MCC Interim Linux - The first distro

[SpookyZalost]

For those that don't know.  Linux is a completely open source operating system created by Linux Torvalds in 1991 as a free unix during the unix wars I talked about during my Cyberspace holywars post.  At the time the only options were either BSD, System V, or Minix and Linux came about as a bit of a dark horse.  What's surprising is how quickly Linux went from prototype to Distro.

On August 25th 1991 Linus torvalds posted the following to the usenet newsgroup: comp.os.minix.

"I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months.
Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(."

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.  A few weeks later on October 5th He released Version 0.02 with the following.

"[As] I mentioned a month ago, I'm working on a free version of a Minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is just version 0.02...but I've successfully run bash, gcc, gnu-make, gnu-sed, compress, etc. under 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.  This was all running on 386 computers with early 32bit CPU's and no graphical interfaces.  Around that time it only ran off of diskettes until Erik Ratcliffe who would later go on to work for Caldera came up with a way to use hex editing to alter the boot sector of a hard drive and get it to boot linux directly from the drive removing the need for a boot disk.

in early 1992 H.J. LU created the Boot root disk however it wasn't until February of 1992 that the University of Manchester and it's Manchester Computing Center or MCC created the very first linux distro. Compiled by Owen Le Blanc it was simply called MCC Interim Linux.

Officially MCC was made available by anonymous FTP in november 1991 however Le Blanc's frustrations with the state of early linux, then only a few months old lead to him creating both the distro and some early utilities like a linux version of Fdisk for formatting hard drives as well as compiling it all together to remove the need for downloading utilities from multiple FTP repositories.  The Distributions were listed as Interim because they were not intended to be final or official.  just small test distributions.

MCC was based on Linux version 0.12 and made use of Theodore TS'o's Ramdisk code to copy a root image to memory freeing the floppy drive to load additional disks.  the goals of the project being the following.

To provide a simple installation procedure.
To provide a more complete installation procedure.
To provide a backup/recovery service.
To back up his (then) current system.
To compile, link, and test every binary file under the current versions of the kernel, gcc, and libraries.
To provide a stable base system, which can be installed in a short time, and to which other software can be added with relatively little effort.

Not long after the release of MCC TAMU was created by some people at Texas A&M University.  then Martin Junius created the Solftlanding Linux System or SLS.  SLS would then go on to be the basis upon which Slackware was created and inspired the creation of Debian.  From there all other Linux Distros followed.

With MCC version 1.0 it was pointed out that Debian was five times the Size of MCC and quite comprehensive.  and as of the final version in November of 1996 users were encouraged to switch to Debian and had transitional support.

MCC included the following utilities as of version 1.0

bash
compress
elvis
gawk
The GNU shell/file/text utilities
grep/egrep/fgrep
joe
less
make
more
mtools
sed
tar
uuencode/uudecode
GCC
G++
Kermit
Emacs
Info
Elm
IP
Mail
Progman
Timezone
Words

This distro may be lost to time now, but it still is an important piece of history because it was the first Linux distro.

[Kyng]

Wow, "just a hobby"... I guess Torvalds couldn't predict just how big this would eventually become .

Anyway, it does sound like this was quite limited in what it could do - but, that's probably for the best, given that it was the first distribution (and it was laying the foundations for something that would eventually grow far bigger).

Thanks for sharing this piece of computer history!

[SpookyZalost]

Wow, "just a hobby"... I guess Torvalds couldn't predict just how big this would eventually become .

Anyway, it does sound like this was quite limited in what it could do - but, that's probably for the best, given that it was the first distribution (and it was laying the foundations for something that would eventually grow far bigger).

Thanks for sharing this piece of computer history!

Gotta love old computer history.  This was during the time when you had the Chaos Computer Club, the Cult of the Dead Cow (who's members included the lyricist for the greatful dead and the son of the drummer from Jefferson airplane.)  And BBS Literature groups like Soulz at Zero (not to be confused with the short lived metal band Souls at Zero who inspired the name.)