A Brief History of Linux

Here's my interpretation/understanding of how Linux came to be.  Feel free to correct me if I've got anything wrong!

In the 70s, Unix was developed by various US universities.  It became the server operating system of choice for most companies and is still very widely used today.  In the late 80s, another operating system started life as a Unix like educational tool.  This was called MINIX.  Going back to the early 80s, Richard Stallman had announced the GNU project.  This project's aim was to produce a free operating system.  In the early 90s, a Finnish student by the name of Linus Torvalds decided to do something similar to MINIX but with a potentially wider user base and more complete features.  In 1991, he announced his new operating system kernel on a MINIX newsgroup.  It became known as Linux.  The Linux kernel came along at just the right time to complement the GNU project with the final part it needed.  An operating system kernel.  So, GNU/Linux (As it should properly be known.) gave us the basis for wide variety of Linux (Most people use Linux as shorthand to refer to GNU/Linux.  They aren't talking about the kernel exclusively.) distributions we have today.  These distributions run on everything from embedded devices (Network routers, for example.) and smartphones to the most powerful super computers with a very large part of the infrastructure of the internet in between.  There is a strange anomoly in the spread of Linux adoption though.  On desktop and laptop computers, the operating system with the largest market share bears little resemblance to the Unix like systems that run on the lion's share of every other type of computer.  It doesn't share Unix like systems' stability, security and reliability yet through it's parent company's clever use of marketing and manipulation of the personal computer market it retains an effective monopoly.  This is not to say that Linux doesn't fit into personal computer usage though.  Due to it's scaleability, many of the Linux distributions available today work just as well in a large organisation's data centre as they do on any home or office machine.  It takes just some willingness to learn (Which Linux encourages, probably due to it's educational heratige.) to unlock the capabilities of this real computer operating system to perform tasks that users of the more popular (By numbers.) home/office operating system could scarcely dream of.

I hope you have enjoyed this brief history and that it might pique your interest enough to want to learn more.
 

Page updated 15th December 2010