Linux) on a really old 386SX laptop.  It can't do very much, but it's one of those projects you tackle "because it's there."

You can check out the story here.