We have Linux today, thanks to a Swedish software engineer named Linus Torvalds. Most Linux users already know this but for the sake of those who don’t, it was first released twenty years ago, on August 25, 1991. It was on that day that Linus Torvalds shared the operating system he was working on as a hobby for Minix (a UNIX Operating System) users on the UseNet newsgroup ‘comp.os.minix‘ and as the saying goes – the rest is history.

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

I’ve currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I’ll get something practical within a few months, and I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-)

Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes – it’s free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.

—Linus Torvalds

To celebrate this milestone, the Linux Foundation has created and released this infographic that shows how Linux has developed and spread through the years.

Thank you Linus Torvalds and Belated Happy 20th Birthday Linux!

[via AJ Batac/OMG Ubuntu]

I had some people ask me what Google Chrome OS is so I decided to blog about it here and share it with those of you who also don’t know what it is or how it works. Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system based on Linux that was designed by Google to exclusively work with web applications and was officially announced last July. It has a minimalist user interface (UI) that closely resembles the Chrome web browser. Google Chrome OS is targeted for users who spend most of their time or do their work on the Internet and intended for secondary devices like netbooks.

To make it easier for regular users to understand how it works, the folks over at Google in collaboration with Epipheo Studios have produced this simple video that tells how the Chrome OS was created.

Last November 19th, led by Vice President Sundar Pichai and Engineering Director Matthew Papakipos, Google held a press conference in its Mountain View, California headquarters and demonstrated an early version of Google Chrome OS. Below is the video of the demonstration.

So what do you think about Google Chrome OS? IMO, its a great operating system especially for users who are always connected to the Internet and do a lot of cloud computing. Its also an ideal OS for netbooks and other portable devices because the hardware requirements are minimal. I don’t know what Google’s plans are but it would be awesome if they could incorporate a Google Gears-like feature into it so users could also use it offline.

As you’ve seen in the video demos, Google Chrome OS booted up in only 7 seconds! Another cool thing about it is that it consumes 60 times less drive space than Windows 7. Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Adobe, Asus, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale and Intel are some of the big named companies who are developing hardware/devices for this operating system.

Btw, if you’re a software developer/engineer you can play around with it’s source code which was also released last November 19th with an open source license under the name Chromium OS.

[image source: Wikipedia]

I really like the comment info feature of Firestats and find it very useful that I searched for a plugin that specifically did that job. I wasn’t sure if such a WordPress plugin existed but I kept looking and finally found one. The Comment Info Detector plugin is created to help bloggers know where their readers or commentators come from (country of origin based on IP address), what web browser they’re using – Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and what OS (Operating System) they have installed on their computer.

This is a plugin for WordPress 2.6+ that can help you know where your commenters come from, which type of web browser and OS they used when they left a comment on your blog. It provides two functions that take IP and User Agent as parameters and then return HTML string contains country flag, web browser and OS icons. You can put these icons anywhere you like in each comment.

In fact, this plugin is a combination of two plugins: WordPress Browser Detection Plugin and Easy IP2Country that I have intergrated as a built-in plugin for my premium theme before, see this page for example, but now I decide to separate it as a new plugin with some enhancements and share it for everyone.

Screenshot:

Comment Info Detector displays commentator’s country flag, web browser and OS.

Features:

• Detects and shows commenter’s country flag, web browser and operating system
• Supports many web browsers and operating systems: major desktop browsers, antiquated browsers, blogging software (for trackbacks and pingbacks), text based browsers, various PDAs and cell phones.
• Uses a binary file for IP to country resolution and supports database sources from Webhosting.info – Software77.net
• The returned string can be configured as a template to suite your theme

Comment Info Detector isn’t one of those must-have WordPress plugins but very useful if you want to know more about your readers/commentators and can be handy at times. It
can also help you come up with what to blog about especially if your blog is about technology and other tech related stuff. Like for example, if you see that most of your readers/commentators use Firefox as their web browser, you can blog about a new Firefox addon/extension or a list of useful Firefox addons/extensions, get what I mean? I’m sure there are also other ways that the Comment Info Detector plugin can be useful for you and your blog.

It’s not that hard to install, it just requires you to insert a line of code into your theme’s comment.php file. To make sure that you do it right, don’t forget to read the installation and usage instructions found at the plugin homepage.

Anyone heard, tried or are using the Comment Info Detector WordPress plugin? What do you think of this plugin? If you haven’t tried it yet, would you consider using it on your blog? Please share your thoughts.

For more information, installation and usage instructions, visit the official Comment Info Detector WordPress plugin page. You can also download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

This is a joke that was posted in my webhost’s forum. I thought it was funny so I’m sharing it with you guys.

Junior asks his dad, “Daddy, how was I born?”

His dad sighs and replies, “Ah, my son, I guess one day you would have to find out anyway!

Well, you see your Mom and I first got together in a chat room on
“Yahoo”.

Then I set up a date via e-mail with your Mom and we met at a
cyber-cafe.

We sneaked into a secluded room, where your mother agreed to a download from my hard drive.

As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of us had used a firewall, but it was too late to hit the delete button.

Six weeks later your Mom sent me an instant message saying that her operating system was showing signs of unauthorized program activity from a self extracting file which had implanted itself in her BIOS.

Then nine months later a little Pop-Up appeared and said: ‘You’ve Got Male’!”