Linux at 25

[Jon Elson]

On 09/14/2016 03:18 PM, Murray McCullough wrote:
> Linux at 25 - created 25 years ago. Has it changed computing or is it
> 'better' than WIN or MacOS? Not really part of classic computing world
> but nonetheless it can be used today in emulators. ( I use it for ADAM
> emulating. )
>
>
I don't want to get into the "better" wars, but I think it 
definitely HAS changed computing!
The Beagle Bone is a total hacker's paradise, the modern 
equivalent of a PDP-8 and some digital I/O modules that you 
could hook to whatever you wanted.  I've slapped together a 
number of TCP and web-based special purpose 
control/interface devices over the years, and the ease of 
converting a simple program into one that is controllable 
over the net is great.

NIST tried to build their own CNC motion control program in 
1995 or so, using a real time version of Windows, and it 
didn't work (real time latency was laughably bad).  Then, 
they tried it with a real time-patched Linux, and it DID 
work.  This became the EMC project, now known as LinuxCNC.  
We have no idea how many people are using it, but there are 
indications there are (at least) several thousand users.

Jon