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History of the World — Er, Linux — Part II
In the beginning of computerdom (said in a booming, thunderous voice), the world was filled with hulking mainframes. These slothful beasts lumbered through large corporations; required a special species of ultranerds to keep them happy; and ate up huge chunks of space, power, and money. Then came the IBM PC and Microsoft, and the world changed. Power to the people — sort of.In 1991, a student at the University of Helsinki named Linus Torvalds became dissatisfied with the standard PC operating system. Torvalds thought that the Unix operating system might be better suited than MS-DOS or Windows to help him accomplish his work. Unix was invented in the 1970s and, although powerful, was expensive, so he began writing his own version of Unix. Now, writing your own operating system is a simple task — not! After formulating the basic parts, Torvalds recruited a team of talented programmers through the Internet, and together they created a new operating system, or kernel, now named Linux.One of the most important decisions Torvalds made in the early days of Linux was to freely distribute the Linux kernel code for anyone to do with as they wanted. These free Linux distributions were and still are available in several forms, mainly online.The only restriction Linus imposed on the free distribution of his creation was that no version of the software can be made proprietary. (Proprietary software is owned and developed by private companies in places that often rival Area 51 in security. Open source code is for “the people” — anyone can use and develop it without fear of violating copyrights.) You can modify the heck out of it and also distribute it for fun or profit. What you can’t do is stop anyone else from using, modifying, and distributing the software you have modified.Think of open source software as a chain. You can use the existing chain and add another link to the chain. However, you can’t stop anyone from using the chain or adding to it.The lack of proprietary restrictions on Linux has led to drastic improvements in its technology. Open source software, and Linux in particular, is transparent to all users and developers. That transparency allows people throughout the world to rapidly improve Linux and its associated subsystems. In contrast, proprietary operating systems are like a black box where no one except a small group of insiders knows what goes on inside. Only that select group can make modifications, and that limits innovation and improvements.Go back to our history lesson. In early spring 1994, the first real version of Linux (Version 1.0) was made available for public use. Even then it was an impressive operating system that ran smartly on computers with less than 2MB of RAM and a simple 386 microprocessor. Linux 1.0 also included free features for which other operating systems charged hundreds of dollars. Nowadays, tens of millions of users enjoy Linux at home and work.
Technical StuffBy the way, if you’re wondering about the whole penguin thing, the answer is disappointingly simple. Linus loves penguins. The Linux world naturally started using it as its symbol. The friendly and familiar penguin — whose name is Tux, by the way — now symbolizes All Things Linux.
