History of GNU/Linux
From RHLUG
Contents |
[edit] On the Beginning of a Revolution…
[edit] Josh Cartwright
Presented to RHLUG September 13, 2007
[edit] Every Story Needs a Hero… introducing RMS
[edit] Richard Matthew Stallman
- Joined MIT AI Laboratories (1971)
- Learned 'old-school' collaborative development style
- Concerned with growing business trends toward proprietary software
- Quit MIT (1984) after announcing the GNU Project
- Founded Free Software Foundation (1985)
- ...has an awesome beard
[edit] The Beast: GNU Project
[edit] Announced in 1983 (GNU's Not Unix)
- Completely FREE Operating System
- Included every necessary item
- Compiler / Debugger / Development Tools
- Kernel
- Userspace tools (editors, etc. )
- See GNU Manifesto
- “the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity” —RMS
- GNU General Public License (GPL)
- Widely used license (look it up)
[edit] Kernel: The Missing Link
[edit] By the 1990's one thing missing: A suitable Kernel
- GNU's Answer: GNU Hurd (1990)
- Written by GNU developers
- Completely free (under GPL)
- Development very slow..
- Still not stable (17 years later)
[edit] Along comes some Finnish Guy
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 :-(.
[edit] Linus Torvalds: The Guy With The Answer
- Released Linux v0.01 in 1991
- Quickly picked up by hobbyists
- Rapidly developed
- Re-licensed under GPL
- Linux was missing piece to an entire GNU system
- Ported to many different hardware platforms
[edit] From Then To Now
- Current Linux Kernel Version:
- 2.6.23-rc6
- Interesting Stats (kinda outdated, but oh well – 2001)
- It would cost over $1 billion (a Gigabuck) to develop this Linux distribution by conventional proprietary means in the U.S. (in year 2000 U.S. Dollars).
- It includes over 30 million physical source lines of code (SLOC).
- It would have required about 8,000 person-years of development time, as determined using the widely-used basic COCOMO model
