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History of Linux
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The Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to its state in 2007 of about 290 megabytes of source under the GNU General Public License[1] .
Contents [hide]
1 Pre-creation
2 The creation of Linux
3 The name
4 "Linux is obsolete"
5 Linux under the GNU GPL
6 GNU/Linux naming controversy
7 Official mascot
8 New development
8.1 Kernel
8.2 Community
8.3 Desktop
8.4 Open Source Development Lab and Linux Foundation
8.5 Companies
9 Controversy over Linux
9.1 Samizdat
9.2 Competition from Microsoft
9.3 SCO
9.4 Trademark of the name
9.5 Trademark rights
10 Chronology
11 See also
12 References
13 External links
[edit] Pre-creation
The Unix operating system was conceived and implemented in the 1960s and first released in 1970. Its wide availability and portability meant that it was widely adopted, copied and modified by academic institutions and businesses, with its design being influential on authors of other systems.
In 1983, Richard Stallman started the GNU project with the goal of creating a free UNIX-like, POSIX-compatible operating system. As part of this work, he wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL). By the early 1990s there was almost enough available to create a full operating system. However, the GNU kernel, called Hurd, had failed to attract enough attention from developers.
Another free operating system project in the 1980s was the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). This was developed by UC Berkeley from the 6th edition of Unix from AT&T. Since AT&T Unix code was contained in BSD, AT&T filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s against the University of California, which strongly limited the development of BSD and greatly slowed adoption.[2][3]
MINIX, a Unix-like system intended for academic use, was released by Andrew S. Tanenbaum in 1987. While source code for the system was available, modification and redistribution were restricted. In addition, MINIX's 16-bit design was not well adapted to the 32-bit features of the increasingly cheap and popular Intel 386 architecture for personal computers.
These factors of a lack of a widely-adopted, free kernel provided the impetus for Torvalds's starting his project. He has stated that had either the GNU or 386BSD kernels been available at the time, he likely would not have written his own[4][5].
[edit] The creation of Linux
Linus Torvalds in 2002In 1991, in Helsinki, Linus Torvalds began a project that later became the Linux kernel. It was initially a terminal emulator, which Torvalds used to access the large UNIX servers of the university. He wrote the program specifically for the hardware he was using and independent of an operating system because he wanted to use the functions of his new PC with an 80386 processor. Development was done on Minix using the GNU C compiler, which is still the main choice for compiling Linux today (although the code can be built with other compilers, such as the Intel C Compiler).[citation needed]
As Torvalds wrote in his book Just for Fun[6], he eventually realized that he had written an operating system kernel. On 25 August 1991, he announced this system in a Usenet posting to the newsgroup "comp.os.minix.":
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
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sweeeeet...
wala ako maibibigay eh~
behlat! razz