How far can this go?
|I take my hat off to Ben: he definitely won the latest podcast challenge by getting Linux 0.00 to run. In the comments I “joked” that I’ll find something even older — some code that Linus Torvalds wrote for his Sinclair QL back in the 1980s.
Of course, I was actually dead serious, so here we are readers:

This is GMOVE, a Sinclair QL BASIC extension (C) 1986 LBT (Linus B Torvalds) Soft. I got it running in a Sinclair QL emulator, after much fiddling about. It blits one area of the screen to another, as I’ve highlighted — pretty cool, huh? Your move, Ben.
8 Comments
Wow. I instantly knew what machine that was from just by looking at the image thumbnail. Brings back some memories, even if they're not exactly good ones.
Of course, what your emulator failed to replicate from the original experience was the microdrive chewing up the entire cartridge that you had that code stored on and depositing the tape from it all over the desk approximately two seconds after that screenshot was taken.
Well played Mike, well played.
Now I'm off to phone a Finnish nusery school to see if I can find out if they can help me out with some of young Linus's lego-building algorithms.
And one Ben to rule them all!! Wow, that's impressive! Does it play TuxRacer? 🙂
Nice work, Mike! I don't think you'll be able to beat that, Ben.
Since we've quickly reached the end of how far back we can go with Linux and Linus, permit me to make a suggestion to anyone who might want to go back even further to see how Unix worked in the 70s and early 80s. If you've got access to a Windows machine, there's a really neat exe that will install a Vax emulator with a working 4.2 BSD install in it. Google 4BSD for the Digital VAX to find that on Sourceforge.
If you want to go back even further, google V7/x86 to find a virtualbox disk image of a port of late 70s Unix to the x86 platform. (I am pretty sure I actually first heard of this on the old Tux Radar podcast, possibly thanks to Mike.)
Anyway, that's a bit OT, but should be fun for anyone who's been interested in this challenge!
I am impressed with the level of linuxy awesomeness u guys are managing! Keep up the good work 🙂
Most excellent discovery & effort to get running Mike. I'd defer to the judges on the question of whether it qualifies as an early 'distro', but it is after all s/w released by Linus.
My ruling would be co-prizes for you, Ben, AND Billy Larlad for the great pointer to the V7 port emulator, but if Linus' mother shows up with homework papers from his early school years …
If we assume that Linus' first program was hello world, could 1 of you run it in the first programming language that he first learned?
Knowing Linus even back then his first "Hello World" style program was "I hate nVidia" – pretty sure the genius must have a time machine by now.