Peter MacDonald (computer programmer)
Peter MacDonald is a Canadian software engineer, best known as the creator of Softlanding Linux System (SLS), widely regarded as the first Linux distribution. 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.
Biography
Peter Charles MacDonald was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 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).[1]
Linux
MacDonald co-developed early features of the Linux kernel in the early 1990s, including shared libraries, pseudo terminals, the select call and virtual consoles.[2][3] He announced Softlanding Linux System (SLS), the first standalone Linux install, in October 1992 (recommending at least 10 MB of disk space).[4]
References
- ^ "Peter MacDonald", PDQI Staff page. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
- ^ "Linux-Activists" mailing list, 1991. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
- ^ "Linux-Activists" mailing list, 1992. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
- ^ "Linux Timeline", Linux Journal, May 31, 2006. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
External links
Linux Kernel Credits - www.kernel.org SLS first announcement - Newsgroups: comp.os.linux, 15 Aug 92 Linux Timeline - Linux Journal Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution - O'Reilly Publishing Interview with Linus Torvalds - Meta Magazine (archived) SLS History - pdqi.com