The Linux kernel turns 27 this year. OS based on it many corporations, government, research institutions and all over the world.
For more than a quarter of a century, many articles have been published (including on Habré) that tell about different segments of the history of Linux. In this series of materials, we decided to highlight the most significant and interesting facts related to this operating system.
Let's start with the developments that preceded Linux and the history of the first version of the kernel.
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The era of the "free market"
The advent of Linux one of the most important events in the history of open source software. The birth of this operating system is largely due to the ideas and tools that have been formed and "ripe" for decades in the development environment. Therefore, to begin with, let's turn to the origins of the "open source movement".
In the early 50s, most software in the United States was created by employees of universities and laboratories and without any restrictions. This was done in order to facilitate the exchange of knowledge in the scientific community. The first open source solution of that period A-2 system written for the UNIVAC Remington Rand computer in 1953.
In the same years, the first group of free software developers, SHARE, was formed. They worked on the model". The result of the work of this group towards the end of the 50s OS of the same name.
This system (and other SHARE products) manufacturers of computer equipment. Thanks to the openness policy, they were able to offer customers not only hardware, but also software at no additional cost.
The advent of commerce and the birth of Unix
In 1959, Applied Data Research (ADR) received an order from the RCA organization - program for autocomplete flowcharts. The developers did the job, but did not agree with RCA on the price. In order not to "throw away" the finished product, ADR redesigned the solution for the IBM 1401 platform and began to implement it independently. However, sales did not go well, as many users were waiting for the free alternative to the ADR solution that IBM was planning.
ADR could not allow the release of a free product with similar functionality. Therefore, the developer Martin Goetz (Martin Goetz) from ADR filed a patent for the program and in 1968 the first in the history of the United States his. From now on the era of commercialization in the development industry - from a “bonus” to hardware, software has turned into an independent product.
Around the same time, a small team of programmers from Bell Labs over the operating system for the mini-computer PDP-7 - Unix. Unix was created as an alternative to another operating system - Multics.
The latter was overly complex and only ran on the GE-600 and Honeywell 6000 platforms. Unix, rewritten in C, was meant to be portable and easier to use (largely due to the hierarchical file system with a single root directory).
In the 50s, the AT&T holding, which at that time included Bell Labs, an agreement with the US government that prohibits corporations from selling software. For this reason, the first users of Unix - scientific organizations - OS source code for free.
AT&T moved away from the free software concept in the early 80s. As a result division of the corporation into several companies, the ban on the sale of software ceased to operate, and the holding stopped the free distribution of Unix. Developers were threatened with lawsuits for unauthorized sharing of source code. The threats were not groundless - since 1980, computer programs have become the subject of copyright in the United States.
Not all developers were satisfied with the conditions dictated by AT&T. A group of enthusiasts from the University of California at Berkeley took up the search for an alternative solution. In the 70s, the school received a license from AT&T, and enthusiasts began to create a new distribution based on it, which later became the Unix Berkeley Software Distribution, or BSD.
The open Unix-like system was a success, and AT&T immediately took notice. Company to court, and the BSD authors had to remove and replace all of the Unix source code involved. This slightly slowed down the spread of Berkeley Software Distribution during those years. The last version of the system was released in 1994, but the very fact of the emergence of a free and open OS was an important milestone in the history of open source projects.
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Back to the origins of free software
In the late 70s, employees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology driver for a printer installed in one of the classrooms. When paper was jammed and a queue of print jobs was created, users were notified to fix the problem. Later, a new printer appeared in the department, for which the employees wanted to add such a function. But this required the source code of the first driver. Staff programmer Richard Matthew Stallman (Richard M. Stallman) requested it from colleagues, but was refused - it turned out that this is confidential information.
This minor episode may have been one of the most important in the history of free software. Stallman resented the status quo. He was not happy with the restrictions placed on sharing source code in the IT environment. So Stallman decided to create an open operating system and let enthusiasts freely modify it.
In September 1983, he announced the creation of the GNU project - GNU's Not UNIX ("GNU is not Unix"). It was based on the manifesto, which also served as the basis for the free software license - the GNU General Public License (GPL). This step was the beginning of an active movement for open source software.
A few years later, Free University of Amsterdam professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum developed a Unix-like Minix system as a teaching tool. He wanted to make it as accessible as possible for students. The publisher of his book, which came with the OS, at least at a nominal fee for working with the system. Andrew and the publisher have reached a compromise on the license price of $69. Early 90s Minix popularity among developers. And she was destined basis for Linux development.
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Birth of Linux and the first distributions
In 1991, a young programmer from the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds, was mastering Minix. His experiments with OS to work on a completely new kernel. On August 25, Linus held an open survey of a group of Minix users about what they did not like about this OS, and announced the development of a new operating system. The August letter contains several important theses about the future OS:
- the system will be free;
- the system will be similar to Minix, but the source code will be completely different;
- the system will not be "big and professional like GNU".
August 25 is considered to be the birthday of Linux. Linus himself from another date - 17 September. It was on this day that he uploaded the first release of Linux (0.01) to an FTP server and sent an email to people who showed interest in its announcement and poll. In the source code of the first release, the word "Freaks" was preserved. So Torvalds planned to name his kernel (a combination of the words "free", "freak" and Unix). The administrator of the FTP server didn't like the name and renamed the project to Linux.
A series of updates followed. In October of the same year, kernel version 0.02 was released, and in December, 0.11. Initially, Linux was distributed without the GPL license. This meant that developers could use the kernel, modify it, but did not have the right to resell the results of their labors. Starting from February 1992, all commercial restrictions were removed - with the release of version 0.12, Torvalds changed the license to GNU GPL v2. This move was later cited by Linus as one of the defining factors behind Linux's success.
The popularity of Linux among the Minix developers grew. There has been some discussion on the comp.os.minix Usenet feed for some time. In early 92, Minix creator Andrew Tanenbaum launched in the community about the architecture of the kernels, stating that "Linux is obsolete". The reason, in his opinion, was the monolithic OS kernel, which is inferior to the Minix microkernel in a number of parameters. Tanenbaum's other claim was that Linux would be tied to the x86 line of processors, which, according to the professor's forecasts, was about to disappear into oblivion in the near future. Linus himself and users of both operating systems entered into controversy. As a result of the dispute, the community was divided into two camps, and Linux adherents got their own feed - comp.os.linux.
The community was engaged in expanding the functionality of the basic version - the first drivers and the file system were developed. The earliest versions of Linux on two floppy disks and consisted of a kernel boot disk and a root disk that installed the file system and a few basic programs from the GNU toolkit.
Gradually, the community began to develop the first distributions based on Linux. Most early versions were created by enthusiasts, not companies.
The first distribution, MCC Interim Linux, was based on version 0.12 in February 1992. Its author is a programmer from the Computer Center of the University of Manchester - development as an "experiment" to address some shortcomings in the kernel installation procedure and add a number of features.
Shortly thereafter, the number of custom distributions increased significantly. Many of them remained local projects, "» no more than five years, for example, Softlanding Linux System (SLS). However, there were also distributions that managed not only to gain a foothold in the market, but also largely influence the further development of open source projects. In 1993, two distributions, Slackware and Debian, were released, which launched major changes in the free software industry.
Debian Ian Murdock with the support of Stallman's Free Software Foundation. He was conceived as a "graceful" alternative to the SLS. Debian is maintained to this day and is developments based on Linux. On its basis, in turn, a number of other distributions important for the history of the kernel were created - for example, Ubuntu.
As for Slackware, this is another early and successful Linux-based project. Its first version was released in 1993. By , two years later, Slackware accounted for about 80% of Linux installations. And decades later, the distribution popular among developers.
In 1992, SUSE (an abbreviation for Software- und System-Entwicklung - software and systems development) was founded in Germany. She is the first Linux-based products for business customers. The first distribution that SUSE started working with was Slackware, which was adapted for German-speaking users.
It is from this moment that the era of commercialization in the history of Linux begins, which we will talk about in the next article.
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Source: habr.com