Deep dive into the Softlanding Linux System (SLS)

We all heard of GNU/Linux also known as Ubuntu... jokes 😆

So as a Linux guy on the web, you will be corrected by a senpai screaming at you is GNUUUU!!! Linux. And remind you that Linux is just a kernel.

So here is where I want to touch, because YES! Linux is just a kernel, but what does it mean.

The kernel is like a brain in an animal or human, the function of it, is connect the nervous system so that senses such as touch, smell or sight, can be translated into emotions like pain, pleasure, hunger, etc. The same relation is the hardware we use in a computer like mouse, keyboards, processors, memory, storage, webcam, means to the base layer of the operating system. Without it, a keyboard is just a bunch of different sensors that get either 0 or 1 if touched. Doesn't mean the 'a' or the 'f', really, it just means sensor scancode number 0x1E=1 and number 0x21=1 while the other sensors are at 0.

A kernel in itself won't turn it into an 'A' but will help wire it to the software that does. Making the kernel the brain of what we call an operating system. So when Linus Torvalds design a new Kernel based on Minix, he needed people to test it by compiling it along some other tools, these were the GNU software tools, such as GCC, BASH, GNU Make and other series of commands to interact with the kernel. By December of 1991, the GNU tools were ported to run on top of the Linux kernel. This was version 0.11 of the kernel.

Before SLS (and other structured systems existed), the way to run a kernel was using a two floppy disc process where one had the compiled kernel while the other served as a "root" disk containing a minimal set of essential GNU utilities (like bash and gcc). There were other ways as well using Minix, but it was a complicated process because an Operating system needed something to exist before it could compile the kernel.

So SLS solved that problem becoming the first quasi-distribution, by bundling the kernel with core utilities, a TCP/IP network stack, and—most importantly—the X Window System (graphical interface).

The process could still be improved, and improved it did, and that's what the early distributions got started. Distributions like Slackware or Debian. SLS was a product of Softlanding Software a software company created by software engineer from British Columbia, Peter MacDonald. He also co-developed several fundamental features for the nascent Linux kernel, including shared libraries, pseudo-terminals, the select system call, and virtual consoles.

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