By tradition, at the end of each year, the CRN editors name the 25 best “captains” of the US IT business. In 2004, this list included the most entrepreneurial channel leaders, executives from some of the leading vendor companies, as well as the idea generators and visionaries who help their companies grow rapidly and prosper even in difficult times. The first on this list was Linus Torvalds, through whose efforts the Linux project gained unprecedented power in 2004.
Linus Torvalds is neither the CEO nor the chairman of the board of the company. He does not have the status of a leader. It wasn't until 2003 that he first accepted a paid position in the Linux industry he created.
But, according to CRN, it is Torvalds, a 34-year-old programmer from Finland, creator of the Linux kernel, who deserves the title of the most influential leader of 2004. He earned this title through almost 15 years of dedicated work on his brainchild. Last year turned out to be a turning point for Linux and for the entire open source community. And Torvalds played an extremely important role in this.
The creation of the Linux 2.6 kernel took the OS to a new level, making it suitable for enterprise use, which forced Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and other OS vendors to radically rethink their sales models.
A lot has changed in Torvalds' life recently: he completed work on the Linux 2.6 kernel and received his first official status in the Linux developer community, becoming an employee of the Open Source Development Labs (open source software development laboratory, OSDL). This organization is vendor neutral and was initiated by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Computer Associates International, Intel and NEC.
Now Torvalds has a position and a business card confirming his official status. But all this did not affect his usual way of life. Torvalds's departure from microprocessor company Transmeta to work at OSDL allowed him to devote his time to developing the Linux kernel and to his family as he worked from home.
“My original plan was to take a year off from Transmeta at my own expense, so I could focus solely on working on version 2.6 and not have any other distractions,” Torvalds says. “The OSDL position has been a great way to maintain health insurance, earn a salary, and remain independent from providers.”
This event played an important role for the open source community. Linus' decision to gain official status at a difficult time for Linux developers - during a period of intense criticism of open source and constant scrutiny, the reason for which was the SCO Group's lawsuit against IBM - gave his followers confidence in the future. This once again proves Torvalds' enormous influence on the fate of Linux.
Last June, Linus, his wife Tove, and their three daughters (ages three, six and seven) left California and settled in a quiet suburb of Portland, Oregon. He lives in a new house, furnished quite simply, without frills, with elements of Danish Art Nouveau. Torvalds also does not attach much importance to clothing: he greeted the crowd of photographers who violated his privacy in frayed jeans. He seems amused by all the fuss around him.
Linus's home office has a separate entrance at the back of the house, there is a small kitchen and bookshelves that are not yet fully stocked. The office windows overlook the backyard, where Torvalds is building a toy house for his daughters. Further on there is a view of the forest. In this environment, which is not disturbed by any business problems or office routine, the sacred rite takes place - work on the Linux OS.
Usually Linus sits in front of the monitor and plays on the keyboard like a child - almost like in 1991, in Helsinki, when he was just conceiving the kernel of his OS. But today Torvalds conducts a worldwide orchestra of thousands of developers and piece by piece assembles a masterpiece that undermines the entire software establishment, hurts Sun, brings IBM to its senses and makes even Microsoft doubt its own immortality.
“Now, thanks to the efforts of Torvalds, Linux is the most successful open source project in the world. It challenges the norms of the software industry,” says the lead developer of another successful open source project.
“Linus exemplifies how to position himself as a formidable challenger to industry powerhouses by skillfully managing the developer community and devoting himself entirely to his craft. He showed the way to many professional open source developers. He's the one who got JBoss moving in this direction,” says Marc Fleury, CEO of JBoss, a J2EE application server developer.
Eric Raymond, author of a treatise on the open source movement, “The Cathedral & the Bazaar,” believes that Torvalds’ talent and organizational skills allowed the Linux OS, contrary to expert predictions, not only to survive, but also to flourish. “Linus has an amazing sense of purpose. He resisted the immoderate ambitions that ruined more than one project of this scale, says Raymond. - An even more important factor was the introduction of a decentralized code development model. It existed before Torvalds, but he managed to systematize it.”
For Torvalds, this work is simply a labor of love: having all the rights to dispose of the Linux trademark, he does not receive a penny from them. It's ironic for an industry that produces billionaires: having revolutionized the software business, one has absolutely no interest in the business.
"I don't think I could be the Bill Gates of this decade," Torvalds says. - To do this, you need to stand at the very origins of a new technical direction. OSes have not been something new for a long time. Perhaps even more important is to have a commercial streak. And is this what I have? Yes, I think about business least of all.”
For all his modesty, Torvalds did work that brought the ossified OS market back to life and forced society to think about the philosophical and social aspects of the question of how and for whom software products are created. Many representatives of the open source community believe that software is one of the blessings of civilization, like electricity, and therefore should not belong to a handful of capitalists, but to the entire society and be used for the benefit of society. There are also radicals who view the growing competition between Linux and proprietary operating systems as a struggle between good and evil, and Torvalds is considered the liberator of the world from slavery to Microsoft Windows.
However, Linus sees it completely differently. “I don’t have a philosophical view of open source at all. I'm more of a pragmatist in this regard. I truly believe that collaboration and open knowledge sharing results in higher quality development. But sometimes, even with this style of work, you have to resort to licensing, because there will always be people who can easily appropriate someone else’s work. The idea that knowledge can be shared openly may be called a “philosophy,” but such sharing actually exists, says Torvalds. - This is what distinguishes science from alchemy or witchcraft. I think those who don’t believe in this simply don’t want to take off their blinders.”
Linus's passion for coding makes him the number one open source developer.
“Linus is not only a brilliant programmer: he has good taste,” says Dirk Hondel, director of Linux OS and open source strategy at Intel, and one of the original developers of the Linux kernel almost from the very beginning of the project in 1991. “Torvalds finds simple and reasonable ways to solve problems, knows how to “sort out everything.” He makes complex things simple. In my opinion, this is the main difference between an excellent programmer and a simply good one.”
Andrew Morton, Torvalds' right-hand man and number two developer on the Linux project, is now also responsible for the OSDL work on the Linux kernel. He says that Torvalds "keeps the bar high," and this is also the key to the success of the entire project. “He managed to reach a state where everyone works without haste and under equal conditions. There is a self-organization of the entire community and a distribution of roles between its members... when no personal differences can seriously harm the entire project,” says Morton.
But this is by no means an easy task, says Alan Cox of Red Hat, one of the key Linux developers. “Linus has two strong character traits: he is honest and he does not insist on his point of view if it turns out to be wrong,” says Cox. -Torvalds is able to lead, he has excellent intuition when choosing technical solutions and a reasonable approach to working with people. It is known that managing programmers is like “herding a herd of cats.” But Linus copes with this very well, without infringing on anyone’s interests.”
Torvalds is calm and natural, he is practically not interested in industry-wide problems, but with all his flexibility, he always has his own point of view and is not afraid to express it out loud. He openly criticizes Microsoft Windows code, and calls SCO a weakening company that takes credit for other people's achievements.
Torvalds is proud of the Linux 2.6 kernel, which was completed in December 2003. This version is ready for enterprise use. In terms of performance, reliability and scalability, it is not inferior to commercial operating systems. It is suitable for working with corporate applications and for any tasks related to processing large volumes of data. Torvalds is proud of the formal search procedure he developed with Morton, which makes it easier to make updates and fixes to the OS kernel.
At the same time, Linus prefers to keep a safe distance from any commercial and legal issues, says Stuart Cohen, OSDL's chief executive officer. “He has absolutely no interest in being a general counsel or a VP of technology,” Cohen emphasizes. - Torvalds has enough to do already. We try not to overload him, giving him complete freedom - he is free to do what interests him.”
Torvalds doesn't like to be the center of attention, but does participate in industry events from time to time. Trying to be extremely precise in everything - both in creating the code and in defining his own role - Linus calls himself the chief technical lead, and not the chief architect, since he does not so much write himself as supervise the work of other developers. And he is always ready to pay tribute to programmers who played a significant role in the development of open source, including the authors of the C language and the Unix OS at Bell Labs - Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson.
Torvalds doesn't consider himself a hero, but according to his friends, he's far from the worst role model. Hondell recalls one time at the LinuxWorld Expo conference when Torvalds was preparing to give a speech, but suddenly disappeared just before going on stage. Panic and confusion set in, but Torvalds’ wife, who often travels with him with her daughters, intervened and calmed him down, saying that he ran to the car for diapers.
This is all very typical for Torvalds, Hondel says. Despite his worldwide fame, Linus is completely devoid of any sense of his own greatness and does not walk around surrounded by a retinue of assistants, like many celebrities. “Torvalds is a madman, worse than that, he is an outstanding madman. But fortunately, despite this, he is a completely normal person and a good friend,” says Hondell. “It’s enough to see him once with the children and you understand that he remains what he always was - just a good guy.”
The latest versions of Linux distributions are distinguished by a beautiful shell, an attractive desktop, and ease of setup and use. But some people can’t even imagine what Linux was like immediately after its appearance.
Do you know how much work and time developers spent to bring their distributions to what we have now? What thorns did the path to perfection go through? You probably don't know. So today I will tell you about it. The history of Linux began almost thirty years ago and has undergone a lot during all this time. Let's rewind time and see how this OS was born and how it evolved into the masterpiece that we see on our screens today.
Origins. 1991
Unix itself appeared back in 1969 by programmers Ritchie and Thompson. And then Unix-based systems came from people who were inspired by it. Among them are the famous MINIX and BSD, created back in the eighties.
But the history of the creation of Linux begins only 20 years later, in the early nineties. In 1991, then an ordinary student from Finland, Linus Torvalds, created the very core that later conquered the whole world. Why Linus even started working on this project is not known for certain. Most likely because he became disillusioned with MINIX and decided to make his own operating system.
Some say that Torvalds wrote the kernel to increase the functionality of the computer, and MINIX could not be improved.
The developer himself does not specify where Linux comes from, but that doesn’t matter anymore. He did what he did. At first it was just a terminal emulator on MINIX. August 25, 1991 Linus Torvalds provided the world with the first version of what we now call Linux.
Back then the new OS was called Freax. And it quickly spread across FTP all over the world, increasing the number of users every day. The first, or rather 0.01 version of Linux was far from the one you see in today's Ubuntu.
The rise of desktop operating systems. 91-94
In the first half of the nineties, such well-known distributions as Debian and Slackware began to appear. The world saw what it had previously seen only on Windows: Linux version 0.95 with support for graphical applications. At the same time, desktop OSes flourished.
Slackware was one of the first to receive the new Linux kernel. At that time, it also had a different name: Softlanding Linux System, abbreviated as SLS. It was created in 1992 and even then had graphics support and kernel version 0.99. However, SLS came out rather crude and problematic, and was soon changed to Slackware, the oldest distribution in the world.
Problems with the SLS interface prompted not only the creation of the above-mentioned distribution, but also another one. In 1993, our beloved Debian appeared, named by its creator, Ian Murdoch, after himself and his girlfriend Debi.
Following Slackware, Linux technical support began to appear. The most famous such company still exists and is called S.U.S.E.
The distribution, Red Hat, named after its creator's red hat, also appeared in the first half of the nineties.
On March 14, 1994, the world saw the same Linux 1.0.0, from which the history of the development of almost all Linux distributions began.
Release Desktop Environments. 95-99
The second half of the nineties became revolutionary for Linux. The most significant period in its development. It was from 1995 to 1999 that KDE and Gnome were released, as well as the most popular Linux distributions to this day.
The first distribution with a normal scripted installer was Jurix Linux. He was the first to use the ext2 file system.
In 1996, version 2.0 of the kernel was released, which secured the title of the best server OS in the world for this system. It supported the SMB protocol, different types of processors, PowerPC, and even NTFS mounting, albeit read-only.
One local legend says that while Linus Torvalds was at the Australia Zoo, he was bitten by a penguin. And after that, for some reason the developer began to like penguins for their carefreeness and stupidity. Torvalds named the penguin symbol of Linux Tux, from the first letter of his last name and the outer letters of the word UNIX.
Debian was not so popular at that time, because developers focused on the appearance and usability of distributions, leaving functionality a little behind. And it bore fruit. Projects based on Red Hat even began to appear on the covers of developer magazines.
Perhaps the release of KDE and Gnome was the most important release in the history of Linux. KDE was released in 1996. It was no longer just a set of programs, it was an entire desktop environment. This allowed users to have a choice between it and the then existing X11.
KDE 1.0 appeared only in 1998, and 2.0 only in 2000. It already included the KIO and KOffice libraries.
The new GTK+-based environment is called Gnome. The first project to use this environment was Red Hat. Ease of use and high speed made Gnome very popular in record time.
First Live-distributions 2000-2005.
The dawn of Linux's popularity. Many users began to switch to it from Windows. This is not surprising, the kernel was improved, more and more programs became available, and the first Live distribution was released.
The Knoppix distribution, which was created on the basis of the then almost forgotten Debian, was very popular at the beginning of the twenty-first century. And all because you could run it without even installing it, straight from the disk.
Today this is the norm, then it was nonsense. September 30, 2000 Anyone could run a full-fledged Linux distribution with all the necessary tools on absolutely any system. Knoppix became the starting point for the creation of Live distributions, which are still popular today.
At the same time, users could create their own Linux distribution from source thanks to the Linux From Scratch project.
Linux began to develop rapidly and in 2000 a Linux sponsorship was even created to help this development and protect its core values
At that time, version 2.4 of the kernel had already appeared with support for USB, Bluetooth and the ext3 file system. And this version was supported until 2011. Even then, 2.4 was completely different from 1.0, which appeared in the early nineties.
Red Hat then wanted to take a new commercial path of development, dividing its distribution into the commercial Red Hat Enterprice and the free Fedora.
2002 was coming to an end, and then CRUX appeared - the simplest possible distribution for developers. All developers were chasing the title of the best Linux distribution, but CRUX remained simple and unobtrusive. So he would have remained on the sidelines, if not for one thing. Years later, ArchLinux was made on its basis.
The Linux version was updated to 2.6, new 64-bit processors began to be supported, and Ext4 appeared.
The distributions were of very, very decent quality even then, but still lagged behind Windows. They were still mostly aimed at developers, forgetting about ordinary users. And then he appeared. The distribution that changed everything. A distribution aimed at the user, with the most simplified workspace possible - Ubuntu. The first Ubuntu “for the people” was released on October 20, 2004 in version 4.04.
The ups and downs of Ubuntu. 2006-2012
Linux is improving, distributions are stabilizing, and new and improved ones are appearing. In 2006, the almost legendary Mint was released, based on Ubuntu, aimed at beginners. Installing drivers and other components in it was as simple as possible at that time. The developers themselves tried to fill their distribution with useful software, listening to their users, which is how they earned their trust in the future.
KDE4 came out at the same time and immediately received a barrage of criticism for instability. Torvalds himself criticized this version of the environment, saying that it breaks everything and doesn’t do even half of what the previous one could. Only version 4.2, released only in 2009, corrected the situation.
At the same time, the world saw the birth of the world's most popular operating system, based on Linux. It remains so to this day, but most of its users have no idea what their Android is built on. Android 1.0 was released then for HTC phones and, in principle, did everything that today's Android does, only crookedly. Version 1.1 fixed everything, and 1.5 won the hearts of millions of users.
The Ubuntu distribution has been gaining strength all this time, winning primacy in all ratings, and winning the hearts of an increasing number of users. And everything would be fine if it weren’t for the release of the fateful Ubuntu 14.04. No matter how bad KDE4 and Gnome 3 were, everyone immediately forgot about them and attacked Unity - the new Ubuntu environment version 14.04. She was not only not loved, she was openly hated. However, the developers from Canonical did not give up so easily and soon made Unity livable, it’s a pity it’s too late.
The kernel reached version 3.0, immediately after 2.6, because the numbering became too long and had to be changed, and not because there were global changes to it.
Failures began to plague Linux everywhere, and KDE4 was not the only failure of the environment. Developers began to listen more to the opinions of the community, but the Gnome programming team still followed its own path of development. And in 2012 this resulted in Gnome 3, which became the most unsuccessful version of this environment. Subsequently, all the shortcomings were corrected, but what’s done is done, and the Gnome community somehow lost interest. Mint developers even released their own Cinnamon environment.
The emergence of games on Linux. 2012-2018
Now Linux has almost completely conquered all the servers in the world, but it has not forgotten about home PCs. And what kind of home computers can there be without games? February 2013, Valve ports Steam to Linux, causing a strong reaction from the community. After all, at that time, normal games were launched only through “windows” emulators, and those that were created specifically for Linux were simply not needed by anyone.
A couple of years later, Valve released their Linux distribution, calling it SteamOS. True, it was released only for special consoles from Valve themselves. By 2018, more than 3,000 Steam games could be played on Linux.
More and more new distributions began to appear. ArchLinux was gaining popularity faster and faster. Based on it, separate distributions began to be created, for example, Manjaro. Created in 2013, it is still among the leaders in popularity. Its main feature is the simplified installation of ArchLinux, preserving its flexibility and functionality. The similar Manjaro, equally simple and based on Arch, ElementaryOS is also very popular, especially among beginners.
By 2015, Linux was updated to version 4.0, and again without major changes. Just based on the results of voting in the community, the developers decided to change the version. Only UEFI support and some security and stability updates have been added.
Ubuntu also did not stand still. Its mobile version, Ubuntu Touch, was released, which was supposed to turn your smartphone into a full-fledged PC when you connect it to a monitor. Again the Unity shell, abandonment of X Window in favor of the new Mir, release of a couple of smartphones, and closure of the project in 2017 due to low popularity. Samsung's DEX also greatly influenced this decision.
But the most important event happened in Ubuntu 17.10, where Unity was removed and the Gnome environment was returned. It took developers quite a few years to understand this. They also decided to replace Mir with the new Wayland. Ubuntu has become what we see today.
But its story does not end there, like that of Linux in general. The kernel is developing, receiving new versions, new functionality, creating a new history for Linux. And we will closely monitor its development in order to refresh your knowledge in a few more years and supplement our article today.
Encyclopedic YouTube
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✪ How does Linux differ from Windows?
✪ 10 Interesting facts about Linux
✪ History of Linux development
✪ The Code (Linux). LINUX Code
✪ GNU/Linux, history of a free operating system
Subtitles
It is usually difficult to immediately explain how Linux differs from Windows. But such a question is asked casually and they expect that the answer will be given briefly, in two or three sentences, and so that it becomes immediately clear. But knowledgeable people start talking about the difference in architecture, about different distributions, about the principles of free software, and after a few seconds they simply stop listening to them, they wave their hand, they say, everything is clear. So, back to our question: “What is the difference between Linux and Windows?” Let's answer as in a philosophy exam: Linux is no different from Windows, but at the same time, Linux is different from Windows in everything. When I say that Linux is no different from Windows, I mean that both will allow you to perform the same tasks. If, for example, you need to watch a video, listen to music, read news on the Internet or edit a text file, then you will not even feel a significant difference. But when I say that Linux differs from Windows in everything, this already concerns very important, but less obvious things for the average user. The first thing I would like to focus on is the price of the issue. For example, Windows 10 Home version will cost $119.99 ($107 if a student or employee of an educational institution), and the Pro version will cost $199.99 ($179 for students and employees of educational institutions). Naturally, the figure decreases slightly if you buy a computer with the system already installed. The very fact that the product is paid slightly changes its perception. Perhaps this is not particularly felt among Russian-speaking users, because piracy is very common. And due to this, a common mistake is that many people compare Linux and Windows as two free operating systems. Well, on this basis, the head turns begin: “Oh no, this window here is not so beautiful, the melody is wrong, the font is wrong, I’ll stay on Windows.” Windows is a commercial product from start to finish. And he lives according to the laws of the market. As for Linux, it is a completely free product. Moreover, not only the Linux system itself, but also the programs that are developed for it. I can say with confidence that the same Linux Mint 18 will cope with all the tasks that Windows 10 Home does, but for free. The next important difference is system security. Any user knows that the first thing after installing the Windows operating system is to install a good antivirus. In the case of Linux, the level of security is much higher, and for daily use you do not even need an antivirus program. This also includes the fact that the pirated version of Windows itself is leaky and even less secure than the licensed version, which is already susceptible to infections. I will not dwell in detail on Linux security, but I will note that the very fact that the vast majority of servers around the world use one or another version of Linux already confirms the reliability of this system. Next, we should dwell on a feature of Windows that is popularly called “brakes”. Over time, a computer running Windows inevitably begins to slow down, various programs open more slowly each time, and periodically, even on powerful computers, working with files causes irritation. It seems like you paid a thousand bucks for a powerful computer, but you still sit and wait for this wheel to spin. With Linux you can forget about this problem. Differences in the file systems used, in the level of file fragmentation, and in general in the principles of organization of the system as a whole played a role here. The last difference I'll highlight today is freedom of choice and software availability. In my opinion, this is the most obvious difference for a beginner. And obviously for an avid Windows user it is initially from the negative side. Here is an example. For example, you wanted chocolate. And you decide to go to the store to buy it. But then you go up to the rack and see 20 different types of chocolates, which cost the same, and in principle do not differ in any significant way, and you have never tried any of them before. Here you stand and choose. And in another case, you are visiting, for example, your grandmother in the village, and you also suddenly want a chocolate bar. And you go to a village store, where the only choice is either chocolate or not chocolate. There are no options, and naturally you will buy the only one that will be available. This is approximately the same situation with the choice of Windows and Linux. Windows - it is also Windows in Africa. According to the Microsoft website, today there are about 400 million Windows 10 users in the world. And for all of them, the system will look approximately the same. From a sales point of view, this is a very smart move to limit the choice for users so that this choice is easier to make. In the situation with Linux, the user is often put off by the huge selection of different “types” of this system, so to speak. Studies begin about which version is better suited for certain tasks, many new unfamiliar terms appear, and a person can simply get confused. The Windows operating system is inextricably linked with its graphical shell and forms one whole with it, while the Linux operating system can easily do without a graphical shell at all and still perform a huge range of tasks. In the case of Linux, the choice of the graphical shell, or as it is also called, the desktop environment, is made by the user independently, while for Windows users this choice has already been made without their participation. As for the availability of programs: many people are afraid that the applications they use will not run on Linux, but this is only partly true. Firstly, there are many analogues that will do the job perfectly, and at the same time will also be completely free. As a last resort, it is possible to run Windows applications on Linux, or use two systems on one computer, or, finally, install Windows on a virtual machine and run it inside Linux. There are many other fundamental differences between these two operating systems, but I’ll finish for today. In conclusion, I would also like to say this. Any operating system, be it Windows or Linux, or Android, or MacOS, is in any case only a tool, a means to perform one or another task. For example, if you are faced with the task of getting to work every day, then you can do this in different ways - call a taxi, go by personal car, use the metro, bus, ride a bicycle or walk - regardless of the means of transportation, the main thing is to get to work. And depending on the circumstances or characteristics, you will choose the best remedy for you. Probably, if your place of work is only a 5-minute walk, then it would be irrational to buy an expensive car for these purposes. Or if the roads are covered with snow, it would be better to use the subway than to risk getting stuck in a traffic jam. Imagine if you were to limit yourself to just one means of transportation forever. My car broke down, that’s it, I don’t know how to get to work any other way. The example is funny, but this is exactly how Windows users often behave. Most people need a computer to watch videos, chat on the Internet and look at photos, and all this can be done for free and without problems using Linux, but they will still pay for Windows, or install a pirated version, because they know how and are used to doing everything that way . I’ll finish here for today and make a small announcement: in the next video I’ll talk in more detail about the Linux operating system and list its most common “types”, and then, over the next 3 - 4 weeks, I will analyze in more detail some types of the operating system Linux to help you make your choice.
GNU without Linux
UNIX compatibility at this point meant that the operating system had to support the POSIX standard. POSIX is a functional model of a UNIX-compatible operating system that describes how the system should behave in a given situation, but does not provide any guidance on how it should be implemented in software. POSIX described those features of UNIX-compatible systems that were common to different implementations of UNIX at the time the standard was created. In particular, POSIX describes the system calls that must be processed by an operating system that is compliant with this standard.
The global computer networks Usenet and Internet played a critical role in the development of Linux. In the very early stages, Linus Torvalds discussed his work and difficulties with other developers in a newsgroup. comp.os.minix on the Usenet network dedicated to the MINIX operating system. Linus's key decision was to publish the source code of the still ineffective first version of the kernel under the free GNU GPL license. Thanks to this and the increasingly widespread Internet, many people were able to independently compile and test this kernel, participate in the discussion and correction of errors, and also send corrections and additions to the source code of Linus. Now more than one person was working on the kernel, development went faster and more efficiently.
In 1992, the Linux kernel reached version 0.95, and in 1994 version 1.0 was released, indicating that the developers finally felt that the kernel as a whole was complete and all the bugs had (theoretically) been fixed. Nowadays, Linux kernel development is a much larger community effort than in the pre-1.0 days. The role of Linus Torvalds himself has also changed: now he is not the main developer, but the most authoritative member of the community, traditionally assessing the quality of the source codes that should be included in the kernel and giving his approval for their inclusion. However, the general model of free development by the community remains.
GNU and Linux
However, just as you cannot make an operating system without a kernel, the kernel will be useless without utilities that use its capabilities. Thanks to the GNU project, Linus Torvalds immediately had the opportunity to use free utilities with Linux: bash, the gcc compiler, tar, gzip and many other already known and widely used applications that could work with his UNIX-compatible kernel. So Linux immediately found itself in a good environment and, in combination with GNU utilities, represented a very interesting environment for software developers even at a very early stage of its development.
The fundamental step forward was precisely that from the Linux kernel and GNU utilities and applications it became possible for the first time to make a completely free operating system, that is, to work with a computer and, moreover, to develop new software using only free software. Stallman's ideal of completely non-commercial development could now be realized.
Soon theoretical possibilities for realizing the ideal appeared, but this did not mean its immediate practical implementation. The compatibility of Linux and GNU utilities was due to the fact that both were written with a focus on the same standards and practices. However, this practice (that is, having many different UNIX systems) left a lot of room for incompatibility and different solutions. Therefore, at the initial stage of kernel development, every GNU application that ran on Linux was another achievement for Linus. Bash and gcc were the first. Thus, the combination of GNU and Linux made it possible to create a free operating system, but did not itself constitute such a system, because Linux and the various GNU utilities remained disparate software products written by different people who did not always take into account what others were doing . The main property of any system is the consistency of its components.
The emergence of distributions
After a certain period of development, a number of the most important GNU utilities were already working stably on Linux. The compiled Linux kernel with a small set of GNU utilities already compiled on Linux constituted a set of tools for a software developer who wanted to use a free operating system on his personal computer. In this form, Linux was no longer only suitable for Linux development, but was also an operating system in which it was already possible to perform some application tasks. Of course, the first thing you could do on Linux was write programs in C.
When the task of getting a computer with a Linux system constantly running on it became popular and quite common, developers at the universities of Helsinki and the University of Texas created their own sets of floppy disks, from which the compiled kernel and basic utilities could be written to a hard drive, and then the operating system could be loaded directly from it. These sets of floppy disks became the first prototypes of modern Linux distributions - software packages on the basis of which you can get a working operating system on your computer. It should be noted that the Linux distribution included GNU software from the very beginning. In fact, whenever it says “Linux operating system,” it means “Linux kernel and GNU utilities.” The Free Software Foundation recommends calling it the Linux operating system.
However, copying all the necessary programs to the hard drive is not enough to get an operating environment suitable for the needs of the user (even if he is a very professional user). Therefore, the first sets of floppy disks can only be conditionally called distributions. To get a working operating system, some special software installation and configuration tools are required. It is the presence of such tools that distinguishes modern Linux distributions. Another important task of the distribution is regular updates. Software, especially free software, is one of the fastest growing areas, so installing Linux once is not enough, you also need to update it regularly. The first distribution in the modern sense to become widespread was Slackware, created by Patrick Volkerding. It was widely known among Linux users by 1994.
Despite the fact that with the advent of the first distribution kits, installing Linux no longer requires independent compilation of all programs from source texts, the use of Linux remained the destiny of developers: a user of an operating system with it at that period of its development could engage almost exclusively in programming. At the very least, in order to solve other everyday application tasks in it (for example, reading e-mail, writing articles, etc.), he had to first spend some time programming and even developing the Linux system itself in order to create the appropriate application programs for himself or make them work on Linux.
All Linux software was open source, so soon more and more Linux applications began to appear, which were used by a larger community, making them more reliable and gaining new functionality. Ultimately, the idea arises that Linux and GNU applications for Linux, through the focused efforts of a small group of developers, can be made into complete operating systems suitable for a very wide range of users and sell these systems to users for money as an analogue and alternative to existing proprietary operating systems.
The benefit of an operating system consisting entirely of free software is obvious - those who assemble this system do not have to pay anyone for the programs included in it. Moreover, further development and updating of existing programs is also carried out by the developer community completely free of charge; there is no need to pay employees to do this. As a result, the costs of a company assembling a Linux distribution for a user are limited to paying programmers who integrate disparate applications into the system and writing programs to standardize installation procedures and system configuration to make these tasks easier for an untrained user, as well as the costs of self-publishing the resulting distribution. For the end buyer, this means a fundamental reduction in the price of the operating system.
The first successful company working according to this scheme was Red Hat, which appeared in 1995. Red Hat addressed its developments not only to professional programmers, but also to ordinary users and system administrators, for whom a computer is primarily an office workstation or a work server. Focusing on the existing offerings on the market for this class of users, Red Hat has always placed great emphasis on developing GUI applications to perform typical system configuration and administration tasks. Red Hat's business developed quite successfully; in 1999, the company went public - immediately after the issue, the shares grew in price very vigorously, but then the excitement died down. Currently, Red Hat's share of the Linux servers and workstations market is very large. Thanks to Red Hat, the RPM package format has become very widespread in the Linux user community.
Almost simultaneously with Red Hat, the Debian project appeared. Its goal was roughly the same - to make a coherent distribution of Linux and GNU free software, but this project was conceived as a fundamentally non-commercial one, carried out by a community of developers, the norms of interaction in which would be fully consistent with the ideals of free software. The Debian developer community is international, whose members interact via the Internet, and the rules of interaction between them are determined by special documents - policies.
The developer community does not make any profit from the sale of Debian, its versions are freely distributed, available on the Internet, and can also be distributed on hard media (, DVD), but even in this case their price rarely greatly exceeds the cost of the media and the markup that recoups the cost of publication. Debian's development was initially sponsored by the Free Software Foundation. The target audience for Debian distributions has always been primarily professional users, one way or another connected with academic software development, who are ready to read the documentation and organize with their own hands the necessary system profile that corresponds specifically to their tasks. Orientation towards such an audience predetermined some trends in the development of Debian: it never had an abundance of “simple” graphical tools for setting up the environment, all kinds of “wizards”, but a lot of attention was always paid to the means of consistent and uniform integration of software into a single system. It was Debian that introduced the package manager (APT). Currently, Debian is the most popular Linux distribution among users who are professionals in the field of information technology security, as it has the fastest response time to detected threats.
Whenever free software is in demand, many alternative solutions immediately arise - this is what happened with Linux distributions. Since 1995, a huge number of commercial companies and free communities have emerged (and continue to emerge) with the goal of preparing and releasing Linux distributions. Each of them has its own characteristics, its own target audience, and its own priorities. By now, there are several leaders on the distribution market that offer more or less universal solutions and are the most widely known and used. In addition to the already mentioned Red Hat and Debian, among the distribution kits aimed at the average user, the German SuSE and the French Mandriva (until 2005 - Mandrake) should be mentioned, among those addressed to specialists - Gentoo. But in addition to the “big” players in the distribution market, there are a much larger number of less common distributions. Now a user who wants to install Linux is faced with the question of choosing a distribution. The selection criteria include the tasks that are supposed to be solved using Linux, the user's level of training, technology, and upcoming contacts with the community that is developing the distribution.
History of Linux in Russia
It turned out that in the international community of developers who started and continued to develop Linux, everyone, to one degree or another, could speak English. This is not surprising, since historically English turned out to be the language of computer science and the UNIX operating system, the global Internet, and programming. In the international software development community, English has played and continues to play a role comparable to the role of Latin in the scientific community of medieval Europe. But if Linux is supposed to be used not only for programming and communicating with programmers, but also for solving everyday problems, then localization is necessary, that is, the ability to communicate with a computer and using a computer in languages other than English.
ASPLinux's goal was to release Red Hat with modifications to support the Russian language. Their product name is the same as the company name.
All of the listed Russian manufacturers of Linux distributions exist to this day, continuing to more or less actively produce distributions. However, they are losing popularity, since now popular worldwide distributions, such as Ubuntu or Fedora, are quite well translated into most languages of the world.
Linus Benedict Torvalds- a world-famous Finnish programmer, a legend in the computer world, especially among programmers. He became famous for creating an operating system that revolutionized the computer industry and gave birth to a computer “religion.”
Torvalds' childhood
The famous programmer was born in the capital of Finland, Helsinki, on December 28, 1969, into a family of journalists. It was named after the famous chemist Linus Pauling, who was once awarded the Nobel Prize. Linus's mother worked as a translator at a Finnish newspaper publishing house. His father was a communist, but after the mid-70s, his interests changed and he became a radio journalist. Torvalds' uncle worked in television, and his grandfather served as a newspaper editor-in-chief. His family was one of the small number of Finnish residents who spoke Swedish, and there were about 300 thousand of them out of 5 million who inhabited Finland.
Linus's father left him with his mother when he was still young, so the boy was raised by his mother and grandparents. Despite this, he had a happy childhood. Since the family mainly consisted of journalists, from childhood Torvalds was instilled with a passion for reading. However, he was less interested in journalism than in the computer that Leo Toernguys (Torvalds’s grandfather on his mother’s side) bought himself in the mid-70s. It was one of the first computers at that time. It was called the Commodore Vic 20.
However, Linus soon became bored with standard computer programs and wanted to write something of his own. At first he decided to master BASIC, but soon the capabilities of this programming language were not enough for him and he decided to learn another, more complex language, but at the same time with greater capabilities - Assembler. Linus learned quickly and was not distracted by anything. His father tried to instill in him an interest in girls, sports and many other things that Linus' peers were interested in. But all attempts were in vain. A few years later, Torvalds admitted in his book that, apart from mathematics and programming, he was not interested in anything else at that time, and besides, he simply did not want to understand other areas.
How Linux came to be
Linus saved money and dreamed of getting his own computer. In 1987, his dream came true and he purchased a Sinclair Ql - a 32-bit personal computer, with a Motorola 68008 processor, 7.5 MHz clock speed and 128 KB of RAM.
However, Linus was not happy with his purchase for long. Disappointment befell him as soon as he learned that it was impossible to reprogram the installed operating system. This required special equipment, which he did not have. At the age of 19, he began studying at the University of Helsinki, where his parents had previously studied. At the time of enrollment, his knowledge of programming was quite extensive, so he entered the computer science department. Linus began studying the C programming language in 1990 in classes at the university. This is the same language that he used to write the kernel of the Linux operating system.
In 1991, he replaced his old computer and bought a new one, more powerful for those times: an Intel 386 processor with a clock frequency of 33 MHz and 4 MB of RAM.
But this computer also disappointed him, or rather its operating system - MS-DOS, which was supplied in the kit and used only half of the processor's capabilities. Therefore, Torvalds decides to replace the standard operating system with the one that is on the computers at the university - the UNIX operating system. And then he faces another problem: the cheapest UNIX with basic capabilities costs about five thousand dollars. He doesn't have that kind of money, so he decides to get a clone of UNIX, a small operating system called MINIX. The system was written for students studying UNIX. Its author was Andrew Tanenbaum, a specialist in the field of operating systems.
Even though MINIX was designed for Intel x86-based processors and was much more powerful than MS-DOS, it had many disadvantages. The system was paid (but not very expensive), the functionality was poor and, on top of everything else, half of the code was closed. Linus Torvalds could not come to terms with this and therefore decided to write his own operating system, something between UNIX and MINIX. It is unlikely that he then thought about how much time it would take him and certainly did not expect that his system would not only change his future life, but also the entire computer industry.
He decided to announce his intention at the MINIX conference. It was August 25, 1991. Here is his original message:
Original letter
Subject: What would you like to see in Minix?
(Small survey for my new operating system)
Hello to all Minix users -
I'm developing an operating system (free, just a hobby - not that big and
professional like GNU) for 386 (486) processors. I started back in April and now I already have
first results. I would like to get your opinion on what you like/dislike about Minix, since mine
the operating system is based on it in some ways (the same file system structure - but this is purely
practical reasons).
I have already ported bash (1.08), gcc (1.40) and everything seems to work fine. It follows that in
Over the next few months I will receive the first working version and therefore would like
know what people need most.
Any suggestions are welcome, but I can’t promise that I will implement them :)
Linus Torvalds [email protected]
Linus Quotes
Below is a list of the most famous Linus Torvalds quotes:
“Here I want to talk about my golden rules. First: Treat others the way you want them to treat you. By following this rule, you will know what to do in any situation. Second: be proud of what you do. Third: do everything with pleasure.”
“Anyone who reads this column will think that the increasing rigors of my role as chief hacker have turned me into a bastard. But this is not true. I've always been a bastard."
“I brought the girls home only when they wanted to work out. This didn’t happen very often, and I was never the initiator, but my father has illusions that they wanted to do more than just mathematics. (In his opinion, they bought into the same formula: significant nose = significant man).”
“Programs are like sex: it’s better when it’s free.”
"Microsoft isn't evil, they just have really lousy operating systems."
"My name is Linus and I am your God."
“You see, not only do you have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you also have to be a smart-ass son of a bitch.”
Linux philosophy: “Laugh in the face of danger.” Oh. Not that. "Do it yourself." Yes, that's right.
“Some people have told me that they don't think the fat penguin fully represents the elegance of Linux. But in my opinion, an angry penguin has simply never rushed towards them at a speed of 200 km/h.”
“Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, but still get it done.”
When you say, “I wrote a program that crashes Windows,” people just look at you blankly and answer: “Yes, I got such programs along with the system, for free.”
“I have no doubt at all that virtualization is useful in some areas. What I seriously doubt is that it will ever have the impact that those involved in virtualization want.”
“So, most of you are likely to be incredibly bored this Christmas, and here's the perfect entertainment for you. Test 2.6.15-rc7. All the shops will be closed and there won't really be anything better to do in between eating."
