X-bit labs

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The History of Linux – A Glance Back. The History of Alternative OS

The majority of modern computers utilize different versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system (OS), but Microsoft’s way to victory was not easy, as a lot of operating systems were available in the eighties, including various versions of DOS, OS/2 and so on. Linux, the main “alternative” operating system of today, was born in the early nineties and in the beginning no one thought that it would become relatively big. A group of enthusiasts led by Linus Torvalds spent some time creating the barebone of Linux back in 1991 and almost fifteen years later, their efforts are definitely not forgotten: Linux is still free and has, in fact, become much better.

“Linus himself didn’t believe that his creation was going to be big enough to change computing forever. Linux version 0.01 was released by mid September 1991, and was put on the net. Enthusiasm gathered around this new kid on the block, and codes were downloaded, tested, tweaked, and returned to Linus. By December came version 0.10. Still Linux was little more than in skeletal form. It had only support for AT hard disks, had no login (booted directly to bash). Version 0.11 was much better with support for multilingual keyboards, floppy disk drivers, support for VGA, EGA, Hercules etc. The version numbers went directly from 0.12 to 0.95 and 0.96 and so on. Soon the code went worldwide via ftp sites at Finland and elsewhere,” writes The Tech Zone.

• The Tech Zone: The History Of Linux.

Building a Notebook Yourself. Web-site Explains Notebook Building Basics

It has been almost a decade since end-users began to build PCs from different computer parts themselves. By doing so, some people saved money, other obtained a hobby. As desktop computer market becomes very mature and mobile computer market evolves rapidly, building a notebook PC has become a reality for everyone.

Legit Reviews has posted a detailed guide about how to build a notebook PC yourself. ASUS Z71V notebook chassis was used as the base for mobile gaming system. This notebook features a 15.4” WSXGA+ (1680x1050) TFT widescreen display, PCI Express graphics with an MXM slot, and dual-channel DDR2 memory operating at 533MHz. The barebone comes equipped with preinstalled NVIDIA GeForce 6600 graphics chip.

The guide has detailed instructions how the following things should be performed:

• Finding the right parts for the mobile system;
• Detailed installation of the microprocessor and memory;
• Detailed installation of optical drive and wireless network adapter.

• Legit Reviews: How To Build A Sonoma Notebook.