The lost talks from Linus Torvalds at DECUS'94 - Kostenloses Hörbuch

This is the long-promised Christmas present to all those good little girls and

boys who love GNU/Linux.

It was November of 1993 when I received my first CD of what was advertised as "A

complete Unix system with source code for 99 USD".   While I was dubious about

this claim (since the USL vs BSDi lawsuit was in full swing) I said "What the

heck" and sent away my 99 dollars, just to receive a thin booklet and a CD-ROM

in the mail.   Since I did not have an Intel "PC" to run it on, all I could do

was mount the CD on my MIPS/Ultrix workstation and read the man(1)ual pages.

I was interested, but I put it away in my filing cabinet.

About February of 1994 Kurt Reisler, Chair of the UNISIG of DECUS started

sending emails (and copying me for some reason) about wanting to bring this

person I had never heard about from FINLAND (of all places) to talk about a

project that did not even run on Ultrix OR DEC/OSF1 to DECUS in New Orleans in

May of 1994.

After many emails and no luck in raising money for this trip I took mercy on

Kurt and asked my management to fund the trip.   There is much more to this

story, requiring me to also fund a stinking, weak, miserable Intel PC to run

this project on, but that has been described elsewhere.

Now I was at DECUS.  I had found Kurt trying to install this "project" on this

stinking, weak, miserable Intel PC and not having much luck, when this nice

young man with sandy brown hair, wire-rim glasses, wool socks and sandals came

along.  In a lilting European accent, speaking perfect English he said "May I

help you?" and ten minutes later GNU/Linux was running on that stinking, weak,

miserable Intel PC.

I sat down to use it, and was amazed. It was good. It was very, very good.

I found out that later that day Linus (for of course it was Linus Torvalds) was

going to give two talks that day.  One was "An Introduction to Linux" and the

other was "Implementation Issues in Linux".

Linus was very nervous about giving these talks.   This was the first time that

he was giving a talk at a major conference (19,000 people attended that DECUS)

to an English-speaking audience in English.   He kept feeling as if he was going

to vomit.   I told him that he would be fine.

He gave the talks.  Only forty people showed up to each one, but there was great

applause.

The rest of the story about steam driven river boats, strong alcoholic drinks

named "Hurricanes", massive amounts of equipment and funding as well as

engineering resources based only on good will and handshakes have been told

before and in other places.

Unfortunately the talks that Linus gave were lost.

Until now.

As I was cleaning my office I found some audio tapes made of Linus' talk, and

which I purchased with my own money.  Now, to make your present, I had to buy a

good audio tape playback machine and capture the audio in Audacity, then produce

a digital copy of those tapes, which are listed here.  Unfortunately I do not

have a copy of the slides, but I am not sure how many slides Linus had.  I do

not think you will need them.

Here is your Christmas present, from close to three decades ago.   Happy

Linuxing" to all, no matter what your religion or creed.