I did some Twitts this morning:
“The history of Welsh computing: Inmos Transputer, Raspberry Pi. Impressive. Whatever happened to parallel processing? Or druids.”
[At this point I did a search to check ‘David’ Cox’s name]
“…I should probably have included Alan Cox’s networking contributions to the Linux kernel in between those two.”
“… At least I now know what happened to one of the druids.”
[When I saw the photos, I thought 2 of them were a young RMS ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman
“…I just learned that Alan Cox comes from Solihull, which may explain why I think I may have met him at the first Linux event I ever attended”
[Then I went back to the search Window and found this link]
“…Isn’t The Internet good? This meeting! http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/linux-newsletter/linux@uk13/decus.shtml ”
[18th September but which year: 1994? The first release of the kernel was in 1991.
but http://www.ukuug.org/about/timeline/
shows MH was UKUUG newsletter editor 1995-6.
Are we approaching 20 years of Linux (or “Free Unix”) in Birmingham?]
“…Yes kids, my first Linux distro was Lasermoon. Martin Houston also wrote the magazine article that caused me to be there and started SBLUG.”
Martin Houston was a quiet, unassuming programmer who first brought Linux to the attention of me and probably most people in Britain who’d heard of it at that point. He was “the organiser” of the UK Unix User Group Linux SIG. I think his article in one of the DEC magazines was the first time I ever saw Linux mentioned and this meeting was at DEC’s office on the Birmingham Business Park, organised by the DEC User Society, DECUS. They must have been trying hard to recover from Ken Olsen’s accusation that Unix was snake-oil.
Soon afterwards I went to either the first or second meeting of the South Birmingham Linux User Group. Martin understood the importance of marketing and coined the phrase “A storm is coming and its name is Linux” which, for 1994, showed remarkable foresight and possibly misplaced confidence. A few years later, Martin turned up at Powergen in Coventry as a contract programmer but I haven’t heard of him since.
I remember that the demonstration of a Linux installation on a “portable PC” (they didn’t fit on your lap then) by Colin Bruce of Coventry University involved floppy disks and a parallel port network adapter (‘portables’ didn’t have a network connection. What do you think this was, The Future?)
And yes, Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox, famously Welsh, is a Brummie.
On The Outside 