Celebrating the 28th Anniversary of the Linux Kernel

Exactly 28 years ago today, a 21-year-old student named Linus Torvalds made a fateful announcement on the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix.

i-Programmer commemorates today's anniversary with some interesting trivia: Back in 1991 the fledgling operating system didn't have a name, according to Joey Sneddon's 27 Interesting Facts about Linux:

Linux very nearly wasn't called Linux! Linus wanted to call his "hobby" project "FreaX" (a combination of "free", "freak" and "Unix"). Thankfully, he was persuaded otherwise by the owner of the server hosting his early code, who happened to prefer the name "Linux" (a combination of "Linus" and "Unix").

One fact I had been unaware of is that the original version of Linux wasn't open source software. It was free but was distributed with a license forbidding commercial use or redistribution. However, for version 0.12, released in 1992, the GPL was adopted making the code freely available.
Android Authority describes the rest of the revolution: Torvalds announced to the internet that he was working on a project he said was "just a hobby, won't be big and professional." Less than one month later, Torvalds released the Linux kernel to the public. The world hasn't been the same since...

To commemorate the nearly 30 years that Linux has been available, we compiled a shortlist of ways Linux has fundamentally changed our lives.

- Linux-based operating systems are the number-one choice for servers around the world... As of 2015, web analytics and market share company W3Cook estimated that as many as 96.4% of all servers ran Linux or one of its derivatives. No matter the exact number, it's safe to say that the kernel nearly powers the entire web...

- In Oct. 2003, a team of developers forked Android from Linux to run on digital cameras. Nearly 16 years later, it's the single most popular operating system in the world, running on more than 2 billion devices. Even Chrome OS, Android TV, and Wear OS are all forked from Linux. Google isn't the only one to do this either. Samsung's own in-house operating system, Tizen, is forked from Linux as well, and it's is even backed by The Linux Foundation.

- Linux has even changed how we study the universe at large. For similar reasons cars and supercomputers use Linux, NASA uses it for most of the computers aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts use these computers to carry out research and perform tasks related to their assignments. But NASA isn't the only galaxy studying organization using Linux. The privately-owned SpaceX also uses Linux for many of its projects. In 2017, SpaceX sent a Linux-powered supercomputer developed by HP to space and, according to an AMA on Reddit, even the Dragon and Falcon 9 run Linux.
"Without it," the article concludes, "there would be no science or social human development, and we would all still be cave-people."

Twenty-eight years...

[Dutch Gun]

Twenty-eight years and Linux is only up to version 5? That's pathetic. Linus needs to adopt Google versioning. Then they'd be up to, like, version 150 or so. Think how much more advanced that would be!

Re:

[swillden]

Linus needs to adopt Google versioning.

Not that it matters, but I'm curious what Google product you're thinking of that churns rapidly through version numbers. Android does one per year. None of the web properties even have public version numbers.

Re:

[swillden]

Linus needs to adopt Google versioning.

Not that it matters, but I'm curious what Google product you're thinking of that churns rapidly through version numbers. Android does one per year. None of the web properties even have public version numbers.

Chrome, I guess, which has a major release every six weeks. Linux would be up to version 240 or so.

28 years, and still can't run office

[Dallas May]

Well, it can't run MS Office. Windows had been running MS Office for decades. Obviously Linux is inferior to Windows.

I accept no other alternative explanation.

Re:

[iggymanz]

HA, Sure it can, I have to use office for work and so my Linux Mint box runs MS-Office, in a Windows 7 virtual machine. Some people make it run under Wine in Linux too but that sounds like work

Re:

[Lonewolf666]

Well, for personal use I dumped MS Office a few years ago for Libre Office. It might not have the same level of integration, if you count MS Outlook, but them again I'm not running an enterprise network at home.

So I don't count "can run MS Office" as a must-have, even if one disregards running Office under WINE as option.

Re:

[hadrianb]

Actually you happen to be wrong.

Already around 2003 - 2005 I was running MS Office 2003 Professional in Linux and it ran much better than in Windows XP on the same computer on which I was dual-booting Linux with Windows.

I was quite surprised by the better performance under Linux, but I suppose that the Linux file system was faster than the NTFS of Windows XP.

To install MS Office 2003 I had used Crossover, a Wine derivative. I had to pay a small fee for it, but it was worthwhile because previously I had to r

Re:

[Daniel Tiziani]

Word stopped having a nice UI after Word 6. Ribbons are *SHIT*

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They waste way too much space. A menu should be a single row of text and expand when you click to reveal everything in a compact area. I'm trying to get work done as a professional and expert. Ribbons are for amateurs and clueless people.

Re: 28 years, and still can't run office

[Gary Salter]

Thereâ(TM)s always the open source Reactos operating system which is creating an open source version of Windows (nt).

Before Linux, Linus did MINIX patches!

[BobC]

I owned an early 386DX PC, and I clearly remember Linus sharing MINIX patches to enable 32-bit mode on the 80386. I tried the patches, and they worked, but they didn't really do very much, other than show how truly limited MINIX was. That, combined with MINIX licensing, is what I believed encouraged Linus to use that patching experience as encouragement to do a kernel.

As a UCSD alumnus I had early access to the full 386 port of BSD, so I switched to that instead, well before Linux had its name.

Re: Before Linux, Linus did MINIX patches!

[0xdeaddead]

The Linus patches for 386 Minix are different from the Bruce ones?

I just rember Bruce for some reason to patch Minix into something that could run GCC.

The silly part is that I did later port the build tool chain to Win32, and can compile on NT like it should have been lol

Re:

[jwhyche]

I almost went down that BSD path. I installed BSD on my Amiga 3000 hardware. Found a memory bug, I reported it, and got a smart ass answer from the developer. Said "fuck this", I actually said that out loud. Down loaded two fat ass, for the time, tarballs, installed Linux, and never looked back.

Indeed influential.

[Camembert]

My first contact was with an early Slackware distribution, some 25 years ago on a 486. FVWM window manager. Low level adjustment of X Windows to my screen. Back then it was fun and after a few months erased it because I wanted to use more user friendly software in my free time.
Now it is of course behind the scene powering many devices, and importantly it made the idea of open source software palatable for big business as well.
Alternatively, the apple ecosystem uses a different kernel but I think it also benefited indirectly from Linux - for example the Safari browser core engine was originally mainly used in the Linux ecosystem.

Re:

[nyet]

My first contact was void *p=malloc(1024*1024) which you couldn't dream of doing on MSDOS lol.

What a laughable joke.

Not to mention what happens when you *((void *)0)=0 on that toy OS.

Re: Indeed influential.

[0xdeaddead]

Some of us had the $99 version of Watcom with doa4gw. The luckier ones used DJGPP!

Re:

[StormReaver]

...the Safari browser core engine was originally mainly used in the Linux ecosystem.

The Safari renderer started as KHTML (the renderer that originated in KDE's Konqueror), then later became WebKit after Apple forked it from KDE, then later became Blink after Google forked WebKit. So the world's dominant renderer is a descendant of KHTML, which was created for a desktop predominantly focused on Linux.

Cave people

[fustakrakich]

Yeah but on the moon at least...

Found it in '94

[Snotnose]

In the 90s I was a consultant. Took a project in 94, company was using PCs and MPEG2 to replace VCRs at cable company head ends. Back then there were 3-4 VCRs per channel, and while shows were playing they had a dude running around putting tapes into VCRs, the tapes had the commercials. Our idea was a single PC per channel, with MPEG2 commercials. We kept track of who needed to play which commercial at the next commercial break, and used the network to copy spots to the appropriate PC (didn't want to pull an MPEG2 file across the network while the commercial was airing).

We ran Linux. I'd never heard of it before (they also introduced me to the WWW, which is where the Linux docs were).

Naturally we had issues. All commercials tend to run at the same time, which made a network bottleneck. We tried going from a 486 to a Pentium, no joy. Then in 95 or 96 I went to a CES show and saw a network switch. Dividing our network into 3-4 segments solved all our problems.

Alas, the company was too small to take advantage of it's tech and got sold to someone bigger, who really fucked it up and went toes up.

Re:

[Snotnose]

Yeah, I meant MPEG. MPEG2 was a huge step up in quality.

I assume the VCRs were Beta, not sure though. They most definitely weren't what I had at home.

Re:

[LaminatorX]

You'd be amazed how much of the ad insertion infrastructure still follows the model you helped develop. Once the inserters became able to send back verification data as to whether spots ran successfully or if their breaks were pre-empted or the like, the verification files became something of an in-stone component of the industry ecosystem since the advertisers would be billed based on them. Nobody wants to replace it because it would require getting buy-in from so many outside parties WRT how things get bi

"and we would all still be cave-people"

[fredrated]

and Linus is the second coming of Christ. Got it.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"and we would all still be cave-people"

[Kjella]

That part is clearly tongue-in-cheek but it is a good question how much one person actually shapes history. Some people believe ideas are ripe for their time, that if you went back in time and assassinated Linus there'd be someone else in the same time frame that'd make something similar. That if you took out Hitler all the anti-Jewish sentiments would still be there and another would step up and take his place. Like Neil Armstrong wasn't supposed to be the first man on the moon, he just ranked up after the Apollo I fire. I think that's underestimating how much their individual contribution meant, like I don't expect the world to stop and like never progress without them, but it's hardly so that everything would be the same. Can't do proper A/B testing without the time machine though...

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

I do wonder what would have happened if GNU Hurd had worked out, or if they had just built a less ambitious kernel.

Re:

[exomondo]

I do wonder what would have happened if GNU Hurd had worked out, or if they had just built a less ambitious kernel.

Hurd was (is?) a FOSS project, Linux is really an Open Source project. Sure it has a FOSS license but it also has preamble that allows linking of proprietary code to the kernel and with no "or later version" license provision because using it in locked-down proprietary devices is just fine so long as you release the code. This is why it has massive corporate contributions and has grown into such a versatile and widely supported piece of software.

Hurd's exclusion of developers that don't wholly share the fre

Re:

[TuringTest]

No, that's Stallman. Linus is His prophet.

Re:

[Resuna]

We'd be using BSD instead. Linus only started Linux because Minix was kind of off in the weeds and BSD was developing too slowly. In a Usenet post in 1992 he wrote:

"It's just coincidence: I knew about 386bsd through DDJ, but it obviously
wasn't ready when I would have wanted it, so I just started on my own.
If 386bsd had been ready one year earlier, I'd probably not have started
on linux at all, but used bsd instead - although I'm very happy with how
it all turned out."

Re:

[Resuna]

Update: full post archived here: https://www.linux.co.cr/unix-s... [linux.co.cr]

I like the way Linus edited Jim's post so it lined up with the original by padding the first line with spaces.

A little context here

[tannhaus]

There's already someone on Reddit claiming he installed it as soon as Linus announced it and has been using it ever since. So, I'll add a little context to this date:

He didn't actually release it on this date in 1991. He released it privately on September 17th [archive.org] to a small group of friends, but only one or two downloaded it at the time. The first public release was .02 on October 5th [zdnet.com] and the first standalone version that didn't need minix for setup was version 11+VM @Christmas 1991 [cmu.edu].

Re:A little context here

[Anonymous Coward]

The first distributions really didn't come out in earnest until 1992, be it MCC, SLS, or Yggdrasil. Also, at the time, William Jolitz released 386BSD, not to be confused with BSDI's BSD/386 or BSD/OS. This was also a major step, because it was one of the first operating systems with all source available.

I would say the biggest reason why Linux and 386BSD were possible was due to GCC. Before that, every UNIX flavor (and there were tons at that time) had the compiler a commercial product where you might have to pay thousands to get. Since GCC not just was good at compiling, but could be built and cross compiled on a completely different architecture, this made it possible to get F/OSS operating systems started.

After that, it became a stone soup with people contributing. Everyone contributed in something. Around 1993-1994, Linux made its way into colleges because a generic 386 could be used as a web server without paying crazy amounts for XENIX, BSDI, Dell UNIX, or some other SVR4 item + a compiler to compile the CERN httpd.

The only thing I wish Linux would actually have is more work on btrfs, as it still isn't production quality, and RedHat ripped it out completely. It sucks still using ext4 which was intended to just be a stopgap until everything moved to btrfs, but in reality that, or XFS is still what most servers use. Having some way to pop snapshots, deal with bitrot, or do RAID maintenance on the LVM level and not the block level (look how long a rebuild versus a ZFS resilver take). Even Apple has an enterprise tier filesystem.

Re:

[sjames]

I find BTRFS quite usable as long as you stay stick with mirroring or single disk.

Redhat seems to have a bad case of NIH with BTRFS.

Re:

[Resuna]

Pretty sure BSD originally supported multiple open source C compilers, and only went GCC-only once GCC killed off the competitors.

Re: A little context here

[0xdeaddead]

I've been using it since SLS. It's just as unusable today as it was back then.

While I did the hoops to build on Minix, it was so bare and such a massive amount of work. Once it was self hosting and fleshed out SLS made it super easy.

A couple of my early Linux anecdotes

[imidan]

When I was an undergrad in the late 90s, I had a Linux box in my dorm room that I experimented with a lot. My roommate was a dull-witted CS guy who had a great talent at roping other people into doing his homework for him, one side effect being that he knew very little about CS. He scoffed at my Linux box, calling it a passing fad, and didn't believe there was any point in learning how to use it. Today, my Linux box and my Windows box are both here on my primary desk, and I use both every day. For work, I often need to connect to other Linux machines, and it's incredibly valuable to me to be able to ssh with port forwarding and access a remote database, or even occasionally export a remote GUI to my local X instance. I haven't tried the Windows 10 Linux capabilities, yet.

I also had various student jobs in college, and in one I routinely manipulated files in a large catalog of XML (~20,000 files of ~200KB each). I was by then pretty competent with command-line tools like find, grep, awk, and sed. We got some new hardware and I asked if we could preserve one of the older computers as a Linux box so I could use those tools. (I had tried Cygwin before, and I never thought much of it.) The local sysadmin was adamant that he wouldn't allow Linux on his network. So I wound up putting it on an old laptop of mine and using it anyway (not connected to the building network). I kept it secret for a long time, until my boss was trying to figure out how I was able to do global find/replace recursively on files in complex directory trees so fast, and I had to spill the beans. He was so impressed with these tools that he started using Cygwin himself and was a lot more patient with it than I was. Eventually, we wound up with several Linux machines on the network in that building.

Linux? It'll never work.

[thermopile]

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

.

(and if you really want to feel old, that quote was written eighteen years ago, but Linux was only 10 years old then.)

Re:

[Briareos]

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

Needs more "Netcraft now confirms: Linux is dying"...

Since when was 28 a significant anniversary?

[AntisocialNetworker]

Are we going to have to put up with the same people's "I remember the good ole days before systemd" EVERY year?

Re:

[TeknoHog]

Yes [godsong.org].

soon followed by 386BSD

[weberjn]

12 Mar 1992 386BSD was announced:

" This is 386BSD Release 0.0, the first edition from the
386BSD project. It comprises an entire and complete UNIX-
like operating system for the Intel 80386/486 based IBM PC,
and is based almost entirely on the NET/2 release from the
University of California, which contained much of the ear-
lier freely redistributable and modifiable 386BSD source
code done by William F. Jolitz and contributed to the Uni-
versity of California at Berkeley for distribution."

https://groups.google.com/foru... [google.com]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

FreaX

[XArtur0]

I know what I'll be calling my Unix clone...

Book

[sad_]

I would recommend the book 'Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary', from Linus for anybody who wants to know about the history of the Linux kernel. It starts with Linus as a young boy on his grand fathers lap typing away at a 8 bit home computer and goes to the humble beginnings of the kernel and what happened after the release.

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Fu... [amazon.com]

Linus revolutionnized the tech industry two times

[uulbri]

Once with of course Linux, and a second time with Git which now the de-facto standard for code management ! My hero !

Linux fan

[NikeHerc]

My first Linux install was in September, 1986, on a 486 with an ESDI disk and not much memory. It worked perfectly. I sneaked Linux DNS servers into the back door of a Fortune 100 company in the mid-1990s. As Grace Hopper famously said, "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."

When I left 20 years later, the company had at least 200 Linux servers. Thank you, Linus.

Re:

[NikeHerc]

Good catch, I was off a decade. First install: September, 1996. The DNS servers went into place somewhere between the late-1990s and the early 2000s.

The DNS servers began with discarded (i.e., "junk") machines and later switched over to IBM Netfinity 5000 servers running what was likely version 6 of Red Hat Linux.

When the company scrapped the Netfinity 5000 servers, I scrounged several and still have them in my home office. They aren't screamingly fast but are built like tanks.

The road not traveled

[The Cynical Critic]

I think one of the interesting "road not traveled" stories in the industry is how Linux had it's name changed from FreaX to Linux.

When Linus first created Linux he was a Computer Science student at the University of Helsinki and when he wanted to host it on their servers they said no because they didn't allow students to host their personal projects on the university servers. After being rebuffed by his school he went to the Computer Engineering department at the nearby Teknillinen Korkeakoulu (TKK for short) and asked if they could host his project. Having a much more lax policy to hosting student projects they gladly hosted it and roped in one of their server ops to help out with it. This server op was literally the person who thought Linus' choice of name was a little too cringy and without Linus' permission changed the name from FreaX to Linux.

The reason why I think it's one of the most interesting "road not traveled" stories is that I'm pretty sure Linus' original name would have put a LOT of people off and that would have lead to Linux never getting the kind of support that it eventually did. Who knows what may have filled the market gap Linux ended up filling. Would Windows have dominated even harder? Would we be running GNU Hurd instead of the Linux kernel or would various BSD variants occupy the space that Linux now holds?

Oh and before anyone points out that TKK was actually called "Helsinki University of Technology" in English, I intentionally used the Finnish language moniker because of how similar it is to University of Helsinki and how it was actually based in nearby Espoo. Now they at least have distinctive names after TKK became Aalto University after it merged with the Helsinki School of Economics and the Helsinki University of Art and Design.

Re:

[iggymanz]

no, the name didn't matter at all. The first distros had names like "softlanding system" and "slackware" and Yggdrasil...

How quickly they forget

[UsuallyReasonable]

Who are those Thompson, Ritchie, and Kernighan guys again?

Creating >> cloning.

Android

[timeOday]

In Oct. 2003, a team of developers forked Android from Linux to run on digital cameras. Nearly 16 years later, it's the single most popular operating system in the world, running on more than 2 billion devices.

What is the ongoing relation between Linux and Android? Has Android contributed anything back to the non-Android world of Linux?