Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special? by Brian Byrne Gamesys, February 2020

Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special?
by Brian Byrne Gamesys, February 2020 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

A big thanks to the Gamesys for hosting us, freely.
Much credit to Tuxedo Computers for supporting my free Linux community talks with this lovely laptop! https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ These slides are on Speaker Deck https://speakerdeck.com/brianlinuxing Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 2

Tonight’s talks are dedicated to Mary Allen Wilkes, an early
assembler programmer and operating system developer on the LINC systems: a precursor to much of modern IT. She wanted to be a lawyer but went into computing as it was seen less sexist than the legal profession, at the time. See the FAQs for more information on her life. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected] Mary Allen Wilkes

Please put your hand up if you use any of
these. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Hands up? Congratulations! You are a Linux user! I am
just like you :) Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

I am Brian. I tweet far to much at: @BrianLinuxing
And if you want a real excess of computing then please follow me on Twitter ! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Brian Byrne discovered computing around the time Intel released the
4004 chip, in 1971. After 1979 he professionally worked across most sectors, educational, commercial and finance, in some seriously technical, managerial and hands-on roles. Brian organises Linuxing In London, co-organises Covent Garden Pi Jam and the phenomenal all London Raspberry Pi Jam. He is rather fond of opera and history books. NB: Brian speaks in paragraphs. He is a freelance IT manager, a thinker and do-er for hire. Want your IT systems organised properly? Pay him, he’ll do it for you! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

My first PC around 1971 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne,
2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

My first non-laptop in 1979 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne,

Brian’s Operating Systems I’ve used, installed, fixed and played with
over 24 operating systems in 40 years, including but not limited to: TOPS-10, RT-11, RSX, VAX/VMS, CP/M, MS-DOS, AmigaOS, RSTE/E, Classic Mac OS (Lisa), Sinclair_QDOS, Ultrix, OSF/1, SCO Unix, OpenVMS, OS/2, VM/CMS, NetWare 2->3, Windows 1-> Windows 3.1, Windows 95->98 SE, Windows NT 1.0 ->4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7->8.1, Windows 10 and a lot more. Linux was my 15th or 16th operating system! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Enough of me, to the point! Linux 100 © Brian
Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Linux: technology’s best kept secret Linux 100 © Brian Byrne,

A word about Linux Everything is Linux. Android phones, the
lot. Linux is used on 100% of the world’s supercomputers. Everyone runs Linux: AWS, Netflix, Google, Facebook, even Microsoft Distrowatch lists ~250 live Linux distributions, as of February 2019. Linux is free. 250+ types to try out! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Run one of these? Linux has you covered! Linux 100
© Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] Plus
another 10+ browsers!

Linux runs everything (free apps): Word-processors, managing PDFs, graphic and
image editing, non-linear video, audio editing, databases (SQL, NoSQL), web servers, blogging and lots of coding tools too: git, C, C++, Dart, Swift, Javascript/Node, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, Fortran, PASCAL, COBOL, the lot! All free! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Who runs Linux? Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter:
@BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

The International Space Station Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020
Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 22

CERN and the Large Hadron Collider Linux 100 © Brian
Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 23

Does Linux cost much? Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020
Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Zero cost Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing
Email:[email protected]

The Raspberry Pi - the most popular small board computer
Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

The Summit Supercomputer (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Linux 100 ©
Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

What’s a supercomputer and why are they important? Typically, these
are the most expensive and fastest systems that can be purchased or created. US: Summit (created by IBM for Oak Ridge National Laboratory) uses IBM POWER9 CPUs and Nvidia Tesla GPUs, cost ~ $200 million, High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark ~148.6 petaflops. China: Sunway TaihuLight (created by China’s own NRCPC) uses SW26010 manycore 64-bit RISC processors, cost ~$273 million, LINPACK benchmark ~93 petaflops. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Top 500 supercomputers If someone is going to spend $200
million on a really, really fast supercomputer then it follows they will probably have spent a lot of time considering which operating system is best for it? In the case of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, they all run Linux. https://www.top500.org/statistics/details/osfam/1 That should tell you something. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 29

Reasons to use Linux It does everything that Windows does,
but better. It is used extensively in business, and is secure. Most backend computing involves the use of Linux. It is all over the Cloud, even at Microsoft, particularly in Azure. Plenty of choice (250+ varieties). It’s comparatively lightweight on computing resources, thus faster. It is the future, from a ~£36 computer to one costing $200+ millions. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected]

Linux facts All major Cloud providers offer Linux. 2/3s of
web servers run Linux. ~2.7% on desktop, >26% among devs. Android (based on the Linux kernel) has an approximate 69% market share. Linux’s distinctive features: It’s largely written in C, simple and small, works on low-end CPUs, and is supported across 10+ computer architectures. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 31

Microsoft and Linux WSL2 - Windows Subsystem for Linux 2
- a Linux kernel and shell directly accessible from Windows 10. “Sasha Levin, Microsoft Linux kernel developer, in a request that Microsoft be allowed to join a Linux security list, revealed that: "the Linux usage on our cloud has surpassed Windows". “ See https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-asks-to-join-private-linux-security-developer-list/ Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 32

Choice With over 250+ varieties of Linux you can find
one you like, one that suits you, one that values your privacy, one that works fast, is secure and one that you control. Above all, Linux gives you choice! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 33

Therefore, you need an operating system that is designed with
security in mind. You need privacy, not your own data being sent off from your computer as “telemetry” information. You want an operating system that doesn’t need rebooting 5 times a day. You want choice, security and privacy, that’s Linux. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 38

That is why Linux is special and why you should
be using it! Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email:[email protected] 39

Brian’s follow-up talks cover: ➢ A very brief history of
operating systems and computing since the Abacus. ➢ The installation of Linux from scratch on bare metal laptops. ➢ Installing Linux with VirtualBox on MacOS or Windows 7/8/8.1 or 10. ➢ Installing Kali Linux with VirtualBox on MacOS or Windows 7/8/8.1 or 10. ➢ Post installation tasks, the Command Line Interface (CLI) and proper package management under Linux. ➢ [Coming soon] Building your Linux own distro from scratch. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Thank you for participating. If you enjoyed the presentation and
slides, then please leave a nice comment on Twitter, that would make me very happy. PS: All images herein are the copyright of their respective owners. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

FAQs Q1: Where can I find out about Mary Allen
Wilkes? Mary Allen Wilkes programming the LINC computer in the mid 1960s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmv6p8hN0xQ The Secret History of Women in Coding https://womenintech.ucla.edu/articles/secret-history-women-coding People Pill: Mary Allen Wilkes: https://peoplepill.com/people/mary-allen-wilkes/ Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Q2: Why is the LINC machine important? A: It led
to the TX-0 and TX-2 transistorized computers, then the PDP-1. It brought a flavour of modern computing, AI, editors, word-processing and all in an 12-bit CPU, 2K memory, etc LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Personal/LINC.html Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC) "The Genesis of a Technological Revolution" by Samuel A. Rosenfeld https://history.nih.gov/exhibits/linc/docs/page_03.html Dr. Dobbs on LINC https://www.drdobbs.com/the-linc-an-early-personal-computer/184404067 Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Q3: What’s a Petaflop? Is it important? A: in this
context, Petaflop is an overall measurement of speed. A single Petaflop is said to be a thousand million million (10^15) floating-point operations per second. A Gigaflop is one billion floating-point operations per second. A Teraflop is 1,000 Gigaflops and a Petaflop is a 1,000 Teraflops! According to Hexus, the Core i7 8700K was measured at (Single precision) 61.41 GFLOPS. Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Q10: Where can I find more about the top 500
computers? https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/ Q11: WHere can I find figures on desktop Linux usage? Try: https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx Linux 100 © Brian Byrne, 2020 Twitter: @BrianLinuxing Email: [email protected]

Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special...

Linux 100 - Why Linux? What makes it so special? by Brian Byrne Gamesys, February 2020

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