Peter MacDonald is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

, best known as the creator of

Softlanding Linux System Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was one of the first Linux distributions. The first release was by Peter MacDonald in August 1992. Their slogan at the time was "Gentle Touchdowns for DOS Bailouts". SLS was the first release to offer a comprehen ...

(SLS), widely regarded as the first complete

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

. Some of his work served as a foundation of

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

. He also created the

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

web browser BrowseX, and the PDQI suite of Tcl utilities. Current projects include

Jsish JavaScript Interpreter SHell (Jsish or Jsi for short) is a scripting language designed for use in embedded systems. It is a language used primarily by applications written in C or C++ using GNU tool-chains. MinGW provides Windows compatibility. ...

, an embeddable javascript interpreter with builtin type-checking.

Biography

Peter Charles MacDonald was born in

Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Th ...

on June 28, 1957. He graduated from the

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

program of the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...

with a

BSc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

(1989) and MSc (1996,

master's thesis A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...

: ''Decomposing the Linux Kernel into Dynamically Loadable Modules'').

SLS

MacDonald co-developed early features of the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

in the early 1990s, including

shared libraries In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subr ...

pseudo terminal In some operating systems, including Unix and Linux, a pseudoterminal, pseudotty, or PTY is a pair of pseudo-device endpoints (files) which establish asynchronous, bidirectional communication ( IPC) channel (with two ports) between two or more pr ...

s, the select call and

virtual console A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, illumos, Unix ...

s."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. He announced

(SLS), the first standalone Linux install, for testing in August 1992 (on 15

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

s), and for general release in October 1992 (recommending at least 10 MB of

disk space Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central processing unit (CPU) of a computer ...

). SLS became popular, but also drew criticism. MacDonald was criticized for trying to make money on free software, but defended by

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also c ...

. Two of the early

s were made specifically in reaction to SLS,

Ian Murdock Ian Ashley Murdock (April28, 1973 – December 28, 2015) was an American software engineer, known for being the founder of the Debian project and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company. Life and career Although Murdock's parents were ...

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

to compensate for SLS's bugs, and

Patrick Volkerding Patrick Volkerding (born October 20, 1966) is the founder and maintainer of the Slackware Linux distribution. Volkerding is Slackware's " Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL), and is also known informally as "The Man". Personal life Volkerding e ...

Slackware Slackware is a Linux distribution created by Patrick Volkerding in 1993. Originally based on Softlanding Linux System, Slackware has been the basis for many other Linux distributions, most notably the first versions of SUSE Linux distributions ...

to include installer patches which weren't added to SLS, and which MacDonald wouldn't allow Volkerding to distribute independently.

Other software

The initial 1993

Windows compatibility layer was based on

Tcl/Tk Tk is a free and open-source, cross-platform widget toolkit that provides a library of basic elements of GUI widgets for building a graphical user interface (GUI) in many programming languages. Tk provides a number of widgets commonly needed to ...

windowing functions MacDonald wrote (though later rewritten as direct

Xlib Xlib (also known as libX11) is an X Window System protocol client library written in the C programming language. It contains functions for interacting with an X server. These functions allow programmers to write programs without knowing the d ...

calls). MacDonald founded BrowseX Systems in 1999,"BrowseX Home Page"
Retrieved 2011-09-27. and put out version 1.0 of BrowseX, an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Tcl-based cross-platform web browser, meant to be smaller and faster than

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

. The last update of BrowseX was in 2003; the company was renamed to PDQ Interfaces Inc., and put out a set of various TCL based utilities. Jsish: a javascript interpreter with builtin sqlite, json, websocket, and zvfs support.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:MacDonald, Peter 1957 births Living people Linux people Free software programmers