Linus' Root+Boot

[sfermigier]

Shouldn't Linus' "Boot+Root" 2-floppy set (released on comp.os.minix in nov. 1991) be considered the first ever Linux distribution ?

[FabioLolix]

Interesting question, I guess it is, on which day was released precisely? and when it should be considered discontinued?

[blueglyph]

Late answer, but the first version posted by Linus on FTP was version 0.01, on 17 September 1991.

The "boot and root" process was meant to help people launching the early versions of the OS. A first boot disk contained the kernel; once it was loaded, it asked the user to insert the root disk, which contained the file system and the tools available on that version. I don't think it was referred to as a distribution per se. You just fetched the content from the FTP Linus was using or a mirror.

That process wasn't installing anything on your harddisk, if you had one. That's an operation you had to do manually, by formatting the disk, creating the partition, copying the files, and modifying the boot disk to fetch the filesystem there (or modifying the harddisk MBR directly if you didn't use it for another OS like MS-DOS).

Note that Linux version 1 was only available much later, once the network module was finally stable, on 13 March 1994. By then, distributions like SLS, Slackware, Debian, and RedHat were already available.

[sfermigier]

I don't believe the Boot+Root distro was release in September 1991.

According to this post https://tch-forum.com/showthread.php?tid=18307 :

"On September 17th Linus prepared version 0.01 of the kernel to the FTP server of the finnish university and research network funet. it was not executable and needed Minix to compile it. [...] it would only be a matter of months before Linus released his Boot/Root floppies that would allow one to boot the linux kernel with one disk then login as root with the other as well as had utilities. "

Or this one https://www.quora.com/When-first-Linux-distro-was-created-in-1993-but-Linux-in-1991-how-did-they-use-Linux-between-these-years :

"But undoubtedly the earliest “distro” was the Boot-Root disks. Linus Torvalds announced that he was working on Linux at the end of August 1991. He put the source code for the kernel on an FTP server in the middle of September 1991. When he released version 0.11 of the Linux kernel, he also posted the Boot and Root disk images."

I clearly remember the Boot+Root release of version 0.11 in December 1991, because that's the first version of Linux I've ever used! I can't say for sure that there wasn't another release before.

S.

On Sat, Aug 17, 2024 at 2:44 PM Redglyph @.***> wrote:

Late answer, but the first version posted by Linus on FTP was version 0.01, on 17 September 1991.

The "boot and root" process was meant to help people launching the early versions of the OS. A first boot disk contained the kernel; once it was loaded, it asked the user to insert the root disk, which contained the file system and the tools available on that version. I don't think it was referred to as a distribution per se. You just fetched the content from the FTP Linus was using or a mirror.

That process wasn't installing anything on your harddisk, if you had one. That's an operation you had to do manually, by formatting the disk, creating the partition, copying the files, and modifying the boot disk to fetch the filesystem there (or modifying the harddisk MBR directly if you didn't use it for another OS like MS-DOS).

Note that Linux version 1 was only available much later, once the network module was finally stable, on 13 March 1994. By then, distributions like SLS, Slackware, Debian, and RedHat were already available.

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[blueglyph]

@sfermigier, I think you're right. In the mean time, I'd done some digging just for fun, and found notes on the early releases, which seem to show that 0.11 were the first to have the boot+root floppies. I'll post more about that later.

I found a couple of sources stating the first release had those boots, but after almost 33 years, we're bound to find mistaken accounts. For my part, I hadn't tried those early Linux versions either (and I would probably have forgotten the details anyway).

I think 0.01 is still a significant milestone, as is 0.11. In 'Rebel Code', there's a mention of the early MCC Interim distribution using kernel 0.12 in February 1992, so that could be another early distribution worth mentioning since it seems to predate SLS (for which I have seen multiple dates, like August 1992 and June 1992).

It doesn't look like there'll be another timeline, though, so this may all be purely academic. :)

[blueglyph]

There are multiple sources hosting those files. Here are two sets:

• 0.10 and 0.11
• 0.10 and 0.11

By looking at the installation instruction of version 0.10, Linus is already talking about floppy images, but the process seems manual. I must admit it's not entirely clear to me; the Makefile has rules to create an image, but that's the same as version 0.01, so it must be something else.

In version 0.11, those images are already provided and clearly mentioned in the instructions; that, at least, is clear.