On the second day of January, the year 1991, a young student, Linus Torvalds, from Helsinki went shopping for the most sophisticated personal computer that his pockets could afford. On the shopping he spent approximately three thousand and five hundred dollars ($3,500) on a computer whose specs were four MBs of internal memory and a processor with a speed of thirty three megahertz.
Even with these specs which in today’s advanced technology can only be described as a joke, the gray brick that Linus bought went on to be one of the world’s historic computers, being the original Linux PC. It was this same computer that Linus used to write his famous Usenet post which announced the coming birth of the Linux Operating system. It was also this same personal computer which acted as the hardware for Torvalds when he was building the very first of the drivers, utilities and emulators which went on to help him turn the Linux operating system into one of the best operating systems that exist in the world today.
Even with all the legacy and success the bray brick has achieved in its long service to Linus Torvalds, he has decided to severe the final ties with it and thus throwing it to a historical dustbin. However, even after the severing of the ties, the legacy and history with this personal computer will still live on for many years to come. In the severing of the ties, Linus accepted the patch which had been forwarded by Molnar which dropped the support for the Intel’s 386 microprocessors which were the brains of the Trovald’s old personal computer DX33 system. This resulted in coming to an end of the 15 year long shipping of the 386 microprocessors from Intel with the final shipment being made in 2007.
Explaining the forwarded patch, Ingo Molnar explained in his notes that the patch, written by Peter Anvin, zapped some bit of complexity from the kernel and it further caused the Linux kernel developers to do some bit of extra work in all those times they were in use.
However, when explaining about the forwarded patch, Ingo Molnar showed some signs of wistfulness. Molnar also made it clear that the stopping of the 386 microprocessors would come at a nostalgic cost. This is due to the fact that with them gone, any personal computer using the old and the original DX33 system of the 386 microprocessors will no longer be able to boot with the modern Linux kernel operating system.
Linus Torvalds on the other hand wasn’t exactly shedding tears which would not be a surprise after the long history and legacy the computer has had. Speaking about the shipments stopping and the severing of the ties with the original Linux personal computer, Linus said that he wasn’t in any way sentimental about the change that took place. While accepting the patch, it is reported that he said “good riddance” may be to show that the change was long overdue.
