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Bangladesh Linux Users Group |
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Bangladesh Linux Users Group |
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History of Linuxby Ragib Hasan
Table of Contents a. In The Beginning
It was 1991, and the ruthless agonies of the cold war was 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 Unix world. 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 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 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 System' 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. Students of Computer Science all over the world poured 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. The much awaited Gnu C compiler was available by then, but there was still no operating system. Even MINIX had to be licensed. 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)
Hello everybody out there using minix -
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
c. Confrontation & Development 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 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. 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 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, Debian, and some other companies gained substantial amount of response from the users worldwide. With the new Graphical User Interfaces (like X-windows, KDE) the Linux distributions became very popular. Meanwhile, there were amazing things happening with Linux.
Engineers
have tweaked Linux to run 3Com's handheld PalmPilot computer. Red Hat
Software's
version of Linux won the 1996 award for bestdesktop computer operating
system from trade 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 millenium, with the same enthusiasm that started one fine day back in 1991.
Here are some famous words by Linus himself. Dijkstra probably hates me
"How should I know if it
works?
That's
what beta testers are for. I only "I'm an idiot.. At least this one
[bug]
took about 5 minutes to find.." "If you want to travel around the
world
and be invited to speak at a lot > > Other than the fact
Linux has
a cool
name, could someone explain why I > The day people think linux
would
be better
served by somebody else (FSF > (*) Hey, maybe I could apply
for a
saint-hood
from the Pope. Does Your job is being a professor and
researcher:
That's one hell of a good excuse History is always boring, but history of
Computing
and that of Linux are very interesting. Much of the source of this
article
has been taken from the Internet. It was inspired by the questions
asked
by many would be Linux users at meetings and postings of Bangladesh
Linux Users Group.Thanks to all. |
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. Recently married, he is the proud father of a girl,
Patricia
Amanda 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. He deserves it.