A Look Back On 25 Years Of The Linux Kernel

It’s a big week for Linux! LinuxCon North America is underway in Toronto, PowerShell is going open source which includes a promise by Microsoft to support Linux in the future. But most importantly, Linux had its 25th birthday!

It’s been a long time in the making, and what once was considered a hobby or side project by an ambitious developer (Linus Torvalds) is now embedded in arguably more tech today than Microsoft Windows or Mac OS.

I remember back when I was about 12 years old and a friend of mine who I had considered a bit of a computer geek was messing around with one of the first distributions of the Linux kernel. I used to have to boot one of my favorite adventure games, Kyrandia, from MS-DOS and messed around with the commands found in the /help menu, so I wasn’t unfamiliar with text based interfaces.

I thought his excitement around Linux was a bit over the top at the time. He explained why Linux was going to run the world someday, which even as an adolescent seemed a bit far-fetched since I had never heard of Linux. But that day, Tux the penguin was forever ingrained upon me.

I wish I was still in touch with that childhood friend because I would say, “You were right!”. I might have also taken his advice on buying some shares of Intel.

Even if the less technical may not be fully aware the impact Linux has on their lives, those in the know fully embrace how Linux has changed technology around the world over the past 25 years.

On that note, let’s take a look at the past 25 years of Linux.

1991 — The Birth of the Linux Kernel

Linux today can be described as the most prolific and successful open source project ever created, but its roots were modest. The original Linux kernel was created as a hobby by Linus Torvalds who was interested in MINIX, a Unix-like OS. Torvalds couldn’t stand the licensing model which only allowed use and distribution for educational purposes only.

What’s ironic is that MINIX is open source today. I guess the MINIX developers lived and learned from that.

As you read in Torvalds’ first posts about Linux, from 1991 to 1992 Linux was very much in its infancy. He complained that he couldn’t debug back then and even the PrintF() command was practically useless. Torvalds warned several times in his release notes that it was pretty much a waste of time for anyone who wasn’t a hacker and his side project would never grow into anything practical.

Here is one of those passages:

ALERT! WARNING! NOTE! These sources still need minix-386 to be compiled (and gcc-1.40, possibly 1.37.1, haven’t tested), and you need minix to set it up if you want to run it, so it is not yet a standalone system for those of you without minix. I’m working on it. You also need to be something of a hacker to set it up (?), so for those hoping for an alternative to minix-386, please ignore me. It is currently meant for hackers interested in operating systems and 386’s with access to minix.

The 1990s — The Rise of the First Linux Distributions

Moving further along into the 1990s Linux began to branch off and grow its following. Torvalds had been able to create a usable Linux kernel and the first Linux distributions started to appear. Some of the most notable distributions were Redhat, Debian, GNOME, KDE, and Slackware (known as SLS at the time) — and all of these are still used today.

By the late 1990s, Linux distributions started to look more like Windows which showed signs that the user experience could appeal to a mainstream audience. As for IT infrastructure, sysadmins considered Linux a worthy competitor to Windows.

If you jump into the Wayback Machine to around 1998, you’ll see the Linux Foundation on the web. To this day, the Linux Foundation holds true to its original mission to provide free information and help for anyone to develop on Linux. It’s also important to note the rise of the Internet during Linux’s early days was the fuel that helped Linux communities grow and prosper.

Did you know that VA Research beat tech giants like IBM and Intel in a contest to win Linux.com? VA Research grew to become SourceForge, and now is known as Geeknet, Inc. which also owns ThinkGeek.

The 2000s — Open Source and Birth of Android

By the time Y2K passed, Linux had already made its mark commercially. Red Hat was being used by many IT teams across the globe. Other tech companies like Intel, IBM, and Microsoft started supporting Linux or at least using it in some fashion. In addition, open source software was starting to gain traction in larger developer communities.

By the mid-2000s, companies that considered open source to not be a good thing because it was free and open started to have their folks develop for Linux. Companies began to see the value in supporting open projects like Linux since they could use that same technology in their products.

By the end of the decade, mobile was already making its rise as the next great movement in technology; the biggest since the dawn of the Internet. Google created the first Linux-based Android phone and distros of Linux such as Ubuntu were growing in popularity with the mainstream.

The 2010s — Mobile, IoT, and Gaming on Linux

The past 6 years have brought rise to mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT). And to no surprise, Linux is running on the back-end of most of these devices. Some may argue that Linux has surpassed Windows and Mac OS in market share considering the amount of different devices running some form of the Linux kernel.

It’s amazing to me to see such humble beginnings lead to widespread, global use of Linux. Furthermore, Valve has already marketed its popular SteamOS for gaming which has sparked the end of the Linux gaming debacle of the past 20 years.

It’s hard to tell what’s next for Linux, and any given technology for that matter. But it’s safe to say Linux — a former “waste of time” — is here to stay.

I still believe Linux distributions will quietly surpass Windows and Mac OS in market share. It’s just a matter of when.

This article by Greg Mooney originally appeared on the Ipswitch Blog.