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Peter MacDonald (computer programmer)

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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][4] He announced Softlanding Linux System (SLS), the first standalone Linux install, for testing in August 1992 (on 15 disks),[5] and for general release in October 1992 (recommending at least 10 MB of disk space).[6] He was criticized for trying to make money on the free software, but defended by Linus Torvalds.[4]

The initial 1993 Wine Windows emulator was based on Tcl/Tk windowing functions MacDonald wrote (though later rewritten as direct Xlib calls).[7]

References

  1. ^ "Peter MacDonald", PDQI Staff page. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  2. ^ "Linux-Activists" mailing list, 1991. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  3. ^ "Linux-Activists" mailing list, 1992. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  4. ^ a b "The Choice of a GNU Generation: An Interview With Linus Torvalds", Originally published late 1993 in Meta Magazine. By Mike Linksvayer. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  5. ^ "SLS: now available (for testers)", SLS first announcement - Newsgroup: comp.os.linux, 15 Aug 92. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  6. ^ "Linux Timeline", Linux Journal, May 31, 2006. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
  7. ^ "Wine History", WineHQ. Retrieved 2011-09-27.

Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution - O'Reilly Publishing SLS History - pdqi.com

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