History of Linux

History of LinuxWhen Linus Torvalds 20 years ago have turned to the Internet Linux 12:01, he met with the idea of ​​a free Unix clone, in which everyone can mitentwickeln, a nerve. Today, Linux has become an integral part of the IT world.Twenty years ago it is now, that Linus Torvalds released the first lines of the programmed, how should be the Linux kernel. At that time, the computer science student has not thought of its own operating system, but simply wanted the capabilities of the 386-processor PC in his study. The experiments with memory management, process switching and I / O eventually evolved into something like a rudimentary operating system kernel.For Torvalds, who used to house the Unix-like teaching Minix and Unix by Andrew Tanenbaum knew from the university, it was clear that his own Unix-like operating system had to be. Therefore, he asked in July 1991 in the Minix newsgroup on the POSIX standard, the definition of the Unix system interface. On 25 August 1991 sent after Linus Torvalds, a post in which he mentioned the first time that he is working on an operating system for the 386 ("only as a hobby, will not be big and professional like GNU"), and the Minix community asked for suggestions, what features they would like to see.Linux 12:01On 17 September 1991 finally put his Torvalds' Linux 0.01 "on a FTP server to download (Torvalds wanted to call it" FreaX ", but the ftp-admin found the name" Linux "better). 12:01 Linux was as good as anything: the kernel only ran on 386 processors that support only the Finnish keyboard layout and just booted from a floppy. It seemed even darker in the applications: The bash was limited to the Unix shell and the GNU C compiler.But Linux hit a nerve: a series of UNIX fans who rushed to the limited capabilities of Minix and Unix workstations were too expensive, to the new operating system, Torvalds sent their wishes, and drivers tinkered on first ported programs. The basis was provided in the traditional, founded in 1984 by Richard Stallman, GNU Project, a variety of classic Unix tools was programmed so that they could be compiled for different Unix systems. To a complete operating system was missing only the kernel, and has now supplied Linus Torvalds: GNU / Linux was born - in a form in which it has (on the command line) to this day held.In November 1991, accidentally deleted Torvalds Minix partition on his computer and was now faced with the choice to install new Minix or Linux to develop a usable system. He opted for Linux. In January 1992 he released the Linux version 0.12 for the first time under the GPL, a decision that he - despite some disagreements with the GPL and FSF-author [3]-founder Richard Stallman - still sees fit."Linux is obsolete"At that time, the Linux community met in the Minix newsgroup, but the computer science professor and creator Andrew Tanenbaum minix the discussions went in the growing Linux Minix forum on my nerves. Posting on his famous "LINUX is obsolete" in January 1992 an exchange of blows followed with Torvalds, and finally moved to the growing Linux community in its own newsgroup.1992 brought the X Window system, used until now the Linux kernel 0.95, the swap could now thanks to a virtual memory management data from RAM to disk, a graphical interface. Now, the kernel hackers went to the network stack. First SCSI and sound drivers, the Ext2 file system and the ELF format for binaries have been implemented, ported to the BSD print system, implemented at run-time loadable kernel modules and the / proc pseudo-filesystem. Linux has become increasingly usable; 1992 appeared with SLS and Yggdrasil, the first Linux distributions. Slackware and Debian, launched in the spring and summer of 1993 exist today.
 In March 1994, Linux seemed to 1.0 after a long series of 0.99.x versions and introduced a mode of development should be kept for ten years: Parallel to the careful development of a stable user kernel with a straight version number (1.0), new features in a development kernel ( 1.1) implements that starts with the user code base of the kernel and concludes in a new major version.The fact that Linux runs on almost everything these days, which may differ zeros and ones, on embedded devices from the router to the phone as well as on mainframe computers, has its roots in the Linux kernel 1.2. Brought in March 1995 that, besides many new drivers, and improvements in networking (IP forwarding, firewall, additional network protocols such as NFS) as the first major innovation in porting to other processor architectures: Alpha, MIPS and SPARC. Linux 1.2 laid the foundation for dozens of platforms on which the Linux kernel has now been ported.Thanks to the improved networking capabilities and applications such as Apache, Samba and Sendmail allmäglich created a market for Linux, the commercial Linux distributors like Caldera, Red Hat and Suse served. Caldera has now disappeared from the scene (more on that later), SuSE was bought in late 2003 by Novell and has since its acquisition by Attachmate in the last year independently, Red Hat is expected this year for the first time sales mark crack of a billion US-dollars.Tux the PenguinBut back to the Linux kernel. In June of 1996, Linux 2.0 Initial support for multi-processor systems - and designed by Larry Ewing's Tux as the mascot. Kernel.org launched in March 1997, to discuss today the home of the official kernel sources and the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), in which the kernel hackers. In September 1998, while working on Linux 2.1, there was a tangible crash among developers: Linus Torvalds came with the installation of the patches sent to him in the kernel sources are no longer, many programmers were frustrated with the development threatened a schism.However, the situation could be defused by veteran developers like Alan Cox and Ted Y. Ts'o as a "prefilter" Torvalds relieved from work to test every patch itself, an organization that has survived to this day. 2002, repeated "Linus does not scale" the story. This time they found a technical solution in the more powerful source control system, BitKeeper, which three years later that was written by Torvalds himself Git version control system replaced - even now a standard in the open source world.Linux 2.2 was released in January 1999. The kernel was now properly on SMP machines with up to four processors, brought a more efficient storage management, supported IPv6 and contained powerful firewall code - was the distance to the commercial Unix competitors shrink. Well as sound and video hardware was now much better supported.
2001 switched to Linux, Microsoft ads. In the two and a half years, which required the development of Linux 2.2, also had a lot done in userland: KDE and Gnome Linux graphical desktops, their abilities beyond the traditional X11 window manager bestowed went out. With StarOffice and Netscape Navigator 3 appeared the forerunner of OpenOffice and the Mozilla programs in Linux versions. Oracle and Informix databases in 1998 its ported to Linux. Managed the first Beowulf cluster of 68 Alpha-1998 machines are in the Top 500 list of fastest computers in the world - today Linux also runs on more than 80 percent of the supercomputers.In August 1998, Linus Torvalds was emblazoned on the cover sheet of the U.S. economy Forbes: Linux and open source had become competent. Hardware manufacturers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard announced on Linux servers. These developments have brought Microsoft to the plan: In the Halloween papers, the company continued with the new competition and apart their qualities and try to find a strategy in response to Linux, in April 1999, the infamous Mindcraft study the technical inferiority of Linux show. In 2001, Microsoft then tried in fundamental opposition: Linux is a cancer and destroy that open source intellectual property, said Redmond.
The big Linux hypeThe evil spells from Redmond could the PC Unix that his roots in the x86 architecture had long outgrown, though not aufhalten.IBM announced a major Linux initiative, and at CeBIT 1999 SAP granted the free operating system with a Linux version of its ERP suite, R / 3 to some extent the accolade. The Linux port to the IBM S/390 mainframes (zSeries today) in late 1999 once again demonstrated the tremendous flexibility of the free operating system - not a few analysts believe that Linux has saved IBM's mainframe. A year later appeared with the Suse Linux Enterprise Server, the first explicit distribution company - for IBM mainframes. The x86 version of SLES followed in 2001.
Peace, Love, and Linux: IBM 2001 Linux was spray-advertising on the streets. But at the other end of the scale hardware Linux gained popularity: In 1998 Compaq had introduced a handheld computer called Itsy, which ran on Linux - in a sense the forerunner of today's Android smartphones and tablets. In March 2000, founded the Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) with the goal of designing a specification for embedded Linux.Ever was the turn of the millennium, the time of the major Linux hype, Red Hat put 1999 down as the first Linux company a brilliant start of trading, the stock quadrupled their value on the first business had to (but later, after the bursting of the com bubble, tidy feathers. ) leave. The Linux Professional Institute LPI in 2000 published his first Linux distribution-independent exams. To prevent that Linux was repeated Unix history and splintered into numerous incompatible versions of Linux, the same year founded the Free Standards Group with the aim to create a Linux standard (by now the Free Standards Group - as well as the ELC - in the Linux Foundation risen). IBM announced in December 2000, it would invest one billion U.S. dollars in 2001 in Linux.With the Linux 2.4 kernel came before the beginning of 2001 already in the spheres of commercial Unix operating systems: more efficient SMP operation to eight processors, 64 GB of RAM on x86 processors, raw devices, a 64-bit file system. Firewire and USB support, ACPI and Plug & Play for the then current ISA cards made the new kernel for the desktop and notebook use attractive. Increasingly committed to hardware manufacturers like Intel and AMD in the Linux development: A good Linux support has been increasingly important in server Gerschäft. 2002 brought his first Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the market has.The thing with the Linux DesktopWith the increasing success of Linux began more and more companies and public administrations to consider the benefits of open source software. For example, in 2003 decided the German railways, Linux as strategic server platform - a decision that still applies today. In the same year the Munich City Council decided to convert 15 000 computers of the city administration on Linux desktops - in April this year was celebrated mountain festival: Half of the computers are switched to the Munich LiMux client. At the Foreign Ministry began in 2001 with the introduction of open-source software since 2005 have been converted to Linux desktops - but ultimately the project failed. The rolled out from 2003 Linux desktops in the Stuttgarter Versicherung Group, however, are still in use today.But despite some prominent examples: On a broad front could be the Linux desktop never prevail (for reasons known Chris racket, head of the operating system from AMD labs, in this article). That by 2006 or 2007 repeatedly proclaimed "Year of the Linux desktop", which should begin now did not take place. Not even the dedicated desktop distro Ubuntu change anything, as from 2004, while shaking up the world of Linux properly, but compared to Windows could not really score points. Success is Linux on the server - and on embedded devices. As Android, Google's smart phone and tablet system with Linux kernel, 2008 came on the market, Linux has long been in the machine control, established in Wi-Fi routers, DVD players and navigation devices.Basis for the futureIn December 2003, made the leap to Linux kernel version 2.6. Which brought not only the SELinux security enhancement, a new, accessible via sysfs device model and a suitable for modern high performance computer memory management, but also a fundamental revision of the kernel code, which eliminated many limitations, and provided a clearer structure. Of the cleanup code in the kernel developers are sustained today: Even completely new features such as virtualization and one runs in every way improved scaling, thanks to Linux on the most powerful supercomputers made to fit without major distortions.
The scope of the Linux kernel is growing continuously. With Linux 2.6 Torvalds changed the development model: There is no development kernel no longer exists, new features and improvements are being gradually into the current kernel updates, which appear regularly every two to three months. In place of version jumps, which often led to confusion in the changeover period, steady progress has come.2005 attracted Xen, the first virtualization solution for Linux, some stir in the Linux world, but it would take six years whipped up the Xen code was integrated into the kernel. In the meantime, found the alternative solution KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine), which includes the Linux kernel makes the hypervisor itself, so much appeal among the kernel developers that they are already in early 2007 moved into the kernel 2.6.20.The growing success of Linux in the server area gave the system a year-long free, almost seemingly endless story: The legal battle between SCO and the Linux world. The history of SCO is somewhat bizarre: The provider of a commercial version of Unix for x86 PCs, was acquired in 2000 by the Linux distributor Caldera - even before the turn of the millennium Linux had begun, the market share of expensive commercial Unixes to nibble, and SCO's Unix business were increasingly worse.SCO vs. LinuxThe combination of an established Unix vendors with well-developed distribution network and an experienced Linux distributor to offer all the conditions seemed to reopen the market for Linux in the enterprise. But Caldera became more and more into the background compared to competitors such as Red Hat, which have consistently favored Linux and Open Source. Two years after the takeover, in order named Caldera SCO Group, half a year later the company switched from Linux to suit business.In spring 2003, the SCO Group sued IBM for a billion dollars in damages. IBM has promoted Linux, and thereby not only stole intellectual property from SCO, but nursed the free operating system in the first place to a serious Unix competitors, the core points of the action. This was followed by threats, alleged evidence that delays in court through new applications and processes against Linux users and distributors Red Hat and Novell - the latter to the copyright to Unix, which take both Novell and SCO can claim and the basis all other actions brought by SCO. Last year, the court said to the Novell Unix copyright, and it seems that the long-bankrupt SCO Group is now at the end. But it's not the first time in its long history, that appearances are deceiving ...For Microsoft, the SCO's legal campaign against Linux proved through ball. First, as the arguments were supposedly easier administration and lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of Windows replaced the blanket defamation of Linux and open source as a devil. From 2004, Microsoft took advantage of the legal uncertainty that spread the SCO lawsuits, and put on the card "greater legal certainty." The suggestion that Linux violated Microsoft patents, brought so much uncertainty in the market that IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Sony and Red Hat, the Open Invention Network in 2005 to defend against patent attacks against Linux founded. Although no court has decided today to decide whether Linux violates Microsoft patents actually, today, for example, transfer provider of Android smartphones royalties to Redmond. But in the smartphone market is currently competes anyway more about patents, copyrights, as lawsuits and Wettberwerbsbschwerden about technology.
The 20th gabs a congratulatory video from Microsoft. 2006, Microsoft also accepted the importance of Linux in the IT market: a cooperation with Novell, the company even made it the Linux distributor that offers its customers the very successful Suse Linux Enterprise Server. Since 2009, Microsoft is one of the companies that develop the Linux kernel - and even congratulated recently with a video for the twentieth birthday.Since 2007, the Linux Foundation takes care created from the merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Groups to strengthen the position of Linux in the competition. The Foundation, whose members include virtually all businesses that have anything to do with Linux guards, the Linux Standard Base, paid developers like Linus Torvalds and central cares about protecting the trademark Linux. The Linux Foundation offers ultimately a neutral platform on which companies can work together to compete in the market - similar to how they do it in kernel development.The long road to World DominationA few weeks ago published the current 3.0 kernel is entirely in the Linux 2.6 with established tradition of steady progress: he differs from his predecessors - Linux 2.6.39 - not stronger than any two consecutive 2.6.x versions. Linux 3.0 is just another name for the upcoming kernel 2.6.40 actually. The biggest change in Linux 3.0 is the new, two-digit numbering scheme: In the Kernel version 3.0 will follow 3.1.And what about the World Domination, by Linus Torvalds, many years ago, spoke as a Linux hacker project was an exotic yet? Where the success of Torvalds probably most anticipated - on (desktop) PCs - Linux is still a niche solution. In the data center, it looks different: Here the free operating system is already equal footing with Windows and commercial Unix variants. The high-performance computing Linux clearly dominates, and the Internet - from eBay to Google about Facebook - and in the cloud does not pass the erstwhile PC Unix. With Android, Linux is in the buzzing phone and tablet business in good shape.Linux has the idea that all interested parties together in an open process to develop a software that made it popular - and proved that not even in such a huge project like the Linux kernel can only work, but offers real advantages. Has experienced the boom, the open-source software since the turn of the millennium is likely to be due to a significant part in the success of the free operating system.Thanks to its flexibility, Linux is able to adapt to new developments likely to change the IT world in the next few years. Or, as Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat CEO on the occasion expressed LinuxCon the twentieth anniversary: ​​"The performance [of Linux] lies in what people can do with it." In this sense: In the next twenty years.