Summary
LINUX is a free UNIX-like operating system that runs on
Intel/Cyrix/AMD Pentium, Intel 80x86, Motorola/IBM PowerPC, Motorola 680x0, Sun
SPARC, SGI MIPS, DEC Alpha, HP PA-RISC, DEC VAX, ARM, API 1000+, and CL-PS7110.
Linux is named for Linus Torvalds, a Finnish engineering
student who created the original kernel. Linus didn’t want to use Windows and
searched for an inexpensive alternative that would run on low cost IBM PC
clones. The GNU open source project was progressing very slowly because of
political infighting and an attempt to make the same operating system run the
same on numerous processors. Linus received permission to use MINIX as the
foundation for his own efforts. MINIX was a small version of UNIX created by
Andrew S. Tanenbaum to provide college students with a working version of UNIX
with no AT&T owned source code. Linus opened a web site on his university
student account and started posting free copies of his source code. During the
early days of the project, Linus was posting updated versions several times a day,
which directly contradicted the commercial approach of only releasing new
versions on an infrequent basis after extensive testing. With the help of a
growing number of volunteers (literally tens of thousands), Linus quickly
replaced all of MINIX with new all new source code. As Linux caught on in
popularity (because it allowed college students and hobbyists to experiment
with very cheap Intel hardware), other groups of volunteers ported Linux to a
wide variety of additional processors. The success of Linux proved the
viability of open source software projects and Linus’s approach of rapid and
continual incremental updates proved to be an effective method for harnessing
volunteer effort and an excellent method for widespread testing on a wide
variety of hardware.
“Linux has achieved a measure of success. In
only a few years, the program has evolved from a hacker’s toy into software
that is, at least in part, technically superior to Windows NT.” —Stephen
Morley, “Revenge of the hackers”, The Economist, July 11th - 17th, 1998 [NOTE:
Linux has advanced substantially since this article was published, now
surpassing Windows 2000 in every way except user interface and installation,
both of which are being addressed by the KDE and Gnome projects.]