MCC Interim Linux was a

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 on ...

first released in February 1992 by Owen Le Blanc of the Manchester Computing Centre (MCC), part of the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...

. It was the first Linux distribution created for computer users who were not Unix experts and featured a

menu In a restaurant, the menu is a list of food and beverages offered to customers and the prices. A menu may be à la carte – which presents a list of options from which customers choose – or table d'hôte, in which case a pre-established seque ...

-driven

installer Installation (or setup) of a computer program (including device drivers and plugins), is the act of making the program ready for execution. Installation refers to the particular configuration of a software or hardware with a view to making it usa ...

that installed both the kernel and a set of end-user and programming tools. The MCC first made Linux available by

anonymous FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

in November 1991. Le Blanc's irritations with his early experiments with Linux, such as the lack of a working

fdisk In computing, the fdisk command-line utility provides disk-partitioning functions, preparatory to defining file systems. fdisk features in the DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, and Microsoft Windows operating systems, and in certain ports of Free ...

(he would later write one), the need to use multiple FTP repositories to acquire all the essential software, and library version problems, inspired the creation of this distribution. Le Blanc claimed he referred to the distributions as "interim" because "...they are not intended to be final or official. They are small, harmonious, and moderately tested. They do not conform to everyone's taste -- what release does? -- but they should provide a stable base to which other software can be added."

History

Prior to its first release, the closest approximation to a Linux distribution had been H J Lu's "Boot/Root"

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 ...

images from early 1992. These were two 5¼" diskette images containing 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 ...

and the minimum tools required to get started. So minimal were these tools that to be able to boot from a hard drive required editing its

master boot record A master boot record (MBR) is a special type of boot sector at the very beginning of partitioned computer mass storage devices like fixed disks or removable drives intended for use with IBM PC-compatible systems and beyond. The concept of MB ...

with a

hex editor A hex editor (or ''binary file editor'' or ''byte editor'') is a computer program that allows for manipulation of the fundamental binary data that constitutes a computer file. The name 'hex' comes from 'hexadecimal', a standard numerical format ...

. The first release of MCC Interim Linux was based on Linux 0.12 and made use of

Theodore Ts'o Theodore (Ted) Yue Tak Ts'o (曹子德) (born 1968) is an American software engineer mainly known for his contributions to the Linux kernel, in particular his contributions to file systems. He is the Secondary developer and maintainer of e2fspr ...

's ramdisk code to copy a small root image to memory, freeing the floppy drive for additional utilities diskettes. He also stated his distributions were "unofficial experiments", describing the goals of his releases as being: *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. Indeed, no attempt was ever made to distribute it with a wide range of software or even the

X386 X386 was an implementation of the X Window System for IBM PC compatible computers. It ran on systems with Intel 386 or later processors, running Unix System V-based operating systems, and supported a variety of VGA-compatible graphics cards. X386 wa ...

windowing system.

Successors

Soon after the first release came other distributions such as TAMU, created by individuals at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

, Martin Junius's MJ,

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 comprehe ...

and H J Lu's small base system. These in turn were quickly superseded by

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 De ...

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

and

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 distributio ...

, the oldest surviving distributions. The 1.0 distribution of MCC Interim pointed out that Debian was "five times the size of MCC, and quite comprehensive", and the final distribution encouraged users to switch to Debian by providing transitional support.

Included software

Version 0.95c+

As discussed in an email dated 23 April 1992, the boot and utilities disk pair included: *

bash Bash or BASH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Bash!'' (Rockapella album), 1992 * ''Bash!'' (Dave Bailey album), 1961 * '' Bash: Latter-Day Plays'', a dramatic triptych * ''BASH!'' (role-playing game), a 2005 superhero game * "Bash" ('' ...

compress compress is a Unix shell compression program based on the LZW compression algorithm. Compared to more modern compression utilities such as gzip and bzip2, compress performs faster and with less memory usage, at the cost of a significantly l ...

elvis Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the " King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His ener ...

* gawk *The GNU shell/file/text utilities *

grep grep is a command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the ed command ''g/re/p'' (''globally search for a regular expression and print matching lines''), which has the sa ...

/egrep/fgrep *

joe Joe or JOE may refer to: Arts Film and television * ''Joe'' (1970 film), starring Peter Boyle * ''Joe'' (2013 film), starring Nicolas Cage * ''Joe'' (TV series), a British TV series airing from 1966 to 1971 * ''Joe'', a 2002 Canadian animated ...

less Less or LESS may refer to: fewer than,: not as much. Computing * less (Unix), a Unix utility program * Less (stylesheet language), a dynamic stylesheet language * Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), a product development framework that extends Scrum Other ...

make Make or MAKE may refer to: *Make (magazine), a tech DIY periodical *Make (software), a software build tool *Make, Botswana, in the Kalahari Desert *Make Architects Make Architects is an international architecture practice headquartered in London ...

more More or Mores may refer to: Computing * MORE (application), outline software for Mac OS * more (command), a shell command * MORE protocol, a routing protocol * Missouri Research and Education Network Music Albums * ''More!'' (album), by Booka ...

* mtools *

sed sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

tar Tar is a dark brown or black viscosity, viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic matter, organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. ...

* uuencode/uudecode An optional pair of disks contained gcc and g++ 2.1, kermit and shoelace.

Version 0.99.p8

Released on 14 April 1993. Added to version 0.95c+ were bison, flex,

gdb The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Go, and partially others. History GDB was first written by ...

, gprof, groff, gzip and

man A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chrom ...

Version 0.99.p8+

Released on 26 April 1993. Added to version 0.99.p8 were

emacs Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, ...

and info.

Version 1.0+

Added to version 0.99.p8+ were

elm Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the flowering plant genus ''Ulmus'' in the plant family Ulmaceae. They are distributed over most of the Northern Hemisphere, inhabiting the temperate and tropical-montane regions of Nor ...

, lp,

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

, progman, timezone and wordshttp://debian.mcc.ac.uk/non-debian/mcc-interim/old/1.0+/documentation/README.ftp

References

External links

MCC's site
featuring versions 0.97-p2-12 to 2.0+
MCC
at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

MCC Interim Linux
at

ibiblio ibiblio (formerly SunSITE.unc.edu and MetaLab.unc.edu) is a "collection of collections", and hosts a diverse range of publicly available information and open source content, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics ...

{{GNU/Linux distributions Discontinued Linux distributions Science and technology in Greater Manchester University of Manchester Linux distributions