Peter MacDonald (computer programmer)

Last updated
Peter MacDonald
Born
Peter Charles MacDonald

(1957-06-28) June 28, 1957 (age 67)
Victoria, British Columbia
Citizenship Canadian
Alma materUniversity of Victoria (BSc 1989, MSc 1996)

Peter MacDonald is a Canadian software engineer, best known as the creator of Softlanding Linux System (SLS), widely regarded as the first complete Linux distribution. [1] Some of his work served as a foundation of Wine. He also created the Tcl web browser BrowseX, and the PDQI suite of Tcl utilities.

Contents

Current projects include Jsish, an embeddable javascript interpreter with builtin type-checking. [2]

Biography

Peter Charles MacDonald was born in Victoria, British Columbia on June 28, 1957. He graduated from the Computer Science program of the University of Victoria with a BSc (1989) and MSc (1996, master's thesis: Decomposing the Linux Kernel into Dynamically Loadable Modules). [3]

Softlanding Linux System

MacDonald co-developed early features of the Linux kernel in the early 1990s, including shared libraries, pseudo terminals, the select call and virtual consoles. [4] [5] [6] He announced Softlanding Linux System (SLS), the first standalone Linux install, for testing in August 1992 (on 15 floppy disks), [7] and for general release in October 1992 (recommending at least 10 MB of disk space). [8]

SLS became popular, but also drew criticism. MacDonald was criticized for trying to make money on free software, but defended by Linus Torvalds. [6] Two of the early Linux distributions were made specifically in reaction to SLS, Ian Murdock's Debian to compensate for SLS's bugs, and Patrick Volkerding's Slackware to include installer patches which weren't added to SLS, and which MacDonald wouldn't allow Volkerding to distribute independently. [9] [10] [11]

Other software

The initial 1993 Wine Windows compatibility layer was based on Tcl/Tk windowing functions MacDonald wrote (though later rewritten as direct Xlib calls). [12]

MacDonald founded BrowseX Systems in 1999, [13] and put out version 1.0 of BrowseX, an open source Tcl-based cross-platform web browser, meant to be smaller and faster than Netscape. [14] [15] The last update of BrowseX was in 2003; the company was renamed to PDQ Interfaces Inc., and put out a set of various TCL based utilities. [13] [16]

Jsish: a javascript interpreter with builtin sqlite, json, websocket, and zvfs support. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linus Torvalds</span> Creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel (born 1969)

Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux distribution</span> Operating system based on the Linux kernel

A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and often a package management system. They are often obtained from the website of each distribution, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to servers and powerful supercomputers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slackware</span> Linux distribution (operating system)

Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System (SLS), Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions, and is the oldest distribution that is still maintained.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Project</span> Free software project

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it. GNU software grants these rights in its license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU/Linux naming controversy</span> Issues of what to call a system with the GNU toolchain and the Linux kernel

The GNU/Linux naming controversy is a controversy regarding whether computer operating systems that use GNU software and the Linux kernel should be referred to as "GNU/Linux" or "Linux" systems.

In computing, a futex is a kernel system call that programmers can use to implement basic locking, or as a building block for higher-level locking abstractions such as semaphores and POSIX mutexes or condition variables.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FOSDEM</span> Annual event in Brussels centered on free and open source software development

Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It aims to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open-source software.

HFS Plus or HFS+ is a journaling file system developed by Apple Inc. It replaced the Hierarchical File System (HFS) as the primary file system of Apple computers with the 1998 release of Mac OS 8.1. HFS+ continued as the primary Mac OS X file system until it was itself replaced with the Apple File System (APFS), released with macOS High Sierra in 2017. HFS+ is also one of the formats supported by the iPod digital music player.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Softlanding Linux System</span> Linux distribution

Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was one of the first Linux distributions. The first release was by Peter MacDonald in August 1992. Their slogan at the time was "Gentle Touchdowns for DOS Bailouts".

Squashfs is a compressed read-only file system for Linux. Squashfs compresses files, inodes and directories, and supports block sizes from 4 KiB up to 1 MiB for greater compression. Several compression algorithms are supported. Squashfs is also the name of free software, licensed under the GPL, for accessing Squashfs filesystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate</span> 1990s debate regarding the Linux kernel

The Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate was a written debate between Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds, regarding the Linux kernel and kernel architecture in general. Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix, began the debate in 1992 on the Usenet discussion group comp.os.minix, arguing that microkernels are superior to monolithic kernels and therefore Linux was, even in 1992, obsolete. The debate has sometimes been considered a flame war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux</span> Family of Unix-like operating systems

Linux is a generic name for a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project.

SUSE Linux is a computer operating system developed by SUSE. It is built on top of the free and open-source Linux kernel and is distributed with system and application software from other open source projects. SUSE Linux is of German origin, its name being an acronym of "Software und System-Entwicklung", and it was mainly developed in Europe. The first version appeared in early 1994, making SUSE one of the oldest existing commercial distributions. It is known for its YaST configuration tool.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NTFS-3G</span> Implementation of NTFS file system

NTFS-3G is an open-source cross-platform implementation of the Microsoft Windows NTFS file system with read/write support. NTFS-3G often uses the FUSE file system interface, so it can run unmodified on many different operating systems. It is runnable on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, illumos, BeOS, QNX, WinCE, Nucleus, VxWorks, Haiku, MorphOS, Minix, macOS and OpenBSD. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is a partial fork of ntfsprogs and is under active maintenance and development.

Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2 with a syscall exception meaning anything that uses the kernel via system calls are not subject to the GNU GPL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux kernel</span> Free Unix-like operating system kernel

The Linux kernel is a free and open source, UNIX-like kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system (OS) which was created to be a free replacement for Unix. Since the late 1990s, it has been included in many operating system distributions, many of which are called Linux. One such Linux kernel operating system is Android which is used in many mobile and embedded devices.

systemd Suite of system components for Linux

systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux operating systems. The main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions. Its primary component is a "system and service manager" — an init system used to bootstrap user space and manage user processes. It also provides replacements for various daemons and utilities, including device management, login management, network connection management, and event logging. The name systemd adheres to the Unix convention of naming daemons by appending the letter d. It also plays on the term "System D", which refers to a person's ability to adapt quickly and improvise to solve problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LIO (SCSI target)</span> Open-source version of SCSI target

In computing, Linux-IO (LIO) Target is an open-source implementation of the SCSI target that has become the standard one included in the Linux kernel. Internally, LIO does not initiate sessions, but instead provides one or more Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs), waits for SCSI commands from a SCSI initiator, and performs required input/output data transfers. LIO supports common storage fabrics, including FCoE, Fibre Channel, IEEE 1394, iSCSI, iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER), SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) and USB. It is included in some Linux distributions; native support for LIO in QEMU/KVM, libvirt, and OpenStack makes LIO also a storage option for cloud deployments.

This article documents the version history of the Linux kernel.

References

  1. ↑ "Linux Distributions", Apr 01, 1994, Linux Journal , Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  2. ↑ "Jsish.org" . Retrieved 2017-12-01.
  3. ↑ "Peter MacDonald" Archived 2007-11-08 at the Wayback Machine , PDQI Staff page. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  4. ↑ "Linux-Activists" mailing list, 1991. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  5. ↑ "Linux-Activists" mailing list, 1992. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  6. 1 2 "The Choice of a GNU Generation: An Interview With Linus Torvalds", Originally published late 1993 in Meta Magazine. By Mike Linksvayer. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  7. ↑ "SLS: now available (for testers)" Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine , SLS first announcement - Newsgroup: comp.os.linux, August 15, 1992. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  8. ↑ "Linux Timeline", Linux Journal , May 31, 2006. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  9. ↑ "The Ultimate Distro", by Glyn Moody, Linux Journal , December 27, 2006. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  10. ↑ "Interview with Patrick Volkerding", by Phil Hughes, Linux Journal , April 1, 1994. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  11. ↑ Linux Bible 2010 Edition: Boot Up to Ubuntu, Fedora, KNOPPIX, Debian, openSUSE, and 13 Other Distributions, by Christopher Negus, Wiley, 2009, ISBN   978-0-470-48505-7, p.528. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  12. ↑ "Wine History", WineHQ. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  13. 1 2 "BrowseX Home Page". Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  14. ↑ "BrowseX Systems Inc. announces Beta Release 1.0.x of BrowseX", BrowseX Systems Inc., Sept 26, 2000. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  15. ↑ "BrowseX - A Viable Alternative", review by Steve Coe, Canada Computes, Oct 04, 2000. Archived at the Internet Archive. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  16. ↑ "PDQI Home Page" Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  17. ↑ "Jsish.org" . Retrieved 2014-04-30.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.