Phil H Kim
Stony Brook University
CSE 301 – History of
Computing
Fall 2006
Intro
to Linux
On my personal note, one of
the most significant and important invention in human history would be a
machine, called a computer.
Only about 30 years ago, very few people were interested in, or knew about this
machine. However, many of us do not even want to think about life without a 
computer these
days. My first computer was the IBM-compatible PC with Intel 386processor with MS-DOS as an operating system. Since then I have
always been in love with this machine. Throughout my short era of
using computers, Microsoft
was the most well known company in computer industry. I have heard only a
couple of companies, such as Apple, IBM, and Linux, which could help to
prevent Microsoft¡¯s monopoly. Microsoft developed an operating system
called Microsoft Windows many years down, since then it monopolized most of
personal computers all around the world. I have known another operating system
known as Linux which was developed by Linus Torvalds.
Linus
Torvalds
Linus Torvalds, a son of journalist Anna and Nils
Torvalds, and a grand son of Ole Torvalds,
was born in Helsinki, a
capital of 
Commodore VIC-20. After VIC-20,
he purchased Sinclair QL,
which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. Then finally,
in 1990 he bought Intel-80386 based IBM PC, similar to my first computer. After
playing Price of Persia for couple weeks, he received his own copy of MINIX, a UNIX-like operating system.
Linus actually preferred to obtain UNIX, which was a more powerful
and reliable operating system then MS-DOS, however, unfortunately it was almost
impossible to purchase a copy of UNIX at reasonable price. Linus could not
afford $5000.00 operating system, but could afford making a better operating
system-based on UNIX. He announced the fact that he was creating a
new operating system for AT 386 clones on August 25, 1991. Shortly after, on
September 17th he unveiled its first version 0.01, then released
official version 0.02 on October 15th in same year. First Linus
named his new operating system as Freax, originated
from combination of words Free, Freak, and Minix.
However, his friend Ari
Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the Linux kernel was first hosted
for downloading, gave Torvalds a directory called Linux.
The Development of Linux
When Linus kernel first developed this new operation system, it was designed
only for Intel-80386 microprocessors, however, now it supports variety of computer
architectures. Linux is one of the most widely ported operating system, running on a wide
range of systems from the hand-held ARM-based
iPAQ to the
mainframe IBM System
z9. Linux is also popular for open source code. A 2001 study of Red Hot
Linux 7.1, found that this distribution contains about thirty million lines of
source codes. The 
study estimates that this
would require eight thousand man years of development time. According to the
study if this distribution was developed in conventional means, it
would have cost about 1.08 billion dollars( year 2000)
in order to be developed in United Sates. Linus¡¯s decision about releasing Linux kernel under GPL (GNU General Public License) has
helped achieving remarkable improvement of the system very fast. Many
programmers around the world became very interested in Linux and helped Linux
in many aspects. About 71% of the Linux kernel
is written in C
programming language, however, many other languages, such as C++, Assembly
languages, FORTRAN and etc¡¦, were also
used in development. Only about 2% of the current
Linux kernel is written by Torvalds himself, however,
despite the relative size of his contribution, Torvalds
still remains the ultimate authority on what new code is added into the Linux
kernel. After intensive development of Linux, they added GUI¡¯s to Linux,
also there were file systems , such as ext and ext2, were introduced, improving
its compatibility and network capability.
In December 1996, only 5 years after the first version, Linux released
its new version 2.0, achieving astonishing improvements. Version 2.0 supported
additional processors and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). As
Linux has became a powerful operating system many users around the world stared
to actually install it to their personal computers and started using them. In
1997 about three million copies of Linux were distributed. Only after two
years, in 1999, estimation doubled to seven million copies. Many enterprises
became really interested in Linux kernel since late 90¡¯s.
For instance, IBM has invested multi million dollars on Linux research and now IBM has became the largest
corporation of Linux-related products and services. Gradually many individual
user and many enterprises came to pay more and more attention to this
remarkable operating system. There are many reasons for Linux to be an
alternative of Microsoft Windows system. First of all, there are no license fees,
so it¡¯s much more inexpensive then Windows. Plus, Linux
is fairly advanced and well developed system. Its portability and compatibility
is already proven and well known.
Why?
In ¡°just for Fun: The Story of an
Accidental Revolutionary¡±, a
autobiography of Linus Torvalds, said that once Linus
Torvalds was just another nerdy who has been fooling
around with computer since his child hood. Then he developed a groundbreaking
operating system and distributed it through internet. Linus¡¯s
success is very significant for him and, furthers more, for all computer users
in the world. Even though Linux is not leading O/S system in the world, it has
biggest potentials, and I am sure that it will improve better and better. This
will prevent Microsoft¡¯s
monopoly and give us more options in the future.
References
for Contents
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
4.
http://linuxreviews.org/dictionary/Linus_Torvalds/#Biography
References
for Pictures
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CPUs_old.jpg
2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Linus_Torvalds.jpeg
