So Linux turns 30 next year

2021 is less than a month away and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mention the 30th birthday of Linux yet. Are there any events coming up around this?

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I can raise a glass to that.

I think the upcoming official 64-bit release of Raspberry Pi OS should be such a commemorative event.

To me, the RPi400 is the most satisfyingly “linuxy” computer I can think of:

  • it needs no UEFI to boot, twisting out of the grip of Microsoft. Managing booting is far easier than Microsoft allows it to be (for Linux) on a PC, thanks to imaging tools which burn MicroSD cards. This is not to mention the under-appreciated SD card-copying utility (within Raspberry Pi OS) that Raspberry Pi wrote (which makes live backups).
  • it has a large user base
  • it’s widely available for purchase, and is very affordable
  • it’s general-purpose enough for most/many common use cases
  • it doesn’t run Windows well (linux playing “second fiddle” to Windows, as happens on pretty much all AMD64 machines sold, which almost always come with Windows bundled, requiring a fresh install of linux by the end user). Sure, there are some linux-pre-installed vendors, but their market reach is much smaller than that of the Raspberry Pi.
  • it’s very sold out, speaking to true market demand - which is to say, there is a true, comprehensive Linux product which is actually hot right now.
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Never thought about it that way but you are right and I love my Raspberry Pi 3.

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Me too, and due to it running PiHole, just makes it even better.