The history of Linux began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. Happy Birthday! Linux turns 25 article tells that that Linus’ initially glot his project off the ground in April 1991 and announced in in 25 August 1991. Linus Torvalds’ now-famous announcement would soon be followed by the first Linux kernel release (0.01) on September 17, then a public release of the Linux kernel (0.02) on October 5.
Since then, the resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. The code that an irreverent Finnish college student named Linus Torvalds quietly unveiled in August 1991 has ended up touching at least as many lives as did the political upheavals of the late 20th century. Torvalds did not plan any of this. He was merely an “accidental revolutionary.” By combining Linux kernel and GNU team produced functional components of all the other important parts of the operating system, we got the Linux OS (Gnu/Linux).
Linux has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to 21 million lines of source code under the GNU General Public License v2. Because the first release in 1991 had around 150 000 code lines, the Linux code has grown 140 times in 25 years. The Linux kernel now supports 35 different file system, and virtually all conceivable architectures. Each Linux machine does of course not be run the same 21 million line of code – typical laptop Linux uses around 1.6 million lines of code and the smart phone has 2.5 million.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, recently offered me some awe-inspiring stats:
There are 53,000 source files in the Linux kernel, 21 million lines of code. There are 3,900 developers from all around the globe, 10,800 lines of code are added, 5300 lines of code are removed and 1,800 lines of code are modified every single day in the Linux kernel. It changes seven, eight times an hour on average, every day, 365 days a year. That is a prolific, tremendous scale that is just unparalleled in the history of software development.
Linus Torvalds to still take care of coordinating Linux development. Given that Linux providers pay nothing for the kernel, how does Torvalds earn a living? He’s an employee of the Linux Foundation that is supported by a consortium that consist of many big IT companies (Intel, Red Hat, Samsung, Suse, IBM, Google, AMD, and many more).
Today Linux s very widely used and there are very many versions of it -Wikipedia lists 258 distributions. Today Linux has expanded far beyond its conquest of the server market. If you include Android (built around the Linux kernel) and embedded Linux devices (from TVs to network switches). you’re talking billions of instances.
You can say that today Linux is the world’s by far the most common operating system. Linux is inside all Android phones. With IoT of the phenomenon, the number of Linux devices increases all the time. Even Microsoft sells cloud services for Linux-based solutions, makes software that runs on Linux and has Microsoft even has it’s own Linux version.
Why did Linux become such success? Linux at 25: Why It Flourished While Others Fizzled article says that timing, cost, and the right license made all the difference. It showed programmers everywhere that a different world was possible—a world where they could share code openly, collaborate informally, and make a decent living, even if they gave away the chief product of their labor for free. The advantages of working this way have since become obvious.
Linus Torvalds created the original core of the Linux operating system in 1991 as a computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. University of Helsinki arranged a jubilee seminar to celebrate the world domination of Linux and its 25th anniversary on 22 August 2016.
Open-source software is used by all companies in Finland. Both in Finland and around the world is a serious shortage of Linux talent. Both domestic and foreign firms Linux specialist shortage is hard. Companies desperately need more Linux experts.
Sources:
Happy Birthday! Linux turns 25
Linux at 25: An Ecosystem, Not Only an OS
Linux at 25: An ecosystem, not only an OS
Linux at 25: Why It Flourished While Others Fizzled – IEEE Spectrum
Linux at 25: Q&A With Linus Torvalds
25 vuodessa linuxin koko on kasvanut 140-kertaiseksi
LinuxCon to Highlight How Linux Has Changed in Its 25 Years
Linux täytti 25 vuotta – mutta missä ovat suomalaiset Linux-osaajat?
Facebook: Linux 25 years jubilee seminar
Juhlaseminaari 22. elokuuta 2016
Jubilee Seminar 22 August 2016
6 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Happy 25th birthday, Linux
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/22/happy-25th-birthday-linux/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
13,500 developers from 1,300 companies have contributed to the Kernel since the entire project went up on Git in 2005
Linux now runs most of the websites you visit and runs on everything from gas pumps to smartwatches. The OS teaches kids to program thanks to the Raspberry Pi and it helped the French police save millions of euros. Heck, even Microsoft is releasing code for Linux. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
For a bit more insight into the history of the OS, I’d recommend Rebel Code and
Just For Fun. These books, released around the time Linux was coming into prominence, tell the fascinating story of Torvalds and his not “big and professional” side project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Updates from LinuxCon and ContainerCon, Toronto, August 2016
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/updates-linuxcon-and-containercon-toronto-august-2016
The Future of Linux: Continuing to Inspire Innovation and Openness
The first 25 years of Linux has transformed the world, not just computing, and the next 25 years will continue to see more growth in the Open Source movement, The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said during the opening keynote of LinuxCon/ContainerCon in Toronto on Monday, August 22, 2016.
“Linux is the most successful software project in history”, Zemlin said, noting that the humble operating sytem created by Linus Torvalds 25 years ago this week is behind much of today’s software and devices.
But the message of Linux is far more than software, Zemlin said. It’s about the open exchange of ideas that’s world-changing and inspiring. The concept of sharing has changed how the world thinks about technology and how it’s made, he said.
“We’ve learned that you can better yourself while bettering others at the same time”, he said. “We’re building the greatest shared technology asset in the history of computing.”
In the coming years, Zemlin predicts an even more rapid shift to open source, particularly in a world that now makes it nearly impossible to deploy software without collaborating and taking advantage of open resources.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux turns 25, is bigger and more professional than ever
Just 7.7% of devs are unpaid—because Linux development is worth paying for.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/on-linuxs-25th-anniversary-development-has-gone-corporate/
The Linux operating system kernel is 25 years old this month. It was August 25, 1991 when Linus Torvalds posted his famous message announcing the project, claiming that Linux was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.”
But now, Linux is far bigger and more professional than Torvalds could have imagined. Linux powers huge portions of the Internet’s infrastructure, corporate data centers, websites, stock exchanges, the world’s most widely used smartphone operating system, and nearly all of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The successes easily outweigh Linux’s failure to unseat Microsoft and Apple on PCs, but Linux has still managed to get on tens of millions of desktops and laptops and Linux software even runs on Windows.
As its importance has grown, development of Linux has steadily shifted from unpaid volunteers to professional developers.
Torvalds himself oversees development of the kernel as an employee of the nonprofit Linux Foundation, which is funded by contributions from corporations and individuals. Linux is important enough to the bottom line of major technology companies that they don’t mind employees contributing to the kernel on their employers’ dime. Intel and Red Hat led the way in corporate contributions to the kernel from December 2014 to July 2016
Tomi Engdahl says:
Live from LinuxCon – Sharing the latest news and learnings on Microsoft’s open journey
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/live-from-linuxcon-sharing-the-latest-news-and-learnings-on-microsoft-s-open-journey/
representing Microsoft as a keynote speaker for the first time! I’m excited to share exciting new open source developments from Microsoft and things we’ve learned from our journey with Linux and open source.
The reality is customers use more than one tool and more than one platform to operate their businesses. They need tools that support Linux and Windows, and they need a cloud that allows them to run any application. One of the things I shared with linux.com recently was how blown away I was to see how large Microsoft’s investment in Linux already is. We brought .NET Core, PowerShell, and SQL Server to Linux. We also open sourced Visual Studio Code and just recently PowerShell. And, we are contributing to and participating in numerous community projects. It’s incredible to be a part of it.
Our latest open source and Linux advancements
One of the areas we are focused on is delivering open management solutions. In today’s multi-cloud, multi-OS world, customers need simple, unified tools to reduce complexity. That’s why just last week, we announced that we’re open sourcing PowerShell and making it available on Linux. Now PowerShell users across Windows and Linux can use our popular command-line shell and scripting language to manage almost everything from almost anywhere. My colleague Jeffrey Snover wrote a fantastic story about the journey to open source PowerShell and how customer-centricity brought us here
Today, I’m also excited to share that OMS Docker Container monitoring is available in preview. By nature, containers are lightweight and easily provisioned, so without a centralized approach to monitoring, customers may find it difficult to manage and respond to critical issues quickly.
Our experiences with Linux in Azure, where nearly 1 in 3 VMs today are Linux, have brought us closer to our customers and what they need to succeed in a rapidly advancing world. We have made significant investments in making Microsoft’s platform a great place to run open source software, and I will be working with my team to accelerate this effort over the coming months.
Choice and flexibility are important tenets of our platform. Also critical are our efforts to contribute to open source projects, integrate open source technologies in our platform, and forge commercial and community partnerships with the ecosystem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Happy Birthday Linux
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/happy-birthday-linux?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+linuxjournalcom+%28Linux+Journal+-+The+Original+Magazine+of+the+Linux+Community%29
Tomi Engdahl says:
Updates from LinuxCon and ContainerCon, Toronto, August 2016
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/updates-linuxcon-and-containercon-toronto-august-2016
The Future of Linux: Continuing to Inspire Innovation and Openness
The first 25 years of Linux has transformed the world, not just computing, and the next 25 years will continue to see more growth in the Open Source movement, The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said during the opening keynote of LinuxCon/ContainerCon in Toronto on Monday, August 22, 2016.
“Linux is the most successful software project in history”, Zemlin said, noting that the humble operating sytem created by Linus Torvalds 25 years ago this week is behind much of today’s software and devices.
But the message of Linux is far more than software, Zemlin said. It’s about the open exchange of ideas that’s world-changing and inspiring. The concept of sharing has changed how the world thinks about technology and how it’s made, he said.
“We’ve learned that you can better yourself while bettering others at the same time”, he said. “We’re building the greatest shared technology asset in the history of computing.”
In the coming years, Zemlin predicts an even more rapid shift to open source, particularly in a world that now makes it nearly impossible to deploy software without collaborating and taking advantage of open resources.