Linux Tales - The History of Linux

It was the era when Microsoft was involved in Intel-based microcomputers with its minimalistic DOS (Disk Operating System, which they bought out from under the nose of IBM). A Finnish Computer Science student at the University of Helsinki, named Linus Torvalds, was in his second year of study.

In order to study operating systems effectively, it is important to read and experiment with the source code (programming instructions). Opportunities for this were very limited. DOS and the UNIX systems of the time were proprietary, closed systems. No source code was available.

One operating system was free to study, though it was invented for teaching purposes and not used commercially. It was called Minix, by Andrew Tanenbaum.

At the same time, Richard Stallman, working in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, created a program for programmers to use to create and edit their programs, called EMACS. He released this program with the source code, one of the earliest known Open Source projects. Stallman, with others, began the GNU General Public License project, which created open source software and made it available to all. He wrote the original GNU C compiler, which programmers use to transform their programs from text so that computers can run them, also open source.

Linus Torvalds, in 1991, began writing a new operating system which would have UNIX-like characteristics, be free and open source, and would be able to support professional requirements as computers evolved and became more powerful. He did this because he could not afford to pay the steep licensing fees for commercial UNIX systems, and he wanted something to study and improve.

Andrew Tanenbaum tried to discourage Linus, but he did and continues to have a mind of his own, and was not dissuaded. To quote Linus in his reply to Tanenbaum, "Your job is being a professor and researcher. That’s one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix."

Using the Internet news network, Usenet, word spread about the fledgling operating system. Soon, hundreds of volunteers from around the world were actively working on and contributing to Linux. This grew to thousands.

After he completed his studies in Finland, Linus moved to America. One of my friends, who worked for Transmeta Corporation at the time, suggested to his management that they hire Linus. This was done, and Linus worked on a secret project there to create the revolutionary Crusoe processor chip.

Linux was packaged with GNU software to make a complete, usable product. Several groups of programmers created ’distributions’, which included all of the components needed to run the computer as a server or a workstation. Most of it came from the GNU project, but eventually hundreds of different distributions were created, many for special purposes, some for different types of central processors.

Linux runs on processors from almost all manufacturers, from IBM to Motorola to Intel, and many specialized processors as well.

It is installed in devices as diverse as mobile phones, the space shuttle, satellites, places such as telecommunication providers central offices, business computer centers, and airliner network systems.

It was and continues to be designed to run efficiently on the smallest devices and scales to the world’s fastest supercomputers. Many large corporations contribute source code to Linux, and several have director-level divisions devoted to it.

Not bad for a light-in-the pocketbook college student!