A. In The
Beginning
It
was 1991, and the ruthless agonies of the cold war were gradually coming to an
end. There was an air of peace and tranquility that prevailed in the horizon.
In the field of computing, a great future seemed to be in the offing, as
powerful hardware pushed the limits of the computers beyond what anyone
expected.
But
still, something was missing.
And
it was the none other than the Operating Systems, where a great void seemed to
have appeared.
For
one thing, DOS was still reigning supreme in its vast empire of
personal computers. Bought by Bill Gates from a Seattle hacker for $50,000, the bare
bones operating system had sneaked into every corner of the world by virtue of
a clever marketing strategy. PC users had no other choice. Apple Macs were
better, but with astronomical prices that nobody could afford, they remained a
horizon away from the eager millions.
The
other dedicated camp of computing was the Unixworld. But Unix itself was far more expensive. In
quest of big money, the Unix vendors priced it high enough to ensure small PC
users stayed away from it. The source code of Unix, once taught in universities
courtesy of Bell Labs, was now cautiously guarded and not published publicly.
To add to the frustration of PC users worldwide, the big players in the
software market failed to provide an efficient solution to this problem.
A
solution seemed to appear in form of MINIX. It was written from scratch by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a
US-born Dutch professor who wanted to teach his students the inner workings of
a real operating system. It was designed to run on the Intel 8086
microprocessors that had flooded the world market.
As
an operating system, MINIX was not a superb one. But it had the advantage that
the source code was available. Anyone who happened to get the book 'Operating
Systems: Design and Implementation' by Tanenbaum could get hold of the 12,000
lines of code, written in C and assembly language. For the first time, an
aspiring programmer or hacker could read the source codes of the operating
system, which to that time the software vendors had guarded vigorously. A
superb author, Tanenbaum captivated the brightest minds of computer science
with the elaborate and immaculately lively discussion of the art of creating a
working operating system. Students of Computer Science all over the world pored
over the book, reading through the codes to understand the very system that
runs their computer.
And
one of them was Linus Torvalds.
In
1991, Linus
Benedict Torvalds was a second
year student of Computer Science at the University of
Helsinki and a self-taught hacker.
The 21 year old sandy haired soft-spoken Finn loved to tinker with the power of
the computers and the limits to which the system can be pushed. But all that
was lacking was an operating system that could meet the demands of the
professionals. MINIX was good, but still it was simply an operating system for
the students, designed as a teaching tool rather than an industry strength one.
At
that time, programmers worldwide were greatly inspired by the GNU project by Richard Stallman, a
software movement to provide free and quality software. Revered as a cult hero
in the realm of computing, Stallman started his awesome career in the famous
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, and during the mid and late
seventies, created the Emacs editor. In the early eighties, commercial
software companies lured away much of the brilliant programmers of the AI lab,
and negotiated stringent nondisclosure agreements to protect their secrets. But
Stallman had a different vision. His idea was that unlike other products,
software should be free from restrictions against copying or modification in
order to make better and efficient computer programs. With his famous 1983
manifesto that declared the beginnings of the GNU project, he started a
movement to create and distribute softwares that conveyed his philosophy
(Incidentally, the name GNU is a recursive acronym which actually stands for
'GNU is Not Unix'). But to achieve this dream of ultimately creating a free
operating system, he needed to create the tools first. So, beginning in 1984,
Stallman started writing the GNU C Compiler(GCC), an amazing feat for an
individual programmer. With his legendary technical wizardry, he alone
outclassed entire groups of programmers from commercial software vendors in
creating GCC, considered as one of the most efficient and robust compilers ever
created.
Richard Stallman, father of the GNU Project
By
1991, the GNU project created a lot of the tools. The much awaited Gnu C
compiler was available by then, but there was still no operating system. Even
MINIX had to be licensed.(Later, in April 2000, Tanenbaum released Minix under
the BSD License.) Work was going the GNU kernel HURD, but that was not supposed
to come out within a few years.
That
was too much of a delay for Linus.
In
August 25, 1991 the historic post was sent to the MINIX news group by Linus
.....
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict
Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@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-system(due to practical reasons) among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40),and things seem to work.This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, andI'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi) PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. |
As
it is apparent from the posting, Linus himself didn't believe that his creation
was going to be big enough to change computing forever. Linux version 0.01 was
released by mid September 1991, and was put on the net. Enthusiasm gathered
around this new kid on the block, and codes were downloaded, tested, tweaked,
and returned to Linus. 0.02 came on October 5th, along with this famous declaration
from Linus:
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. Sources for this pet project of mine can be found at nic.funet.fi (128.214.6.100) in the directory /pub/OS/Linux. The directory also contains some README-file and a couple of binaries to work under linux (bash, update and gcc, what more can you ask for :-). Full kernel source is provided, as no minix code has been used. Library sources are only partially free, so that cannot be distributed currently. The system is able to compile "as-is" and has been known to work. Heh. Sources to the binaries (bash and gcc) can be found at the same place in /pub/gnu. |
Linux
version 0.03 came in a few weeks. By December came version 0.10. Still Linux
was little more than in skeletal form. It had only support for AT hard disks,
had no login ( booted directly to bash). version 0.11 was much better with
support for multilingual keyboards, floppy disk drivers, support for VGA,EGA,
Hercules etc. The version numbers went directly from 0.12 to 0.95 and 0.96 and
so on. Soon the code went worldwide via ftp sites at Finland and elsewhere.
Linus displays Linux running on a notebook pc
Soon
Linus faced some confrontation from none other than Andrew Tanenbaum, the great
teacher who wrote MINIX. In a post to Linus, Tanenbaum commented:
"I still
maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a
fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a
high grade for such a design :-)"
(Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds) |
Linus
later admitted that it was the worst point of his development of Linux.
Tanenbaum was certainly the famous professor, and anything he said certainly
mattered. But he was wrong with Linux, for Linus was one stubborn guy who won't
admit defeat.
Tanenbaum
also remarked that : "Linux is obsolete".
Now
was the turn for the new Linux generation. Backed by the strong Linux
community, Linus gave a reply to Tanenbaum which seems to be most fitting:
Your job is being a
professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the
brain-damages of minix.
(Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum) |
And
work went on. Soon more than a hundred people joined the Linux camp. Then
thousands. Then hundreds of thousands. This was no longer a hackers toy.
Powered by a plethora of programs from the GNU project, Linux was ready for the
actual showdown. It was licensed under GNU General Public License, thus
ensuring that the source codes will be free for all to copy, study and to
change. Students and computer programmers grabbed it.
Soon,
commercial vendors moved in. Linux itself was, and is free. What the vendors
did was to compile up various software and gather them in a distributable
format, more like the other operating systems with which people were more
familiar. Red Hat , Caldera, and some other companies gained
substantial amount of response from the users worldwide. While these were
commercial ventures, dedicated computer programmers created their very own
volunteer-based distribution, the famed Debian. With the new
Graphical User Interfaces (like X-window System, KDE,GNOME)the Linux
distributions became very popular.
Meanwhile,
there were amazing things happening with Linux. Besides the PC, Linux was
ported to many different platforms. Linux was tweaked to run 3Com's handheld
PalmPilot computer. Clustering technology enabled large number of Linux
machines to be combined into a single computing entity, a parallel computer. In
April 1996, researchers at Los Alamos National
Laboratoryused Linux to run 68 PCs as a
single parallel processing machine to simulate atomic shock waves. But unlike
other Supercomputers costing a fortune, it was rather cheap. The do-it-yourself
supercomputer cost only $152,000, including labor (connecting the 68 PCs with
cables)-about one tenth the price of a comparable commercial machine. It
reached a peak speed of 19 billion calculations per second, making it the 315th
most powerful supercomputer in the world. And it was a robust one too. Three
months later it still didn't have to be rebooted.
The
best thing about Linux today is the fanatic following it commands. Whenever a
new piece of hardware is out, Linux kernel is tweaked to take advantage of it.
For example, within weeks after the introduction of Intel Xeon® Microprocessor,
Linux kernel was tweaked and was ready for it. It has also been adapted for use
in Alpha, Mac, PowerPC, and even for palmtops, a feat which is hardly matched
by any other operating system. And it continues its journey into the new
millennium, with the same enthusiasm that started one fine day back in 1991.
As
for Linus, he remains a simple man. Unlike Bill Gates, he is not a billionaire.
Having completed studies, he moved to USA and landed a job at Transmeta
Corporation. After conducting a top-secret research and development project,
Transmeta launched the Crusoeâ„¢ processor. Linus was an active member of the
research team. Recently married to Tove, he is the proud father of a girl,
Patricia Miranda Torvalds. But he remains as the world's most favorite and most
famous programmer to this date. Revered by Computer communities worldwide, Linus
is by far the most popular programmer on this planet.
Proving
all the warning and prophecies of the skeptics wrong, Linux has completed a
decade of development. Today, Linux is one of the fastest growing operating
systems in the history. From a few dedicated fanatics in 1991-92 to millions of
general users at present, it is certainly a remarkable journey. The big
businesses have 'discovered' Linux, and have poured millions of dollars into
the development effort, denouncing the anti-business myth of the open-source
movement. IBM corp. once considered the archenemy of open-source hacker
community, has come forward with a huge fund for development of open source
Linux based solutions. But what's really amazing is the continuously increasing
band of developers spread throughout the world who work with a fervent zeal to
improve upon the features of Linux. The development effort is not, as many
closed-sourced advocates accuse, totally engulfed with chaos. A well designed
development model supervised by some maintainers is adopted. Along with this,
there are thousands of developers working to port various applications to
Linux.
Commercial
enterprises are no longer wary of Linux. With a large number of vendors
providing support for Linux based products, it is no longer a
'do-at-your-own-risk' thing to use Linux at the office. As for reliability,
Linux certainly proved it during the nasty attacks of the CIH virus in 1999 and
the love bug a year later, during which Linux based machines proved to be
immune to the damages caused by these otherwise quite simple computer viruses.
Linux startups like Red Hat received a cordial response as they went public.
And even after the dot-com bust of the recent years, these companies continue
to thrive and grow. With this added confidence, many large and small businesses
have adopted Linux based servers and workstations as an integral part of their
offices.
Rise of the Desktop Linux
What
is the biggest complain against Linux? Perhaps in the past, it was the text
based interface which scared off many people from using it. 'Text mode gives total
control', some dedicated hackers and heavy users may explain. But for the
millions of ordinary people, it also means a lot of effort towards learning the
system. The existing X-Window system and the window managers were not up to the
general computer users' expectation. Exactly this argument had always been put
forward by dedicated followers of the Windows(TM) camp. But things began to
change in the last couple of years. The advent of professional looking desktop
environments like KDE( K Desktop Environment) and GNOME completed the picture.
The recent versions of these desktop environment have changed the general
perception about the 'user friendliness' of Linux to a great extent. Though
hard-core users grumble about the loss of purity of the hacker-culture, this
great change in the mindset of the common users has increased the popularity of
Linux.
Today,
almost distributions of Linux include user-friendly GUIs. Installation has also
become easier. Gone are the days when users would need detailed expertise in
computer hardware to install Linux ... distributions like Ubuntu, Debian, Suse,
Knoppix, and Red Hat's Fedora Core can be installed by even novice users. Most
distributions are also available in Live CD format, which the users can just
put in their CD drives and boot without installing it to the hard drive, making
Linux available to the newbies.
Linux
in the Developing World
Perhaps
the greatest change is the spread of Linux to the developing world. In the days
before Linux, developing countries were way behind in the field of computing.
The cost of hardware fell down, but the cost of software was a huge burden to
the cash-strapped computer enthusiasts of the Third World countries. In
desperation, people resorted to piracy of almost all sorts of software
products. This resulted in widespread piracy, amounting to billions of dollars.
But then again, the pricetag of most of the commercial products were far beyond
the reaches of the people in developing countries. For example, a typical
operating system product costs at least US $100 or more. But in countries with
per capita incomes of about US$200-300, is a huge amount.
The
rise of Linux and other related open source product has changed it all. Since
Linux can be scaled to run in almost computer with very few resources, it has
become a suitable alternative for low budget computer users. Old, ancient
486/Pentium 1 computers that has become a part of history in the developed
world are still used in developing countries. And Linux has enabled to unleash
the full potential of these computers. The use of open source software has also
proliferated, since the price of software is a big question. In countries of
Asia, Africa and Latin America, Linux has appeared as a way out for the masses
of computer enthusiasts. And a testament to the true global nature of Linux,
local customizations were made in obscure parts of the world. The Linux
documentation now includes documents written in almost all the major languages
... and also many minor ones, for example, Vietnamese.
From
Desktop to Super Computing
When
Linux was first envisaged by Linus Torvalds, it was just another hackers hobby.
But from the humble Intel 386 machine of Linus that ran the first kernel, Linux
has come a long way. Its most notable use now is in the field of massively
parallel supercomputing clusters.
In
August 2001, BBC reported that the US Government was planning to build what
would be a mega computer, capable of performing over 13 trillion calculations
per second (13.6 TeraFLOPS). The project, called Teragrid would consist of a connected network of 4 US
supercomputing centers. The four labs that are collaborating to create the
Teragrid are: National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the
University of Illinois(NCSA), San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the
University of California Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago; California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
At each of these centers, there would be a supercomputer. In total, there would
be more than 3000 processors running in parallel to create the Tetragrid.
By
2005, the use of Linux became more prevalent in Supercomputing. The 2005
Top500 list of Supercomputers shows that 4 of the top 5 fastest supercomputers use
Linux as their operating system.
The
Journey Continues
The
journey of Linux from a hacking project to globalization has been more like an
evolutionary experience. The GNU Project, started in the early 1980's by
Richard Stallman, laid the foundation for the development of open source
software. Prof. Andrew Tanenbaum's Personal Computer operating system Minix
brought the study of operating systems from a theoretical basis to a practical
one. And finally, Linus Torvald's endless enthusiasm for perfection gave birth
to Linux. Throughout the last couple of years, hundreds of thousands of people
forming global community nurtured it and brought it to its glorious place in
the annals of the computer revolution. Today Linux is not just another
student's hacking project, it is a worldwide phenomenon bringing together huge
companies like IBM and the countless millions of people throughout the world in
the spirit of the open source software movement. In the history of computing,
it will forever remain as one of the most amazing endeavors of human
achievement.
The
logo of Linux is a penguin. Unlike other commercial products of computer
operating systems, Linux doesn't have a formidable serious looking symbol.
Rather Tux, as the penguin is lovingly called, symbolizes the carefree attitude
of the total movement. This cute logo has a very interesting history. As put
forward by Linus, initially no logo was selected for Linux. Once Linus went to
the southern hemisphere on a vacation. There he encountered a penguin, not
unlike the current logo of Linux. As he tried to pat it, the penguin bit his
hand. This amusing incident led to the selection of a penguin as the logo of
Linux sometime later.
F. Some Linux
Cookies
Here
are some famous words by Linus himself. Dijkstra probably hates me (Linus Torvalds, in
kernel/sched.c)
"How
should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only
coded it." (Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)
coded it." (Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)
"I'm
an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.." (Linus Torvalds in
response to a bug report.)
"If
you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot
of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (By Linus Torvalds)
of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (By Linus Torvalds)
Other
than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux over
BSD? No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very
hard on creating a name that
would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux
just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got
Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a
lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because
it sounds too technical. (Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux)
The
day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF being the natural
alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that it's
something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it happening in the near
future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does mean some work, and I
haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored,
but nothing negative so far).
Don't
take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains:
I'm
thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented that
"thickheaded is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. If I
weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me on c.o.minix.
What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so far, I don't want to
stand in the way if people want to make something better of it (*).
Linus
(*) Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does somebody know what
his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke.
(Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux)
(Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux)
`When
you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare
at
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".'
(By Linus Torvalds)
you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".'
(By Linus Torvalds)
Date
|
Event
|
1984
|
|
January 1984
|
Richard Stallman
quits his job at MIT and starts working on the GNU Project.
|
1985
|
|
Month unknown
|
Free
Software Foundation, an organization
for creating and promoting free software, is founded by Richard Stallman.
|
March 1985
|
The
GNU manifesto, a statement by
Richard Stallman advocating the cause of free software movement, is published
in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal
|
1991
|
|
August 25 1991
|
Linus conceives the
idea of Linux and announces the project in a Usenet Post
|
September 1991
|
Version 0.01 is
released on the Net
|
1992
|
|
January 1992
|
First Linux
Newsgroup: alt.os.linux founded in the UseNet
|
April 1992
|
Ari Lemmke starts
the popular Linux newsgroup comp.os.linux in the UseNet
|
November 1992
|
Adam Richter
announces the release of the first Linux Distribution from his company: Yggdrasil
|
1993
|
|
June 1993
|
Slackware, the famous Linux distribution is released by Peter
Volkerding
|
August 1993
|
Matt Welsh
releases Linux Installation and getting started: version 1
|
1994
|
|
March 1994
|
Linux kernel
version 1.0 is released
|
H.
Links
Here are some links
on the history of Linux which you may find helpful.
A website with help on Linux related issues.
|
|
Web site of Linus Torvalds ... contains some funny
comments and photos of Linus Torvalds and his family. (Linus claims himself to
be a www-illiterate :)
|
|
A website devoted to geeks and other tech-minded
people. Contains some interesting contemporary and historical information on
Linux and other free technologies.
|
|
Wikipedia article on Linux
|
|
Wikipedia article on the GNU Project
|
I.
Reference Source
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