Design Management Group

Linux

Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. Developed under the GNU General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone.

Origins of Linux

The 'birthday' of Linux is reckoned to be 25 August 1991, which is when Torvalds sent a post to the comp.os.minix newsgroup, announcing that he was developing operating system (although it was still very much in its infancy) and soliciting suggestions for features.

From:torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroup: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: 1991Aug25, 20578.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki.

Hello everybody out there using minix-

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big
and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has
been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like
any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix; as my OS
resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-sytem
due to practical reasons)among other things.

I've currently ported bash (1.08) an gcc (1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that i'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd
like to know what features most people want. Any suggestions are welcome,
but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

Linus Torvalds torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi

Then in October 1991, came the "call to arms"

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT
Message-ID: <1991Oct5.054106.4647@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote
their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying
to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you
finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-
nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just
for you :-)

As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a
minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers. It has finally reached the stage
where it's even usable (though may not be depending on what you want),
and I am willing to put out the sources for wider distribution. It is
just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully
run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it.

By December, there were 100000 estimated users.

The name Linux was not Linus' idea - the name was actually chosen by Ari Lemke who created the server subdirectory to hold the sourcecode. Linus had suggested the name 'Freax'!

Development

Linux kernel 1.0 was released in March 1994. Shortly afterwards, the minicomputer company DEC was persuaded to fund a port to the 64bit Alpha workstation, conferring a degree of legitimacy on what had been hitherto a bootleg effort. Linux kernel 2.0, released in June 1996, supported the DEC Alpha.

Meanwhile Red Hat Software was set up to provide easier access to the growing range of Linux-related products. Linux distribution and installation had previously been an arcane process, not for the faint-hearted. In December 1997, the Red Hat 5.0 distribution was released, followed by the introduction of telephone support. A number of different Linux distributions are now available.

In June 1998, IBM announced that it would distribute and support the Apache web server - Linux was now part of 'the establishment'.

What started as the hobby of one individual grew through the involvement of many other enthusiasts to become a robust operating system now in use on a significant number of servers, and a potential challenge to the desktop position of the, as yet, still dominant Microsoft. (The open-source Apache web server has been the dominant web server since 1996).

Although much of the code in Linux and other open-source products has come from unpaid volunteers, the scale of the effort is quite significant. One estimate puts the conventional cost of development of software the size of Linux at around $600m.

Eric Raymond, writing about peer review processes in open-source software, coined Linus's Law: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". This refers to the benefit of exposing all source code to as many reviewers as possible (the 'bazaar'), rather than restricting certain key components to the select few (the 'cathedral').

Further information

• www.linux.org website
• Red Hat website, Red Hat corporate timeline and Red Hat Linux release history
• Collection of historic newsgroup postings
• Linux timeline
• Computer OS timeline
• SAS/Linux timeline
• Linux kernel and Linux OS entries from Wikipedia
• Operating System, History of Operating Systems, and OS timeline entries from Wikipedia
• A Quantitative Profile of a Community of Open Source Linux Developers
• More than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's size, David A. Wheeler, 30 June 2001
• Raymond, E. (2001) The Cathedral and the Bazaar, O'Reilly (essays on open-source development, some also online )

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